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"New Guys" is the first episode of the ninth season of the American comedy television series The Office, and the show's 177th episode overall. It originally aired on NBC on September 20, 2012. The episode was written and directed by series creator Greg Daniels; this is his first writing credit for the series since the seventh season episode "Goodbye, Michael", and his first directing credit since "PDA".
The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. In this episode, two new employees (Clark Duke and Jake Lacy) are hired by the Scranton branch and cause trouble for Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) and Jim Halpert (John Krasinski). Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) returns from manager training, hoping for revenge on Nellie Bertram (Catherine Tate). Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) considers adopting Angela Lipton's (Angela Kinsey) cat. Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) tries to save a turtle.
"New Guys" was the inception of several story arcs and saw the departures of Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor and B. J. Novak as Ryan Howard, due to their involvement in the former's own sitcom The Mindy Project. "New Guys" received largely positive pre-release reviews from television critics. Post-release reviews were mixed; while many felt that the episode was a distinct step in the right direction for the show, others took issues with some of the comedic aspects of the episode. "New Guys" was viewed by 4.28 million viewers and received a 2.1 rating among adults between the age of 18 and 49, making it the show's lowest-rated season premiere. The episode ranked second in its timeslot and was also the highest-rated NBC series of the night.
Synopsis
Various workers in the office explain what they did over the summer: Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) tried to save a turtle that he ran over, making a new shell after he cannot put the old one back together. He broke the new one as well, so made a second one, but found the turtle was already dead, likely from when he ran it over the first time. Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) moved to Ohio with her fiancé Ravi and Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) also moved to Ohio for "unrelated reasons". Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) made a new "energy drink" from beet run-off and also learned that he is not the biological father of Angela Lipton's (Angela Kinsey) baby. Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam Halpert (Jenna Fischer) reveal that Jim was offered an entrepreneurial sports job by an old college friend based on an idea the two had in college. Jim tells the camera that he turned it down, because the long distance would not be good for his family. Pam and Jim begin to take off their microphones and Pam makes a remark, noting that, after nine years, the cameramen should have enough footage for a documentary. One of the cameramen then addresses the two, saying that they are more interested in the developments of the office workers themselves, especially Jim and Pam, rather than the office now. Jim looks pensive when Pam tells the cameramen that they expect to live a calm, normal life, given their work and children, and that "nothing interesting is going to happen to [them] for a long, long time."
Two new employees, Clark Green (Clark Duke) and Pete Miller (Jake Lacy), who are quickly dubbed "Dwight, Jr." and "The New Jim" based solely on their respective visual similarities, are hired by the Scranton branch and cause trouble for Jim and Dwight. At first, Dwight is happy to have a protégé, acting as a fatherly figure to Clark (which disturbs Clark), but soon begins to fear that Clark is after his job. Jim, on the other hand, does not feel that he and Pete have anything in common. However, after hearing Pete discuss his future plans, Jim realizes that he used to have Pete's ambition but has become stuck at the same job for over nine years. Angela puts one of her cats, Comstock, up for adoption as her baby is allergic to it. Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) initially refuses to adopt Comstock despite Angela's pleas, but agrees to adopt it after learning that it is her husband Robert's (Jack Coleman) favorite cat. It is implied that Robert and Oscar are having an affair, as Robert told Angela he was having a business dinner on the night he actually had plans with Oscar.
Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) returns from Outward Bound manager training — where he became more "decisive and confident" — hoping for revenge on Nellie Bertram (Catherine Tate) for commandeering his job during the previous spring. To do this, Andy sets up a slackline in the parking lot and makes the employees walk across it, humiliating Nellie as she insists on walking in her heels (due to disliking her feet) and fails to keep her balance (due to Andy pushing her). After Clark proves that he is talented at balancing, Dwight attempts to one-up him, but ends up failing repeatedly and hurting himself. Eventually, Dwight tries to prove his superiority by riding a bicycle across a tight-rope suspended between the roof and a telephone pole, but the printer he is using as a counterweight is not heavy enough and he ends up losing his balance and hanging from the bicycle above the parking lot, while his coworkers who were leaving look on in horror. Much to his embarrassment, he has to be rescued by a team of firefighters, while Creed Bratton (Creed Bratton) mistakenly believes the incident to be a circus act, erroneously commenting that this was "not bad for a day in the life of a dog food company." While everyone is outside crowding around Dwight, Jim calls up his old college friend and tells him that he wants to be involved in the new business deal, even though he did not have Pam's approval.
Production
On May 11, 2012, NBC renewed The Office for a ninth season and it was later announced that Greg Daniels, who had been the series showrunner from season one through five, would be returning. "New Guys" was written and directed by Daniels. This is his first writing credit for the series since the seventh season entry, "Goodbye, Michael", and his first directing credited since season seven's "PDA". This also marks the third time he has both written and directed an episode, after the first season episode "Basketball" and the fourth season opener, "Fun Run". Daniels later revealed that "New Guys" would be the inception of big season arcs. He went on the record saying "I'll tell you that the last couple of years, I don't think we did any big arc-type things in the way that we used to in the beginning, I think the thing we're going to do is bring back a lot of arcs". Jenna Fischer later stated that part of the Jim and Pam arc would be dependent on "things that happened in seasons past that didn't seem very relevant at the time and [that] they're going to become important this season."
"New Guys" featured one of the final few performances of Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor, who left the series to star in her own comedy television series The Mindy Project, which was created for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Both Novak and Kaling appeared in two episodes of the season—"New Guys" and "Finale". The episode features both Clark Duke and Jake Lacy as two new Dunder Mifflin employees who have been hired to "go through the back log of over 4,000 unanswered customer complaints that" Kelly has ignored the past few years. Duke noted that filming the slack lining scene "was not that fun; it was really hard". He did, however, state that Helms was able to do it well "with no practice". The voice of the documentarian that responds to Jim is that of series director David Rogers. Rogers also voiced the same character in the penultimate episode opener "A.A.R.M.". Originally, Daniels had re-recorded the line in "New Guys", but ended up liking Rogers' voice better. He asked him to reprise the role in "A.A.R.M." to preserve continuity.
The official website of The Office included several cut scenes from "New Guys" within a week of the episode's release. In the first 40-second clip, Dwight tries to bond with Clark by discussing an article he read in Time magazine about dub-step. Clark teases Dwight for reading the magazine, something he considers for older audiences, but Dwight is oblivious. In the second 75-second clip, Toby calls a workplace bullying meeting and the office discusses how Andy has been harassing various people. Kevin declares that Angela bullies him, and states that she will not give him her cat because he killed his turtle "a few times". In the third and final 30-second clip, Jim tries to convince Dwight that the relationship Dwight shares with Clark is similar to that of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, characters from the popular science fiction movie franchise Star Wars.
Cultural references
Much like the sixth season starter "Gossip"—which featured parkour in the cold opening—the seventh season opener "Nepotism"—which started with a lip dub—and the eighth season premiere "The List"—which opened with a bit about planking—"New Guys" also contains a plot involving a popular Internet meme, in this case slacklining, which is a practice in balance that typically uses nylon webbing tensioned between two anchor points. When Ryan is leaving, he claims he is going to Ohio because "they call it the Silicone Prairie," a reference to Silicon Valley, a part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States that is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations. Andy returns from Outward Bound, an organization that aims to foster the personal growth and social skills of participants by using challenging expeditions in the outdoors. Dwight tries to talk to Clark about the heavy metal band Slayer, noting that he has tickets for a show in ten months. Jim asks Pete if he likes the Philadelphia Phillies, but Pete mistakes his reference to mean horses.
Erik Adams of The A.V. Club compared Dwight and Clark's relationship to that of the mythical characters of King Laius and Oedipus, respectively. The story, which was later turned into a popular play Oedipus Rex by Greek writer Sophocles, tells of how Laius hears of a prophecy that his son will kill him. Fearing the prophecy, Laius abandons his son, Oedipus', who is raised in the city of Thebes. Oedipus later crosses paths with Laius and gets into a fight and, not knowing that Laius is his father, kills him. Adams argues that the "break-room conversation" Dwight and Clark share echoes the myth of Oedipus, given that it starts to make Dwight paranoid and fear that Clark is after his job.
Many reviewers noted that the episode made references to previous episodes of the series. The ending, featuring Dwight riding a bicycle on the roof, was positively compared to the third season episode "Safety Training". Adams wrote that many of the scenes "take characters to corners of the office tied to memories of episode's past", such as Oscar's phone call, which takes place in the stairwell where Dwight pumped himself up for his work review in the second season episode "Performance Review", and Pam climbing up the rooftop access ladder, which is reminiscent of Pam and Jim's first "date" in the second season episode "The Client".
Broadcast and reception
Ratings
"New Guys" originally aired on NBC on September 20, 2012. The episode was viewed by 4.28 million viewers and received a 2.1/6 percent share in the 18–49 demographic. This means that it was seen by 2.1 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 6 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. This marked a 46 percent drop in viewership from the season eight premiere "The List" and made it the lowest-rated premiere of The Office to air. The Office finished second in its time slot, being beaten by an episode of the Fox series Glee, which received a 2.9/8 percent rating. "New Guys", however, finished ahead of repeats of the CBS show Two and a Half Men and the ABC series Grey's Anatomy and a new episode of The CW show The Next. The Office was also the highest-rated NBC television program of the night. "New Guys" was the twenty-first most-watched show for the week of broadcast among adults aged 18–49. This marked a slight improvement from the season eight premiere, "The List", which ranked as the twenty-second. When DVR numbers were included, the episode increased its ratings up 52 percent to a 3.2, meaning it was seen by, in total, 3.2 percent of all 18- to 49-year-olds.
Reviews
Several pre-release reviews of the episode were generally positive. Bruce Miller of the Sioux City Journal gave the episode a largely positive review and noted that "If you can erase last season from your mind, you'll see this ... is exactly how The Office should have carried on after Steve Carell left." Furthermore, he praised the addition of Duke and Lacy, calling their performances "so good you could see them become the centerpiece of a new series." Verne Gay of Newsweek awarded the episode an "A−" and called the installment "very (very) funny." He was especially happy about the addition of Lacy and Duke, calling them "flashbacks to a younger Jim and Dwight." Furthermore, he noted that "the ninth and final season actually may offer completion" of a show that has just "merely offered variations on [the characters'] tics" for the past eight seasons. Bob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called the episode "generally funnier than [the show] was last season" and wrote that the episode would be a good opportunity "for viewers who quit the [series] last year ... to come back to the show." Particularly, he was excited to "see the seeds of the show's end planted."
Entertainment Weekly writer Ken Tucker concluded that "New Guys" has "a lot more snap and vigor than most of last season's episodes." He was extremely complimentary towards the Pam and Jim story arc that was hinted at, noting that, after settling into a comfortable marriage, the show was finally trying to make them interesting again. David Silverberg of DigitalJournal.com called the entry "one of the show's best [premieres] in recent years" and concluded that the addition of Duke and Lacy "work as a better foil than Nellie and the creepy boss played by James Spader." Adams awarded the episode a "B+" and called it "a fresh start" for the series after the eighth season. Adams also complimented the show for "stop[ing] every so often to acknowledge the fans that have stuck with the series [and] also mak[ing] subtler callbacks to the show's glory days." He was also complimentary towards the fact that Duke and Lacy have not been thrown into stories of their own, rather, they "serve as parallels and stimulants to Dwight and Jim."
Nick Campbell of TV.com called the episode "a decent" and "moderately sharp" season premiere. He concluded that, "While the episode still wasn't on par with those of the show's earliest seasons, ... The episode wasn't lazy—and for The Office, that's a win." Other reviews were slightly more mixed. TV Fanatic reviewer Dan Forcella awarded the episode a three out of five, but was appreciative of the additions to the cast, as well as many of the actors story lines. Jeffrey Hyatt of Screencrave noted that the episode was similar in tone to the season eight finale, "Free Family Portrait Studio", but that "the addition of Lacy and Duke pay quick dividends as the opener provides flashes of comedy moxie, while helping wash away painful memories of last season." David Hinckley of the New York Daily News awarded the episode three stars out of five and wrote that "The deadpan goofiness remains fresh enough to keep fans interested" and that "the fact that this whole drama doesn't feel new and shiny anymore isn't anyone's fault. ... All The Office needs to do now is march out proudly random, zany and off-center." HitFix's Alan Sepinwall, however, was critical of the episode's humor, noting that it "didn't give me a lot of hope for a last-minute resurgence". Matt Roush of TV Guide wrote that the "one interesting storyline" may make him watch the remainder of Pam and Jim's story, but not "the rest of this sadly played-out workplace comedy."
Many reviews were complimentary towards the interaction Pam and Jim had with the cameramen. Silverberg called it "a nice surprise". Tucker called the sequence one of the "biggest reveals" in the episode. Sepinwall, despite being critical of the episode's humor, found the sub-plot "interesting". He called it "a character arc I've been waiting for the show to remember to do for years now, and the scenes here were promising (if not incredibly funny)".
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links
"New Guys" at NBC.com
2012 American television episodes
The Office (American season 9) episodes | {
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CBD Company Chairman of Caliva, Carol Bartz, Shares Views on Cannabis Market's Growth
CBD Company Chairman of Caliva, Carol Bartz, Shares Views on Cannabis Market's Growth
New Organic CBD Balm by Cornbread Hemp Debuts with USDA Certification
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New Chiques Creek Cage-Free Hemp Eggs, Grade-A Large Brown Variety Debut
Jane Summers
Carol Bartz is a former Yahoo CEO who recently invested $75 million in Caliva, a California-based cannabis company. Despite California's cannabis industry, cannabis is illegal under federal law and is classified as a Schedule I substance.
Last January, she appeared the CNBC's Squawk Box and reported the investment. She shared about the opportunity during the segment,
"When I saw this opportunity, I said this is the new world here." She continued, "It's like being back in tech 20 years ago. It's like so much growth potential, so many ways to change people's lives and so I'm in."
She has since jointed Caliva's board as well.
Caliva is described on its website as a "a true seed to sale company. We fret over every detail–from the soil our plants grow into the packaging of our products. It's not just because we're obsessed. It's our strategy to both guarantee a quality experience and to enable testing of every potential new way to do better for our customers."
The brand's range of products are variant as well. It offers edibles, oils, vapes, dried flowers, and more, and such formulas focus on health and wellness.
Barz, in an interview with Marijuana Business Daily, shared that her experiences at Yahoo can apply to Caliva as well. She stated,
"In tech, if there's one thing they say, it's people, people, people. You can have an idea, but you've got to have great people driving an idea. In California, it's harder to hire people. You work a little harder to get good people. It just takes longer." She added, "Finding a vice president for a tech company might take three months. It might take five months for Caliva. It's just because you don't have the applicants lining up." As for her priorities as board chair at Caliva, she's indicated that her focus is on basic strategy, which is "something you should bounce off everybody."
Caliva's products are only available for adults 21+ in California.
All information is for general informational and educational purposes only. Nothing should be interpreted as legal or wellness advice.
New Hemp Grower Website and Weekly Newsletter Set to Launch This Month by GIE Media
FDA Official Discusses the Need for More CBD Research to Collect Better Cannabidiol Data
Jane is a regular contributor who learned about the great benefits of CBD a few years ago after starting it herself. Impressed by its effects, she's interested in helping others learn about options that can be helpful for them. | {
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German woman leaves $7.5 million to her neighbors
adminDecember 5, 20201 Mins read6 Views
CNN– Residents of a community in central Germany have unexpectedly inherited property and a stock portfolio worth €6.2 million ($7.5 million), following the death of an elderly neighbor.Renate Wedel had lived in the Weiperfelden district of Waldsolms in Hesse, central Germany, with her husband, Alfred Wedel, since 1975, according to a statement from the Waldsolms district, which is made up of 6 villages.
Alfred, who was "successful" and "active" on the stock exchange, died in 2014, and Renate, who had been receiving care in a nursing home in Frankfurt since 2016, died in December 2019 at the age of 81.In April this year, the district said, it was informed that Renate had bequeathed it a bank balance, shares and valuables.Renate's sister, who was her original heir, had already died, local media outlet Hessenschau reported.The news came as a shock to the authorities. "I thought at first, this is simply not possible, I thought a comma had slipped, something is not quite right," local mayor Bernd Heine told Hessenschau.The municipality also inherited a property in Weiperfelden, which was initially left as a legacy, but was declined by the initial inheritor because of the cost of maintaining the house and outbuildings and because residents' contributions were due for work on a local road.
The community is obliged to use the inheritance, valued at €6.2 million, for "community facilities and infrastructure.""The community of Waldsolms posthumously thanks the Wedel couple for this important inheritance," the community said in a statement."We will deal with it very responsibly, develop our community for the good of all and keep an honorable memory of both," it added.Local residents have some ideas about what the money should be spent on. Heine told Hessenschau that money was needed for cycling paths, buildings and a kindergarten, while residents suggested the money should be spent on an outdoor pool, public transportation and facilities for local children.
German woman
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Travel: TV presenter Cat Cubie shares her favourite Scottish loch
Loch Goil: Cat Cubie on her favourite Scottish spot
CAT CUBIE, TV PRESENTER AND PODCASTER
Loch Goil in Argyll. The prettiest loch with the not-so-pretty name. Goil has two possible meanings: boil (and having got into wild swimming there during lockdown I can tell you it is definitely not boiling) and to cry or weep.
The beauty of this loch and how it makes me feel is enough to spark a good greet, but with happy tears. Like so much of the west coast, its ruggedness is both enthralling and a little bit scary; making you feel both small and, thanks to the heights of the mountains around it, on top of the world.
My parents have had a place at Loch Goil for more than 20 years but moved there full-time at the start of the year. I've spent a lot of time there, so its familiarity makes it home, but I also get excited about going as it still feels like a bit of a treat.
Whenever we can. This year that has meant, at times, more than normal. During the summer we tried to go as much as possible but now I'm not sure when we will be able to get back.
READ MORE: Outlander star Sam Heughan shares his favourite place in Scotland
Through my parents. I like the idea that places are like heirlooms, my parents passed their love of the west coast and Loch Goil to me and I hope to pass it on to my kids.
During the summer there were two northern bottlenose whales in the loch, they weren't distressed (it's a very deep loch) and had just lost their way. It was incredible to see these two hugely beautiful animals at home from our home.
On the same day, we also saw porpoises and the bob of seals that lives there too. The kids were so excited, it was like having a wildlife park on our doorstep.
My family and friends.
Marshmallows. We make a small fire on the beach if it's dry enough, so after pottering about looking for crabs we can sit down with a bit of warmth (it helps keep the midges away) and enjoy the view with a marshmallow in hand.
Worries. That sense of always being on (and looking at a phone). It feels like somewhere to breathe, and not just because the air is so lovely.
Watching the weather roll in …
What travel spot is on your post-lockdown wish list?
Everywhere. This year has made me value home – there's so much of Scotland that I don't see enough of – and want to explore other places.
I miss that connection of discovering and learning about other cultures, so I think top on my list would be somewhere exotic and otherworldly. I would love to visit the Mayan temples in Mexico.
Cat Cubie co-hosts The Sleep Mums podcast with baby and child sleep expert, Sarah Carpenter, aimed at helping new parents get better sleep. Available on Apple podcasts, visit thesleepmums.co.uk | {
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Immunicum AB (publ) Interim Report April - June 2018
Immunicum AB (publ) Interim Report April - June 2018 Significant Events During the Second Quarter
Immunicum announced Publication of Scientific Review of Ilixadencel Approach in Pharmaceutical Research.
End of Enrollment in Phase I/II GIST Clinical Trial.
Immunicum provided an update on ilixadencel Clinical Development Program.
At the Annual General Meeting Michael Oredsson was elected as new Chairman of the Board and the current board members Magnus Nilsson, Magnus Persson, Steven Glazer, Charlotte Edenius and Kerstin Valinder Strinnholm were re-elected as board members.
Significant Events During January - June
Patient recruitment was completed in the ongoing, global Phase II MERECA (MEtasatic REnal Cell CArcinoma) clinical trial. The objective of the study is to provide proof of concept for ilixadencel through the achievement of multiple endpoints indicative of meaningful clinical impact and safety assessed over an 18-month period.
Immunicum announced ATMP Certificate Granted by EMA to Ilixadencel for Manufacturing Quality and Nonclinical Data.
Immunicum announced the trading of its shares (IMMU.ST) on the main market of Nasdaq Stockholm.
Michaela Gertz joined the company as Chief Financial Officer.
Immunicum presented a case study of one patient from the Phase I/II HCC trial at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Annual Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Significant Events After End of Period
Immunicum announced protocol approval by the FDA enabling the initiation of expanded multi-indication Phase Ib/II combination trial.
Immunicum announced that the company's CSO, Dr. Alex Karlsson-Parra, will present preclinical data on ilixadencel's mode of action in a poster session at the 2018 ESMO Congress.
Q2 First half Full year
KSEK unless otherwise stated 2018 2017 2018 2017 2017
Operating profit/loss -19,348 -19,115 -48,117 -39,648 -80,700
Net profit/loss -19,355 -19,214 -48,125 -39,853 -80,338
Earnings per share, before and after dilution (SEK) -0.4 -0.7 -0.9 -1.5 -3.1
Cash 149,971 61,206 149,971 61,206 128,883
Shareholders equity 141,432 62,533 141,432 62,533 189,556
Number of employees 13 10 13 10 11
CEO Comment
Having reached the halfway point in 2018, I am pleased to review our progress over the past months. We have continued to execute our clinical development plan through the completion of patient enrollment for MERECA and through achieving critical steps to enable the start of the multi-indication Phase Ib/II study, ILIAD. We are also active in presenting ilixadencel and Immunicum globally, assessing new markets and seeking increased opportunities for advancing the company. In short, we remain focused on delivering value for our shareholders.
Our clinical development plan is designed to validate ilixadencel's potential to improve outcomes for cancer patients in combination with the most advanced treatment regimens. Starting with the multi-indication Phase Ib/II combination trial, ILIAD, which has been a central focus for the past months, we have achieved the approval of our clinical trial protocol by the US Food and Drug Administration. This will allow us to start patient enrollment for the Phase Ib part of the study during the second half of 2018 and maintain our timelines for the start of the trial. We have been active in gathering high-value input from clinical experts worldwide. We have used that guidance together with recommendations from the regulators to refine our protocol and improve the trial design so that we can effectively establish the safety and dosing of ilixadencel in combination with checkpoint inhibitors. The trial will enroll head and neck cancer, non-small cell lung cancer and gastric and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma patients at clinical centers in the United States. As recently announced, the Phase Ib portion of the trial will be expanded to include 21 patients, which in addition to valuable safety and dosing information, will potentially capture initial indications of efficacy in any of the three indications. Once the trial is initiated, we will provide updates on the Phase Ib portion of the study over the course of 2019.
By completing enrollment at the very beginning of 2018, we are on target to communicate the primary analysis and top-line results from the MERECA trial during the third quarter of 2019. The objective of the study is to provide proof of concept for ilixadencel in combination with sunitinib through the achievement of multiple endpoints indicative of meaningful clinical impact and safety assessed over an 18-month period.
We are committed to increasing recognition of ilixadencel in the global scientific community. Recently, we announced the acceptance for a poster presentation at the upcoming 2018 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) of preclinical data on ilixadencel's synergistic anti-tumor effect in combination with CPIs and immune enhancers. In addition, a published scientific review on ilixadencel's approach was spotlighted in a widely distributed weekly newsletter focusing on key advances in the cancer immunotherapy field 1 .
The Immunicum team has continued to engage with leading pharma and biotech companies, investors and key opinion leaders as well as hosting investor events. We have broadened the reach of our discussions and have begun to assess the potential for ilixadencel in China where the number of cancer cases in our lead indications are a major health concern. As just one example, China alone accounts for half of the new cases and deaths from liver cancer globally.
Looking forward, we remain committed to upholding our mission of improving survival outcomes and quality of life by priming the patient's own immune system to fight cancer.
Carlos de Sousa
1. Accelerating Cancer Immunotherapy Research, (www.acir.org)
The full quarterly report is available on:
http://immunicum.se/investors/financial-reports/
The information is such information that Immunicum is obliged to make public pursuant to EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was released for public disclosure through the contact persons detailed below on 17 August 2018 at 8.00 am CET.
Carlos de Sousa, CEO, Immunicum
E-mail: [email protected]
Michaela Gertz, CFO, Immunicum
E-mail: [email protected]
Gretchen Schweitzer and Joanne Tudorica
Trophic Communications
About Immunicum AB (publ) Immunicum is establishing a unique immuno-oncology approach through the development of allogeneic, off-the-shelf cell-based therapies. Our goal is to improve survival outcomes and quality of life by priming the patient's own immune system to fight cancer. The company's lead product ilixadencel, consisting of pro-inflammatory allogeneic dendritic cells, has the potential to become a backbone component of modern cancer combination treatments in a variety of solid tumor indications. Founded and based in Sweden, Immunicum is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stockholm. www.immunicum.com
20180817_Q2 Report 2018_ENG_FINAL
This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.
The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.
Source: Immunicum AB via GlobeNewswire
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Home/argentina/Risk of land without braking: exceeded 800 points; Merval sank 2.2%
Risk of land without braking: exceeded 800 points; Merval sank 2.2%
argentina December 20, 2018 argentina
Indicator prepared by JP.Morgan Bank rose 2.2% (17 units) to 804 points, at the rate of the modern bond fell. This is the highest level for more than four years, as on December 16, 2014, it reached 823 units.
Thus, by now this year, the indicator accumulates a jump of almost 130%, from 351 points registered at the end of 2017; while in the month it climbs almost 14%.
Country risk "is also affected by a decline in the US 10-year yield by" flight to quality ".
In fact, these yields fell minimum of eight months (2,748%) and return curve, at a session in which investors assessed Federal Reserve plans to continue to tighten monetary policy.
On Wednesday, the US central bank adopted a slightly more moderate tone than previous meetings, but kept up the plan to continue withdrawing support for the economy it considers strong.
The Fed has proposed "some" additional additional increases in interest rates and It did not stop selling its huge debt portfolio.
"I think that some hope that they will see something of a tremendous change in the statement, actually reduce economic prospects or even have a clearer connection with dependence on economic data or the like" said Blake Gvinn, a strategist for interest rates at Natwest Markets in Stamford, Connecticut. "So there may have been a bit of disappointment about that," he added.
In this context, major bonds in dollars (operating in pesos) are closed with widespread losses. Discount under the Argentinean Act.
The portena torba fell on Thursday, after leading the sale among leading stocks, after confirming the Fed's rate hike.
Index Merval de Bolsas and Mercados Argentinos (BIMA) He lost 2.2%, to 29.305 points after having climbed 0.6% on Wednesday.
The shares of Pampa Energija stand out at a loss of 6.4%, followed by shares of Metrogas (-4.8%); and those Banko Macro (-4%).
The Federal Bank raised interest rates on Wednesday, but predicted lower growth rates in the coming year and noted that the tightening cycle came to an end at a time of instability in financial markets and a slowdown in the economy. the world
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Home Business Why Dangote Refinery Project is Important for Nigeria, By Osinbajo
Why Dangote Refinery Project is Important for Nigeria, By Osinbajo
President Muhammadu Buhari is keen on actively encouraging private sector initiatives that can build the Nigerian economy, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN.
Asserting that if fully utilized, the private sector in the country has the wherewithal to move the Nigerian economy forward, Prof Osinbajo noted that the sector needs to be appreciated for what it has to offer at this critical period, when diversification is the focus of government.
The Vice President spoke over the weekend in Lagos where he had gone with the Lagos State Governor Akin Ambode and a number of federal ministers to visit the ongoing construction of the multi billion naira Dangote Refinery.
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The ministers were Power, Works & Housing Minister Raji Fashola, Industry, Trade & Investment Minister Okey Enelamah, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun and Solid Minerals Development Minister Dr. Kayode Fayemi
"We can talk about how the private sector contributes to the economy of a nation and how easily we understand that it is the private sector that is the engine of growth for any economy. But unless you actually see it in action, you will not fully appreciate what that means.
Continuing he said: "This particular visit is a very important one for us because it demonstrates very clearly what it means by the private sector being the engine room of growth in our economy," he stated after he, the governor, and the ministers where briefed on the progress of the construction of a 650,000 barrels per day refinery by Alhaji Aliko Dangote and his executives.
The Vice President said the refinery being constructed by the Dangote Group would contribute to the development of Nigeria, and besides boosting oil production and the economy as a whole, it will also create employment for many citizens of the country.
Professor Osinbajo extended the President's encouragement to Alhaji Dangote and his group, adding that: "I think that just looking at what has been done and looking at the projections for what would be done here, it is very clear that this is a part of growth for the nation and that is why supporting what you are doing here is not a favor that would be done to the Dangote Group but it's an important part of our own building the Nigerian economy."
He further said what is being built in the site is "not just about building a refinery, it is actually about developing an industrial hub, a modern industrial hub and enormous undertaking."
Besides the refinery, a huge fertilizer plant expected to be the biggest in the world is also being constructed on the site at the Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos.
Describing the project as strategic, the VP noted "looking at just the subsea pipeline alone, it is a strategic asset for the nation, it is not just commercial, it is a strategic asset."
Vice President Osinbajo expressed his excitement about the project, as he pledged more commitment and support from government, while appreciating the opportunity to look round and see the progress made so far by the private company in executing the projects.
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Significance of Negative Return on Shareholders' Equity
Home » Bookkeeping » Significance of Negative Return on Shareholders' Equity
02.10.202002.10.2020| Garry WaltonGarry Walton| 0 Comment
For example, if a company has net income of $1 million and total shareholders' equity of $10 million, return on equity equals 0.1, or 10%. Investors can use this calculation to determine profitability as well as efficiency, as the ratio explains how many dollars of profit can be generated from a specific level of equity invested by shareholders.
In most industries, a higher ROE makes the company more attractive for investors. Shareholder's equity is the term investors use for all of the money that a business owes to its owners — the total amount invested in the business. Return on equity is a calculation that investors use to assess the performance of this investment.
A company's earnings per share is the portion of its profit that is allocated to each outstanding share of common stock. Like cash flow per share, earnings per share serves as an indicator of a company's profitability.
What is cash per share?
Cash flow per share can be calculated by dividing cash flow earned in a given reporting period (usually quarterly or annually) by the total number of shares outstanding during the same term. Because the number of shares outstanding can fluctuate, a weighted average is typically used.
Analyze Investments Quickly With Ratios
Free cash flow can be envisioned as cash left after the financing of projects to maintain or expand the asset base. Of the popular financial condition ratios, Free Cash Flow per Share is the most comprehensive, as it's the cash flow available to be distributed to both debt and equity shareholders. Free cash flow to equity begins with free cash flow to the firm, but strips out interest expenses on debt-related instruments, as they're senior in the capital structure.
Increasing free cash flow to outstanding shares value is a positive, as a company is regarded as improving prospects and more financial & operational flexibility. Free cash flow provides information about the amount of cash that a company actually generates during the time period being examined.
Free cash flow is typically calculated as a company's operating cash flow after subtracting any capital purchases. Capital expenditures are funds a company uses to buy, upgrade, and maintain physical assets, including property, buildings, or equipment. In other words, free cash flow helps investors determine how well a company generates cash from operations but also how much cash is impacted by capital expenditures.
Positive cash flow is where you have more money coming in than going out, and negative cash flow is where you have more money going out than coming in. Cash flow comes in your company either through revenue generated from operations, investment income, or from loans. There are several formulas you can use to calculate cash flow for different purposes, including free cash flow, operating cash flow, and net cash flow, among others. This measure signals a company's ability to pay debt, pay dividends, buy back stock and facilitate the growth of the business. Also, the free cash flow per share can be used to give a preliminary prediction concerning future share prices.
ROE is especially used for comparing the performance of companies in the same industry. As with return on capital, a ROE is a measure of management's ability to generate income from the equity available to it. ROE is also a factor in stock valuation, in association with other financial ratios. While higher ROE ought intuitively to imply higher stock prices, in reality, predicting the stock value of a company based on its ROE is dependent on too many other factors to be of use by itself. Because of the nature of accounting rules, earnings can be easily manipulated, but cash flow is much harder to manipulate.
How do you find cash flow per share?
Cash flow per share is the after-tax earnings plus depreciation on a per-share basis that functions as a measure of a firm's financial strength.
Cash flow comes in your company either through revenue generated from operations, investment income, or from loans.
There are several formulas you can use to calculate cash flow for different purposes, including free cash flow, operating cash flow, and net cash flow, among others.
Positive cash flow is where you have more money coming in than going out, and negative cash flow is where you have more money going out than coming in.
Earnings Per Share vs. Dividends Per Share: What's the Difference?
Similarly, if the asset turnover increases, the firm generates more sales for every unit of assets owned, again resulting in a higher overall ROE. Finally, increasing financial leverage means that the firm uses more debt financing relative to equity financing. Interest payments to creditors are tax-deductible, but dividend payments to shareholders are not. Thus, a higher proportion of debt in the firm's capital structure leads to higher ROE.
It is figured by taking the company's net earnings — remaining revenues after subtracting expenses — as a percentage of the total amount invested in the company. For example, a company that has a total equity investment of $100,000 and a net earnings of $8,000 would post an 8 percent return on equity.
Free cash flow is the cash that a company generates from its normal business operations after subtracting any money spent on capital expenditures. Capital expenditures or CAPEX for short, are purchases of long-term fixed assets, such as property, plant, and equipment. Also known as return on net worth, a company's return on equity (ROE) is a common metric used by investors to analyze profitability. Expressed as a percentage, ROE is calculated by dividing a company's' net income for the previous year by its shareholders' equity.
Earnings per share is calculated by dividing a company's profit, or net income, by the number of outstanding shares. This is money that a company has on hand, as opposed to money it may source from loans or other financing activities. High levels of cash per share suggests that a company is performing well. It reassures shareholders that there is enough of a financial cushion to cover any emergencies and that the company has adequate capital with which to reinvest in the business, return money to investors, or do both. At the top of the cash flow statement, we can see that Apple carried over $50.224 billion in cash from the balance sheet and $22.236 billion in net income or profit from the income statement.
Once the day-to-day operating expenses are deducted, we arrive at the company's operating cash flow. Operating cash flow is an important metric because it shows investors whether or not a company has enough funds coming in to pay its bills or operating expenses.
What Is the Formula for Calculating Free Cash Flow?
This leaves the free cash flow available to equity shareholders, who are at the bottom of the capital structure. For investors, there is no set number listed on a company's financial statements that's States the exact amount of cash that they would receive for owning the company's stock. Free cash flow represents the cash flow that is available to all investors before cash is paid out to make debt payments, dividends, or share repurchases. Operating cash flow is calculated by taking revenue and subtracting operating expenses for the period. Operating cash flow is recorded on a company's cash flow statement, which is reported both on a quarterly and annual basis.
Operating cash flow indicates whether a company can generate enough cash flow to maintain and expand operations, but it can also indicate when a company may need external financing for capital expansion. The DuPont formula, also known as the strategic profit model, is a common way to decompose ROE into three important components. Essentially, ROE will equal the net profit margin multiplied by asset turnover multiplied by financial leverage. Splitting return on equity into three parts makes it easier to understand changes in ROE over time. For example, if the net margin increases, every sale brings in more money, resulting in a higher overall ROE.
Financial leverage benefits diminish as the risk of defaulting on interest payments increases. If the firm takes on too much debt, the cost of debt rises as creditors demand a higher risk premium, and ROE decreases. Increased debt will make a positive contribution to a firm's ROE only if the matching return on assets (ROA) of that debt exceeds the interest rate on the debt. Ideally, a business will generate more cash flow than is required for operational expenses and capital expenditures. When they do, the free cash flow per share metric below will increase, as the numerator grows holding shares outstanding constant.
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South Indian Bank customers, who have registered and linked their mobile number with Bank Account, may make use of this missed call balance enquiry service. If you haven't registered your
What Is Retained Earning's Normal Balance?What Is Retained Earning's Normal Balance?
The Purpose of Retained Earnings A summary report called a statement of retained earnings is also maintained, outlining the changes in RE for a specific period. While Retained Earnings is
Accrued Expenses Recognize Expenses Incurred Before PayingAccrued Expenses Recognize Expenses Incurred Before Paying
When a business or organization accounts for expenses that it will pay off at future dates, the company might record these liabilities as accrued expenses. Even though accrued expenses are
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EXL has been in the forefront of data analytics in the country and has been a sought after job profile for several students. Read below where our recent alumnus – Ramya Madhuri, a graduate of the Department of Civil engineering shares her experience of working at EXL and the placement process to bag this coveted job offer.
How was your placement experience? You were placed on the very first day of placements. How did you prepare for it? What was going on in your mind?
I was sure that I wanted to go for data analytics from the very beginning. I had inclination towards it, so I had done my internship in that direction as well. Then I got a bit of clarity that this suited me and I wanted this is my life. I mostly applied for Data Analytics firms and gave the tests seriously. I had 2 shortlists on day 1 and one on day 2, I don't know what would have happened if I was not placed on Day one 😛 I was consistent in my preparation and hence whole semester went pretty peaceful without much hassle at the last minute. The material sent by the branch counselor and the guidance given by seniors helped a lot. I could clearly understand how the interview might go and what kind of things they might ask. I kept that in mind and prepared accordingly. I would also like to tell you that there is a lot of hype about the companies, the salary that they are giving and other parameters. People are often carried away by these things. Rather, a person should look more at what work the company is doing, talk to the seniors who have already been placed to know what kind of work will be given actually and how will be the career progression in 3 years in that company rather than going behind the big brands. Certain companies which are underrated are also are also doing exceedingly well. There is also a hype about day 1 and day 2 companies. I think only after placements are over and you join the company that you will realize that almost all companies are doing similar work it is just a little different from one other. People take it too seriously and get much tensed and loose cool if they don't get placed on the first day, and because of this they do not perform well. This is the one mistake that most of the students make.
Tell me more about your personal interview. How was it?
I had two sets of interviews. First interview was HR Plus resume based. It was pretty casual. I was asked about my journey and why I wanted to join the company and how I would contribute to the organisation. After that I had second interview it was more of HR plus technical. It was regarding what I had done during internship and why I wanted to join the Company and where do I see myself after 5 years.
What internships did you do in your first, second and third year?
I did a project under a professor during second year summer using EXCEL VBA which is actually used in my company now. I feel that second year summer is the right time to explore things. I got my third year internship through Institute itself in an organization called Quantiphi in Mumbai, a Data Analytics firm and I did a project in text analytics in the field of media. I am getting similar work in my office also as I have experience in that, so my internship helped me a lot.
How did you decide that you wanted to go into Data Analytics?
I was sure that I was not interested in core. I joined Data Analytics club in my second year and attended their sessions. I did my internship in Data Analytics firm and I liked the work that I saw. The whole world is using Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (Data Analytics) to make businesses more efficient and world a better place. This field is growing exponentially currently and we are at the beginning of curve now.
I liked the company in which I have done internship grew so much in just a couple of years. I have taken lot of inspiration from founders and colleagues.
I had inclination in Finance as well but the companies came for finance were very limited and the competition was very high. They hire people for the profiles which are too much into finance or requires very good coding skills, I felt that I fit in neither.
What type of job profiles offered by EXL?
In EXL, they offer only a consultant profile for B.Tech students and a senior business analyst for Masters students. The work which we get gives us a lot of business overview and we also get to interact with the clients on daily basis. Since they work in different verticals such as Retail, media, insurance, banking, etc… there is opportunity for lateral movement into different verticals to get better exposure.
What PORs did you have? How important is a student's CGPA, extra-curricular activities and PORs and how they are helpful?
I was a head/core of sponsorship & PR of civil engineering departmental festival (CEA). I was also a part of Shaastra in Student Relations and Marketing. I feel that PORs give an idea of understanding workplace in terms of team building, delivering results as well as getting work done . PORs shape you, makes you a better person. Extracurricular and POR from placement point of view gives better impression to the interviewer that you are an interesting person who is just into academics.
When taking up PORs it's always good to go to next level by outperforming in your level. You should aim to go to the top. Core's job may seem easier as it is just delegating work. But it is quite important to learn how to delegate work effectively for overall performance of team and it is more difficult to get work done from others than doing it yourslef.
Teams in our campus are model of the corporate world. It develops one's communication skills, improves networking ability by engaging with different teams. It opens lots of opportunities.
More students are not opting core engineering field and branching out to different fields. What do you feel about this?
It totally depends on the person. Also, I feel that there are not enough opportunities in core field for students who are interested in it. If you see the number of companies which came for our recruitment this year, placements were more in non-core companies as more companies are coming for placements than core companies so more students opting for non-core job.
What advice you will give to students who are sitting for placements?
Be calm and composed during the whole preparation time. There will be a lot of hype regarding companies. Do not get carried away. Believe in yourself. Everybody will get what they deserve and they will be happy with it at the end of the day. First placement is not the final placement. There are lots of opportunities, so just perform your best. Being strong, being confident and staying healthy is very important, not just for placements but for dealing with life, as this is just a first step into outside world . placement semester is very demanding, plan things accordingly and try not to mess things up at the last moment.
In addition to this, give your exams properly because first and foremost short listings takes place based on your exams only. If you have more shortlists, then you feel more confident and you need not worry at the last moment or get tensed. If you write exam properly you will be at peace and can concentrate on preparing for interview. Do your preparation along with your friends so that you can understand where you stand and how you can improve yourself. This will help in self-correction because nobody is going to correct you at this point of time. You have to realise it and correct it yourself. Do not panic by seeing other's preparation. Everybody has his/her own way of doing things. Everybody has his own pace. So don't panic by seeing others.
How has been your experience at EXL till now?
It has been a very good experience till now. This was a BPO company and it entered into Data Analytics just 7 to 8 years ago and I can see how swiftly and steeply it has grown. As this is an established Company, I can understand a lot of this such as company business acquisition, business development along with the technical aspects. It has been a very pleasant experience despite of the cultural shift which I learning and experiencing working in north India. Timings are very peaceful. Work-life balance is very good, work environment is also very friendly. They give constant training on technical skills which is also very appreciable. They also work on a lot of different projects pertaining to different fields using different processes and different verticals. Hence there is opportunity to go any vertical we want after considerable amount of time in the organisation (1.5 – 2 yrs). You can talk to your manager and you can shift from your vertical. This kind of freedom you don't get in many other companies. Salary also is decent enough.
What are your future plans where do you see yourself in the future?
I am planning to do an Masters in two to three years depending on where I get the admission. I guess it's important because, after 2-3 years, things at work might get saturated. also there will be more clarity after couple of years work experience about what exactly I want from the program and hence can choose accordingly.
Any last piece of advice to students.
Enjoy every moment in insti. Try out new things. Do not think whether you can do it or not. Believe in yourself and keep trying. Even if you fail, it is fine. If you never try, you will never know whether you have the potential or not. Trying is important. Be active as much as possible. Try out different things in insti like sports, cultural activities, dance, acting because it is very difficult to do these things even if you go for higher studies. Things change a lot after life in insti. You will not get time to do anything other than work. I have tried my best when I was in insti, but I felt I could have pushed myself more.
This article is part of the series – The Placement Guru where we share stories and experiences of graduates working in various companies of cracking the placement process. For more such articles follow us on facebook. For any queries write to us at [email protected]. | {
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Ethics/Values
Separate, But Equal
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Based upon the acclaimed book he co-authored, Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson, filmmaker Shawn D. Wilson's documentary explores the all black, separate-but-equal town of Greenville, MS in the 1950s-60s, and asks a most provocative question about desegregation: "Did we lose more than we gained?"
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Saleem H. Ali
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Author of Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future, Saleem H. Ali is professor of environmental planning and conflict resolution at the University of Vermont. Named one of eight "Revolutionary Minds in the World" by Seed magazine, Dr. Ali is a leading advocate for cross-cultural environmental pragmatism.
Jeff Stibel
Tagged: Business Strategy/Management, Economics, Ethics/Values, Facebook, Innovation, Leadership/Teamwork, Marketing/Branding, Technology, Web 2.0
In his New York Times Bestseller, Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain, Stibel, a brain scientist, entrepreneur and Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp, explores how the intersection of the brain, biology and technology can help businesses better leverage the world's collective consciousness.
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Award-winning former LA Times journalist, and author of the memoir Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America, Lobdell shares his spiritual journey investigating and reconciling the many oft-conflicting facets of faith in America, which took him from evangelical Christian to reluctant atheist.
Tagged: Africa, Business Strategy/Management, Economics, Ethics/Values, Globalization/World Affairs
Co-Author of Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations, and author of Africa's Turn?, Miguel is the Director of the Center of Evaluations for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is an associate professor in economics, with a research focus on African economic development.
Joan Garry
Tagged: Business Strategy/Management, Diversity/Race, Ethics/Values, Human Rights, Journalism/Media, Leadership/Teamwork, LGBT Issues, Non-Profit/Philanthropy, Politics/Activism, Women's Issues
Former Executive Director of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Garry is widely recognized as one of the most vocal, passionate and effective civil rights leaders in America. She is a featured blogger at The Huffington Post, and frequently contributes commentary to major news publications and TV networks.
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Tagged: Diversity/Race, Economics, Ethics/Values, Globalization/World Affairs, Human Rights, Immigration
Award-winning New Yorker journalist and author of Pulitzer Prize nominee Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, Bowe examines how outsourcing, subcontracting, immigration fraud, and the relentless pursuit of "everyday low prices" have created a frightening new market for slavery in America.
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Tagged: Business Strategy/Management, Economics, Ethics/Values, Globalization/World Affairs, Non-Profit/Philanthropy
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Award-winning New York Times journalist and author of the bestseller Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen, Drape paints an inspiring portrait of a small town in Kansas that actually believes it takes a village to raise a child, and how its long-undefeated football team (79 games in a row) has embodied this ideal. | {
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Aafes self service for employees
aafes self service for employees We did this dance several Your Life, Your Health - Military Exchange. ID PIN (if required) Dec 26, 2020 · Aafes wrote up a ticket and assured me I would get a phone call or an email within 24 hours. Aafes Self Service Jobs Aafes Self Service Jobs in All 61 - 75 of 846 job search results Enter your employee ID and password just like on DOC at work. The Exchange is a non-appropriated fund entity of the Department of Defense and is directed by a Board of Directors. com, and click on Employee Self Service (ESS). 16. Follow these steps to access SUNY Self Service and NYS Payroll Online: A Premier EPDS providers offer web-based stub service that employees can use to Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, Employees with the title Retail Shift Supervisor earn the lowest bonuses with an average annual bonus of $400. shopmyexchange. com Since 1985, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, has focused on delivering high-quality goods and services at competitively low prices. If your talking while working you Select An Exchange Service Below to View & Order. The low-stress way to find your next aafes employee job opportunity is on SimplyHired. Password. Retirement Date. An employee number and a social insurance number are Employers can use our Social Security Number Verification Service to verify the names and Social Security numbers of current and former employees for wage reporting purposes. The Army & Air Force Exchange Service has a connection with the military that began in 1895. Is Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES ) 4 Dec 2020 Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) pays its employees an average of $12. Officials from AAFES and the 309th SMXG held a small ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the opening. Simply put, whether it's a forgotten Office 365 or Active Directory (AD) password, ADSelfService Plus enables users to reset their passwords on their own, without IT assistance. This helps: increase employees' trust and engagement; decrease foot traffic, phone calls and emails across your organization Find the cheap Aafes Employee Self Service Login, Find the best Aafes Employee Self Service Login deals, Sourcing the right Aafes Employee Self Service Cheap aafes employee self service login deals MyApps Webtop 2020; Service Portal ServiceNow 2020; Duo Enrollment 2020; Retired Employees Association AAFES eBenefits; Exchange New Hire Logon While the Exchange is a federal employer, we are separate from Civil Service. The To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and enter your username and password. Please include any special instructions in the Comments Box. Nov 20, 2007 · The Army and Air Force Exchange Service employs closed-circuit video surveillance systems and in-house undercover detectives to help combat shoplifting. com,. To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and enter your Agent Knowledge Base Leave information (Dec 29, 2020) Go to Employee Self Service and select PAYCHECK STUBS under Money Matters. Hourly pay at Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) ranges from an average of $8. (Left to right) Chris Toone, Larry King, and Rodney Salazar, KWIK Vending Service, stock food and drinks Feb. All prices are in USD. Oct 18, 2011 · Come to find out I won't, because I am a regular part-time employee (34 hours per week) even though I frequently worked 40 hours a week. For information on your AAFES retirement benefits (medical, dental, life insurance, 401 (k)), visit here. Army and Air Force installations worldwide. FOR AAFES SECURITY PURPOSES All items will be shipped directly to your store with YOUR name on the Attention line. Government (USG) Information System (IS) that is provided for USG-authorized use only. 30- Best employee-help. Shoppers can help in the fight against shoplifting by reporting shoplifters to an AAFES employee or calling 18th Security Forces law enforcement desk at 634-2475. You are accessing a U. 13, 2019, in the new "Bistro to Go" located in building 1515 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The self-service store offers a variety of food and drinks to 309th Software Maintenance Group The new AAFES policy extrapolates on the former policy, saying:"Free coffee, tea, and soft drinks pertain to the regular brewed coffee/soft drinks offered to customers on the self service drink Aafes Jobs Aafes Exchange Jobs Aafes Internal Jobs Aafees Jobs Exchange Aafes Jobs JobsEye. Calling out AAFES on their hypocrisy and abuse of employees and military personnel! Employees can use the employee self-service website The AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) for login and looking through their paystub online at DOD My NAF Benefits You're going to need that to log in. The Employee Self Service app enables users to create and modify a personal employment profile, view available benefits coverage and vacation time, and Watch Now. Are you trying to login to Aafes Self Service Login Employees? The Army & Air Force Exchange Service remains a team of dedicated people Vision: To be the preferred retail and services provider for the military family Aafes self service 2020 Training and Development is available to all associates. 321 Aafes jobs available on Indeed. The HCM PeopleSoft system includes an Employee Self Service section, a new paycheck stub, and new direct deposit options. com. U. Welcome to the State of Kansas Employee Self-Service Center Employee Self-Service Click here to Sign In. You can also-Pay History-Paycheck. UNDERPAID. 856 Army Air Force Exchange Service Aafes jobs available on Indeed. Welcome to your employee self-serve portal. Enter the required information below to log in to Employee Self Service. Experienced Employee; Dec 10 2019; Overall 15 May 2020 We will try our best to do it. The AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) has established their own employee self-service web portalat https://self-service. The Exchange can help you keep a job when you transition from location to location, whether a PCS with a military family member or personal choice. So, if you ever need to login to Aafes Self Service Login Employees again, you can rest assured that we will have the most up to date and official links available. Please update your browser version by NOVEMBER 1, 2017 The Exchange offers exciting advancement opportunities which allows you, the associate, to step up and contribute the knowledge and skills you have to positively impact the organization! aafes self service lex learning provides a comprehensive and comprehensive pathway for students to see progress after the end of each module. To get started access Employee Self Service through ASU Interactive. I will also tell you more about Aafes here. This website is produced and published at U. You can call Aafes Exchange at (800) 423-2011 toll free number, write an email, fill out a contact form on their website www. For a list of TSS officers, access the TAO (EMC2) Bulletin Board of TSS-Security-Officer under the TSS Security Officers by Location. $400 for Food Service worker. The self-service store opened Feb. Home. If you are or were both a Student and an Employee, your information will not be combined and you will need to utilize both of the links to access your Student and Employee information. AAFES Contact Aafes Exchange customer service. Our focus is to deliver quality goods and services at competitively low prices at our 3,100+ locations worldwide and available 24-hours a day online. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service was founded in 1895, and it Aafes Self Service Login Portal For Employees @www. Unfortunately, we cannot detect RSS feed on this website, but you may observe related news or Lex. Forgot username or password The Army & Air Force Exchange Service (Exchange) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense. com) or Confluence Support team ( ConfluenceSupport@aafes. This service allows them to create an account and search for jobs and other benefits. citizen working for the US Government, including the Foreign Service, and you are stationed abroad, your income tax filing requirements are generally the same as those for citizens and residents living in the United States. com JavaScript is not enabled. Employee Self-Service FAQs. and 8 a. com: Check updates and related news right now. As well as employees can review, print, AAFES has worked with my school schedule and allowed me continue my education without giving me a fuss. 1 May 2020 Employee Self-Service Login Two Factor Authentication Code: Resend Submit Employee Self-Service Login Username Forgot your username Empower employees with Primepoint's Self-Service EmployeeXperience® web portal. Then, another AAFES employee told me of someone else who was leaving AAFES after a lengthy employment, to take up a civil service job and that his time with AAFES would be counted when qualifying for federal Dec 04, 2020 · Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) pays its employees an average of $12. (AAFES) In early March, AAFES started requiring its store employees to wear The operation is self-funded and last year returned its $369 million in profit aafes self service 2020. If you are an authorized employee and can not gain access to this website, contact your Aafes self service | Army and Air Force Exchange Self Service. It was founded in 1895. You must be an aafes employee, but this is the place I go to when checking my pay-stub at home. Certain managers don't know how to talk to employees. org Dec 06, 2020 Exchange Employee Self https://self-service. Authorized Users. To access your information on the Employee Self - Service Portal, from home or work: Go to: https://myapps evansvilleotters. Apr 23, 2019 · Self-Service Portal Availability. While it is better, when you look at the percentage of the total retirements for each year it is declining and what HQ is doing to attract new members for AREA membership is not working. Army/Air Force Exchange Service Employees (NAFI/AAFES) duals selected for appointment may be appointed only to permanent positions based on this authority Documentation of current NAFI/AAFES appointment and one continuous year of NAFI/AAFES service for non-appropriated fund employees applying under NAFI Portability Employee Self Service - ESSFor City of Colorado Springs Employees Dec 28, 2020 · 193 Army and Air Force Exchange Aafes jobs. That's why it's impo Save time, take control — that's what an employee self service (ESS) portal is designed for. – April 13, 2015 – NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), the global leader in consumer transaction technologies, announced today that the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) will replace 6,000 point-of-sale terminals with NCR RealPOS™ 72XRT systems. company makes over 6. Aafes Employee Self Service Password Reset ADSelfService Plus offers self-service password management as a solution for password reset tickets. Having trouble logging in? Please contact the TrackSmart Aafes self service is a program designed for army and air force members. Go to https://h3. Come to find out I won't, because I am a regular part-time employee (34 hours per week) even though I frequently worked 40 hours a week. self-service. com or call 757-888-2862. Employment Job Openings. Monthly Visits. Additionally, it's required that the TSS Aafes Home Login 2020 (Dec 11, 2020) The Exchange Intranet Log -In Page Exchange Employee Self https://self- service. com merchandise by mail or by calling 1-800-527-2345 for assistance. org Part of the Department of Defense, the Exchange is directed by a board of directors responsible to the secretaries of the Army and Air Force through the Chiefs of Staff. A self-service system -- an online portal to pay stubs, insurance information and handbook To access your AAFES self-service paystubs, visit Self-Service. Password:*. com/Self-Service, and log in using your Top Secret Security ID and password. 4. User name. No products can be shipped to a personal post office box or home address. O. To access your AAFES self-service paystubs, visit Self-Service. E. *This is a preferred provider organization plan that gives you the freedom to receive care from any licensed health care provider and the opportunity to save when you use preferred providers (doctors and other health care providers who Forgotten Username. MILITARY MEN AND WOMEN GET RIPPED OFF BY AAFES AND D. Nex Navy Exchange Dec 31, 2020 AAFES Employee Login-Workers can utilize the representative self- administration site The AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange Service) for Aafes Employee Self Service Login Page myapps. Hiring Positions. User Name is required. 24-9. com Not a member? To request an account, please contact your Jira administrators. com (Dec 24, 2020) AT WORK: Go to the Exchange intranet, h2. Employment Verification is now available through My Biz for current DoDEA employees. 52 an Apr 19, 2017 · The $4 million settlement, reached in early December, affects AAFES employees who worked or were scheduled for non-overtime shifts primarily between 3 p. Additionally, it's required that the TSS MyPortal is a new way for state employees to access earnings statements, submit leave requests and manage their contact information. They give out stable hours, which is good if you want to earn more. Having a chance to work for a government agency, according to some people who already worked with AAFES, is a great opportunity. aafes self service 2020. S. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Jul 24, 2020 · Current DoDEA Employees. Navy Exchange. Customer service are those activities that a company fulfills for a customer. Once you have your USER ID, simply go out to exchangebenefits. Info Changes . </p> <p>However, there is a much easier way. Aafes Employee Self Service Portal - Find Official Portal cee-trust. If you feel you need additional timecard training, please call Foundation Payroll at extn. spouse or registered civil partner without an income from self-employment or. Your a target for managers if you know the policy. Aafes self service? Aafes self service is a Aafes Self Service Employee Login: Veterans need VHIC for in-person Commissary, Military Exchange, MWR access VAntage Point Blog 599 Army Air Force Exchange Service Aafes jobs available on Indeed. Contact Emails President – Chuck Poffenbarger, president@aafesretired. With ExponentHR, we were able to reduce our HR overhead by 66%. Feb 15, 2018 · The Service Station is a self-service facility. com/self-service/logon. Your TSS ID should be provided to you by your TSS officer. Apr 13, 2020 · To access your AAFES self-service paystubs, visit Self-Service. com employment website. Eliminate AD password reset calls for free. Employee-help. If you have a GCS email account and prefer to use your email password to access Employee Self Service < click here > If you are a substitute, tutor, non-faculty coach, contract employee, or previous employee < click here > (Dec 04, 2020) After obtaining your login information from a TSS officer, verify that the So, if you ever need to login to Aafes Self Service Login Employees Aafes employee self service portal login aafeslogin. comNews Director – Jonathan Miller, news@aafesretired. Before we implemented ExponentHR, it took three HR/benefits/payroll administrators to service 134 employees. Tax-free. Users can reset passwords via a self-service portal, their login screen, or mobile apps. AAFES. It is generally safe for browsing, so you may click any item to proceed to the site. taxpayer expense. An official website of the United States Government If you are an employee of the U. First formed back in 1975, the purpose of the association was to continue the friendships and associations that had been made during Exchange careers, a legacy that continues today in the association's endeavors. com, or write a letter to Hq aafes, 3911 S. • Get more: Employee self service portal aafes Go Now . Q. It is noteworthy that this login portal is the login portal for the employees of Aafes. Exchange stores cannot accept damaged items. Log in to Employee Self Service. ADSelfService Plus is an Active Directory self-service password reset tool for users. Aafes Self Service Login Portal For Employees @www. AAFES is most likely listed with them however, you'd need to enter the correct origin address (the office the W-2 is issued from). Log in using your TSS ID (Y-Number) and Aafes Intranet Login Page How do you Reset your password for aafes self services? You must be an aafes employee, but this is the place I go to when checking my pay-stub at home. Step 1 – Go to the Aafes Self Service Login Employees official login page via our official link below. Jan 17, 2007 · If your filing on-line through Turbotax, they do a auto search for the State and Federal EIN's. As a non-appropriated fund activity, the Exchange self-funds 98 percent of its operations, with revenue coming from the sale of goods and services. com!* Jul 22, 2020 · AAFES has had to ramp up its personal shopper service in Iraq, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia where soldiers have tested positive and are quarantined. I'd call HR and see if your numbers can be found from them. However, Starbucks' policy allows free beverages during work Some of the icons are still being developed, but feel free to browse. Apr 09, 2020 · -- The Fort Rucker Post Exchange will debut its new curbside pickup service April 10. I was in the belief that I would qualify for a pension. <p>Step 1 – Go to the Aafes Self Service Login Employees official login page via our official link below. comVice-President – Marcia Kane, vp@aafesretired. The Exchange | Community | Retired Employees Association . 9K likes. Lack of Effective Workforce Management. I made a monumental oversight when I went to work for AAFES in 1992. If you have any questions on Kronos Self Service, please call Jill in Foundation Human Resources at (909) 869-2953. 96 to $20. Learn more about the benefits, what you can do and how to sign in to your own ESS account. New aafes employee careers are added daily on SimplyHired. Myapps aafes 2020. asp; Log in using your TSS (Y ID) and your password. Over-all, employees at AAFES love the work and the vision that comes with it. com Aafes employee self service portal login Details: Dec 04, 2020 Dallas-based Army & Air Force Exchange Service was one of the first U. com!* To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and enter your To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and e To access your AAFES self-service paystubs, visit Self-Service. aafeslogin. hrsc@aafes. See salaries, compare reviews, easily apply, and get hired. com/ Access to Sobeys employee self-service paycheck stubs can be found on the company's website. DULUTH, Ga. Employee Self-Service Login. Aafes Employee Self Service Portal Login: AAFES pogs home. Your learning will occur on the job, and in a variety of venues. , employee number) and Password at ess. Apply to Customer Service Representative, Warehouse Worker, Stocker and more! Click the Employee Self-Service link There is a considerable amount of detailed information available in the View Paycheck area when you access your paycheck through Employee Self Service. Please sign in with your Employer OnDemand - Log In. Modified on: Fri, 12 Jun, 2020 at 2:58 PM please submit a request for assistance, email hrsc@aafes. Since then, the Exchange mission goes where Soldiers, Airmen, and their families go while improving the quality of life through the goods and services provided. aafes. Walton Walker Blvd, Dallas, Texas, 75236-1598, United States. It is not luteal that aafes employee self service booty shorts was not hyaloid himself which of these importunes to divert, but randstad employee self service brain gym exercises the Reimbursements to shack first-class by the verizon employee self Aafes self service is a program designed for army and air force members. DA: 54 PA: 5 MOZ Rank: 20. Dear Valued Partner: If you notice the 'AAFES Paid' membership dues; this is 44 new retirements that choose to join AREA versus 31 last year. hrsc@ aafes . com!* It's very easy to share insurance you use on a work computer. Aafes Self Service Login Employees It is noteworthy that this login portal is the login portal for the employees of Aafes. As an associate, you can access all of your personal information, including pay stubs, on this site. Aafes Employee Self Service Portal How do you Reset your password for aafes self services? MyApps Webtop 2020 The Retired Employees Association is a worldwide organization for The Exchange retirees. The employees delivering the customer service is the face of the company to the customer. You can access Employee Self Service when you're not at work, too, at https://myapps. families and civilian employees -- in keeping with their service and AAFES's policy states that while employees are on shift, they are authorized to have unlimited brewed coffee, tea, and fountain soda. Employee Self-Service Features. If you need to obtain your User ID, you may email us at benefits@aafes. The Self-Service Portal gives employees direct access to your personal payroll data via the internet. 14 and offers a variety of food and drinks for 309th SMXG employees who work in the facility. BEFORE YOU START, if you are not an AAFES lead, you will need an approval message from your internal AAFES Lead indicating they are approved to be added to JIRA. The Retired Employees Association is a worldwide organization for The Exchange retirees. Apply to Food Service Worker, Material Handler, Operator and more! AAFES Sucks! 1. com is a job search engine. Military Exchange. Health Details: Your DoD NAF Health Benefits Program provides medical benefits through the Aetna Open Choice® PPO Plan. Only Cons for it you will never have 40 hours working in food court unless you are a Manager. Aafes stands for Army and Air Force Exchange Service . Too much bias. Employee Portal. Visit the post for more. I waited 48+ hours each time before calling Aafes again for a status update. aafes self service password reset - Official Login Page [100% Verified] Dec 30, 2020 Dec 30, 2020 How do you access your aafes employee self service to check pay stub? If you have a problem creating or resetting your login4all. Civil Service employee salaries come from taxpayer dollars. You will get a Team Award Bonus. retailers In early March, AAFES started requiring its store employees to wear The operation is self-funded and last year returned its $369 million in Navy Exchange Service Command Attn: Employee Entitlement and Services, 3280 Virginia Beach Boulevard Virginia Beach, VA 23452 FAX: 757-631-3401 AAFES Headquarters, Army and Air Force Exchange Service FA-T (Benefits) P. Copyright 2020 AAFES Associate Apparel. com who shop via the Veteran's Online Shopping Benefit can return shopmyexchange. com popular pages instead. nafhealthplans. 0 Time Off Requests. Your TSS To access your AAFES self-service paystubs, visit Self-Service. COMMUNITY SERVICE COMMITTEE (non-voting members) – With a Chairman and at least two members, terms indefinite, this committee will promote community service by members, Local Chapters and AAFES Associates, and recommend to the Executive Board changes to the program and persons and Local Chapters to be recognized for Community Service Awards. Log in to access your profile or click here to create a new Log in to access your profile or click here to create a new Jun 15, 2019 · Employee Self Service App. wyomingnews. Health Lifes. Aafes Employee Self Service Password Reset ADSelfService Plus offers selfservice password management as a solution for password reset tickets Simply put, whether its a forgotten Office 365 or Active Directory AD password, ADSelfService Plus enables users to reset their passwords on their own, without IT assistance atchannel15org newnationnewsorg canaponlineorg Guidelines for User Name and Password : If this is your first log-in to this application or if you have asked to reset your User Name and Password: Dec 08, 2020 Dallas-based Army & Air Force Exchange Service was one of the first U. Server Date 12/29/20 TUESDAY 10:54:31 PM. Line of sight of the primary register must be maintained. The self-service portal feature is part of the Duo Beyond, Duo Access, and Duo MFA plans. com Dec 04, 2020 Aafes stands for Army and Air Force Exchange Service. How can employees follow the rules when they lack direction, right? The Self-Service Portal gives employees direct access to -This IS includes security measures (e. portal-db. It's just all about the money greed. If your e-mail has changed, please contact your payroll administrator. Expand all Tip sheets for University Employees, Student Employees, Affiliates Get exclusive email-only offers and advance notice about sales & events. In Europe, its food service for schools on Employee Self Service gives all AAFES associates access to their personal information. Army and Air Force Exchange Service Aafes Self Service Login Employees. Management Tasks. military, law enforcement, fire safety and older, or eighteen (18 years) of age or older who is incapable of self- Employees of our AAFES Retail locations will observe the following The Army & Air Force Exchange Service is the retailer on U. Apr 10, 2017 · To our third-party service providers who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, order fulfillment, information technology and related infrastructure, customer service, email delivery, and auditing. How am I paid when there is a holiday? PAYBAND - Base Annual Rate. With a Credit/Debit Card you can purchase gas 24 hours a day. This can happen because your browser restarted after an add-on was installed. 1, 2008, to April To speak with a customer service representative from State Street, call 1-877-247-2769 or 1-630-206-3967 (International). from Nov. svg 2 Structure and funding; 3 Earnings; 4 Stores; 5 Employees; 6 Military Star Card; 7 See As a non-appropriated fund activity, the Exchange self-funds 98 percent of its operations, 5 Oct 2019 The Self-Service Portal gives employees direct access to your personal payroll data via the internet. Secures self-service password reset with advanced authentication options like biometrics and OTPs. Fort Benning in Georgia to support quarantined troops at those locations. Holmes Homes Inc Sandy Utah, Holmes House, AAFES Intranet Log-In Page If you are an authorized streetstylejeans. Additionally, it's required that the TSS In this interview, Karla Younger, the Vice President of HR Services at Coca-Cola, shares how the company increased its HR efficiency by implementing automated web requests and human resources self-service tools. Retiree Self Service, updated July 2018 - All retirees can now log on to access their electronic personnel file and work history (if electronic at time of retirement in 2000 or later), employee paycheck stubs (2003 and later), a Message Box from HQ Benefits, and important links. For security purposes, when requesting your USER ID, please submit your name, the last 4 digits of your social security number, date of birth and retirement date. Use the MOU-Merged Records Personnel Folder to retain the records of employees who qualify for portability of benefits, as well as electronic official personnel folders. Search job openings, see if they fit - company salaries, reviews, and more posted by Army and Air Force Exchange employees. And if you really did find it useful, then kindly share it around. The website allows visitors to apply for positions around the world with the Exchange. Aafes Exchange. We now have one HR Professional servicing over 200 employees while focusing on strategy and value-added programs that drive retention and profits. com/Self- Service, and log in using your Top Secret Security IDand password. Read on for more insight from Karla. After you click on the link, it will open in a new tab so that you can continue to see the guide and follow the troubleshooting steps if required. com (Dec 05, 2020) In this article, I will tell you in detail about the Aafes Self Service Online Employee Login Portal. Aafes self service? Aafes self service is a Directly connect employees to the answers they need. com DESCRIPTION: This article explains how you can access Exchange systems such as Outlook, Employee Self-Service (ESS), LEX training , eBenefits, and Exchange Wed, 17 Jun, 2020 at 8:34 AM Accessing Employee Self-Service at Work 56 aafes employee jobs available. Top Areas That Are Hurting Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) the Most 1. 51 an hour. . com/irj/portal. asp Self-Service For ADP Enterprise Georgia Department of Labor Career Center 601 Greene St. Know the difference between self-service moving and a full-service mover to know if self-service moving is right for your household move. The Exchange is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and its director/chief executive officer is Tom Shull. com, Army & Airforce Exchange Service Employee Benefits. com!*. Filed Under: Employee Force Exchange Service, its representatives and/or agents at its time (RPT) and intermittent (INT) category bargaining unit employees will serve an initial well in his job, documenting significant achievements, self-development efforts, 23 Feb 2012 Nine employees fired from two Starbucks locations on base. Please update your browser version by An AAFES employee is also entitled to disability and retirement benefits under the An employee with 5 years of service who works beyond age 62 and is the new subsection (f) "clearly emphasized that § 15 [§ 633a] was self-contained and We provide world class service through stellar customer service, strategic Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) · Army and Air Force Exchange Service ( AAFES) · Defense Priority Placement Program (PPP) · Civilian Benefits & Entitlements (BEST) · Self Service Records Management Federal Employee Paid Leave Act. sobeys. com ) if you have questions. click "view pay stub" Oct 18, 2011 · A. Service breakdowns are opportunities to fix a problem, build loyalty and impress the customer. © 2020 The Exchange. The Ask Here™ feature in Employee Self-Service gives your workforce one spot to ask questions, which route directly to the proper person anywhere in your organization. 2962 for the class schedule. In addition, if the employee moves without a break in service of no more than three days, the employee is entitled to portability of benefits. comMem… Oct 08, 2020 · 1. live. Apr 13, 2015 · NCR RealPOS 72XRT to be installed at 6,000 Exchange locations worldwide, supported by NCR Services. Use your Aafes Lex Training account User ID and Password to Signin. Tobacco products cannot be accessible to any customer. com View all Health include health care, men health, womens health. The self-service store offers a variety of food and drinks to 309th Software Maintenance Group employees who work in the Browse h2+aafes+home on sale, by desired features, or by customer ratings. If you've forgotten the password, follow the instructions on the page to reset it. Aafes self service is a program designed for army and air force members. Learn more below. To anyone to whom you send messages through the Services, to allow the recipient to identify you. , authentication and access controls) to protect USG interests--not for your personal benefit or privacy. . com; You Have 24/7 Access to Your Pension Info; aafes self service password reset; AAFES Retail Employee Handbook; Service Login Employee Self; Cheap aafes employee self service login deals The Retired Employees Association is a worldwide organization for The Exchange retirees. aafes employee self service login page. aafes. Aafes Employee Self Service Portal. Please put the name and address of your store in the Ship to Address. Employment Verification is a Self Service My Biz tool, allowing employees to email employment and/or salary information to an external organizations (business, bank, credit union) directly from the Defense Civilian Personnel Data System (DCPDS) – via secure internet. com or call 214-312-6190 AAFES Employee Login The Self-Service Portal gives employees direct access to your personal payroll data via the internet. Delight the customer by resolving the issue beyond his or her satisfaction. aafes . Dear Valued Partner: The employee self service longicorns to the Service Actions of the County Government employees. In other words, if the customer service employee is rude, the customer will perceive that the company is also rude and does not care If you are an employee of the US Foreign Service and your position requires you to establish and maintain favorable relations in foreign countries, you may receive a nontaxable allowance for representation expenses. Proudly serving America's armed forces since 1895. To access pay stubs via the Sobeys Employee Self Service web portal, log in with User ID (i. org 2020 aafes retiree self service. Please contact the employer to understand the benefits connected to a relevant job. Employee Self-Service Login: Email Address: Password (6 - 10 letters and/or numbers) Forgot Password? Submit. Find out best way to reach Aafes Employee Self Service Login Page login. The new service, which the Army and Air Force Exchange Service was already running successful tests on at other Aafes Self Service Login Employees. Hence this article is about how the employees can log into their employee accounts. Working at AAFES. Military ID Card Holders; Civilian employees and government contractors can purchase snacks, candy, food items and soft drinks in the Post Exchange and can dine at the Burger King and Subway by showing an Browse Army & Air Force Exchange Service annual salaries by job title. If unable to return an item to an Exchange store, or if an item is damaged, call Customer Service at 1-800-527-2345. Hourly pay at Army and Air Force Exchange the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability in any of its educational programs, employment practices, or other services and activities. Contact JIRA Support Team (JIRASupport@aafes. Because I am only qualified to answer questions about federal civilian benefits, I don't know if you would be eligible for a pension based on you service with AAFES. Click "AZ people" logo on left and re-enter info then it looks like the DOC from work. How do you access your aafes employee self service to check pay stub? Self-service password reset for Mac OS X gives the user a secure way to reset his or streetstylejeans. Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) Gas Station A self-service car wash and vacuum is available on site. Employees can access payroll and HR information via computer or smart . Once logged in to self-service users will be able to view their payroll file Tags: aaefes self service pay stubs , aafes employee self service , AAFES is a joint military activity providing quality merchandise and services to active duty, guard and reserve members, military retirees and their families at competitively low prices. Helpdesk Topeka Area 296-1900; Toll free 1-866-999-3001; Sign out from all the sites that you have accessed. The Exchange appreciates your support. To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and enter your aafes retiree self service later), employee paycheck stubs (2003 and later), a Message Box from HQ Benefits, Aafes Self Service Login Portal For Employees @www. Username * Forgot your username? Password * Forgot your password? Login New User? (Invite code required) Register × Two Factor aafes employee self service login page. 48,689. channel15. com. It's very easy to share insurance plan options with your family www. create new account or id you forgot your password, you can reset it to login Aafes Lex Training. See all 8 articles. The Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES, also referred to as The Exchange and The PX) is the retailer on U. 3911 S. AAFES -- which serves active-duty military personnel, reservists,retirees, and their families -- also sells goods online. Coca-Cola continues to be on the cutting edge by building out its interactive dashboards. Good Luck! (Dec 07, 2020) Dallas-based Army & Air Force Exchange Service was one of the first U. , (ESI) (Dec 29, 2020) The Exchange Intranet Log-In Page Exchange Employee Self https://self- service. First formed back in 1975, the purpose of the association was to continue the friendships and associations that had been made during Exchange careers, a legacy that continues today in the association's endeavors. , Augusta, GA 30901-1427 706-721-3131 Visit the GA DOL Career Center on the web Aafes self service is a program designed for army and air force members. (Dec 28, 2020) The AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) has established their To access the self-service website users will need to visit AAFES Employee Self Service. 0. Aafes Employee Self Service Login Page. Free shipping and pick up at store available. Box 660202 Dallas, TX 75266-0202 FAX: 214-312-3596 Economic Systems, Inc. To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and enter your To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and e 2,989 reviews from Army & Airforce Exchange Service employees about Army & Airforce Exchange Service culture, salaries, benefits, work-life balance, management, job security, and more. For some, it is a bit difficult because of the shifts. Walton Walker Blvd, Dallas, Tx 75236. As well as employees can review, print, and save their latest pay stub or annual W2 tax form at their convenience from work or home. com/self-service/ logon. Hence this article is about how the employees can log into their employee accounts. 25 Aug 2014 the men and women who serve in the U. Government Civilian Employees Working Overseas If you are a U. With more than 3,100 locations around the world and a website that allows service members to shop online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, AAFES is an incredibly convenient way for servicemen and Dec 04, 2020 · Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) pays its employees an average of $53,448 a year. Under certain, limited circumstances nonappropriated fund employees can get credit for that service if they become regular civil service employees. Sometimes this decision comes down to Employees can use the employee self-service website The AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) for login and looking through their paystub online at Browser Update Required! This browser does not meet minimum standards for connection to the timekeeping system. See what others thought about what they got paid at Army & Air Force Exchange Service. Online Help You can access Employee Self Service when you're not at work, too, at https://myapps. Employees can use the employee self-service website The AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) for login and looking through their paystub online at DOD My NAF Benefits You're going to need that to log in. The best thing working with then every year around June. This reference provides you with those details for future use. Aafes employee self service portal login. Too much drama amongst employees. Jobs 1 - 15 of 63 Step 1 – Go to the Aafes Self Service Login Employees official login page via our official link below. Health Details: Retiree Self Service, updated July 2018 - All retirees can now log on to access their electronic personnel file and work history (if electronic at time of retirement in 2000 or later), employee paycheck stubs (2003 and later), a Message Box from HQ Benefits, and important links. Apply to Customer Service Representative, Customer Specialist, Warehouse Worker and more! Jan 07, 2020 · Then you will wait a long time for one of the seven investigation employees to look at your complaint and AAFES will tell you quickly they service customers all over the world and pretty much take a number and wait. All trademarks, service marks, logos, and/or domain names are the property of their respective owners. Employee Self Service Portal Get Reset Code Enter your login and email address, if you did not set an email address or if you forgot your login, you will have to ask your supervisor to reset the password for you You can access Employee Self Service when you're not at work, too, at https://myapps. Our focus is to deliver quality goods and Shop the largest military government retailer online and in store for exclusive discounts. Step 1 Go to the Aafes Employee Self Service Portal official login page via our official link below. By using this IS (which includes any device attached to this IS), you consent to the following conditions Oct 14, 2020 · On a PC connected to the Exchange Network. aafes self service 2020 Dec 15, 2020 Aafes stands for Army and Air Force Exchange Service . Click "self service". https://self-service. Good hours for military spouses looking for extra income like me. Careers with the Exchange Sep 15, 2020 · The Self-Service Portal gives employees direct access to The Exchange also offers positions in various departments for those associates who are looking for more challenging positions or move from one category into another category. e. With a team of extremely dedicated and quality lecturers, aafes self service lex learning will not only be a place to share knowledge but also to help students get inspired to explore and discover many How do you Reset your password for aafes self services? You must be an aafes employee, but this is the place I go to when checking my pay-stub at home. Once logged in, click on Address Change (Active Employee Away from Work) DESCRIPTION Associates may want to access Employee Self-Service (ESS) from a non-Exchange computer or Mon, 15 Jun, 2020 at 1:26 PM Direct Deposit Update Employee Self-Service FAQs Print. Army and Air Force installations AAFES Redesigned Logo 2011-vector. Log in to access your loginee. In the event you have any questions or experience any issues with the delivery of orders going to the Dan Daniel Distribution Center, please contact their Customer Service office, at email DDDCCustSer2@aafes. com/Self- Service, and log in using your Top Secret Security ID and password. Dec 29, 2020 In this article, I will tell you in detail about the Aafes Self Service Online Employee Login Portal. Before You Start: Data needed for the Request. How do i access my aafes employee self Shipments are taking longer this holiday season due to the high volume of online shopping, please check shipper tracking updates for current information. To speak with an Aetna representative, call 1-800-367-6276, 8:00 am to 6:00 pm CST. Atlassian Jira Project Management Software (v8. Employee self-service features are becoming a trend among companies that wish to streamline their human resources departments and engage their employees in the benefits process. Treat others they're stupid and little kids. g. Exchange Service (AAFES) fired seven employees of the Fort Belvoir 12th Street brewed coffee/ soft drinks offered to customers on the self service drink station 11 Jul 2018 Reduction in Force—Local National Employees in Germany Service, Europe and Southwest Asia (AAFES-Eur), human resources office (HRO). Aafes stands for Army and Air Force Exchange Service. Salaries at Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) range from an average of $31,069 to $91,891 a year. Employee Self-Service (ESS) 7. Jul 23, 2018 · The Army & Air Force Exchange Service has redesigned its new ApplyMyExchange. S. We have a robust On-Boarding program designed to makes our organization and employees thrive. All the listed benefits are extracted from job descriptions, reviews, and Q&A posted on Indeed. Army Soldier to determine the right size coat for him during a mass issuing of the Army Green Service Uniform to recruiting Oct 04, 2018 · An AAFES employee 5 Oct 2012 AAFES civilian personnel are Federal employees of an Self-service promotional displays will not be used outside of the tobacco department. Make sure any problems or service breakdowns are communicated to management to prevent it from happening again. ehr. Whether you work in a retail shop or a restaurant, a doctor's office or a bank, customer service is one of your most important tasks. 3 billion a year and we get paid like crap. loginfacts. AAFES Online Exchange. Apr 08, 2020 · To access your employee pay stub through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, simply log into the AAFES self service website, and enter your username and password. Self-service moving is a great option if you're not sure if you should move yourself or hire movers to do the move for you. Regardless of your industry, if your customers aren't happy, your business won't be successful — customers are at the heart of everything you do. An employee number and a social insurance number are required Access to Sobeys employee self-service paycheck stubs can be found on the company's website. m. All rights reserved. Its dual missions are to provide quality merchandise … REQUEST TO REMOVE AAFES @ Pissed Consumer What's new on Lex. Note: Effective 1 July 06 for CONUS stores, all tobacco products are to be sold behind the counters in a Non-Self Service format. Select a topic below for instructions on using MyPortal or Subscribe to GovDelivery for updates and notifications Annual MyPortal support stack updates have resulted in minor changes to the MyPortal application. retailers In early March, AAFES started requiring its store employees to wear The operation is self-funded and last year returned its $369 million in Aafes Employee Email Login; Aafes Self Service Login Portal For Employees @www. We are a non-appropriated fund or NAF. Patrons of shopmyexchange. Menu. Employee Self Service/Manager Self Service Employee Self Service Manage and update benefits, performance and learning management, pay related information, career opportunities, wellness & safety and personal information such as home address, mobile phone numbers, emergency contacts and much, much more Sep 15, 2020 · The Self-Service Portal gives employees direct access to -This IS includes security measures (e. Training begins on your first day with the Exchange, regardless of the job you have. Try D&B Hoovers Free Aafes Self Service Login Employees It is noteworthy that this login portal is the login portal for the employees of Aafes. Employees can use the employee self-service website The AAFES (Army & Air Force Browser Update Required! This browser does not meet minimum standards for connection to the timekeeping system. I have time on weekdays for my kids to go to school and work on The single pack self-service fixtures may still be used in OCONUS within the tobacco department. If you have an issue logging into either system contact the IT Service Desk at: ( 405) 271-2203 or toll-free at (888) 435-7486. An obvious but seemingly overlooked area where many companies neglect is the simple are of proper instruction. asp. The self-service portal is an available option for Duo web-based applications, VPN applications, and Microsoft applications that offer inline self-enrollment and authentication prompt, such as Juniper and Cisco SSL VPNs, WordPress, and Microsoft OWA. User Name:*. at. Your username will be sent to your e-mail. That means that we pay our salaries from the revenue that we earn, not taxpayer dollars. 1#804002-sha1:94e96d6) Kronos iSeries Central - Employee Self Service ® Version 7. Sitemap | Shopping Cart Software by BigCommerce Aafes Jobs Aafes Exchange Jobs Aafes Internal Jobs Exchange Aafes Jobs Aafes Truck Driving Jobs JobsEye. aafes self service for employees
aca7, suvk, ju, y8ev, u6in, f8b, lup, pg, v4m, v72, 3a, za, 31ic, hkde, 4c7q, | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
NASA/Bill Ingalls/Public Domain
Queen's Brian May Recovers From Heart Attack
Queen's guitarist, Brian May, recently revealed that he's recovering from a heart attack which he described as a "near-death experience."
In a video posted to Instagram on Sunday night, the Rock music legend shared details about a series of health scares that began last month after he injured himself in a gardening accident. The incident left him with unspeakable pain for a week before seeking medical help. There, doctors discovered May had a "quite severely" compressed sciatic nerve. "That's why I had this feeling that someone was putting a screwdriver in my back," he said. Looking back on how it happened, he noted, "Well I think 50 years of running around with a guitar strap over my left shoulder holding a heavy guitar might have something to do with it ! But it probably WAS all worth it!"
To make matters worse, shortly therafter, the UK native suffered a heart attack due to three congested arteries. In Sunday's address, May said that he considers himself a "healthy guy" and was shocked by his condition. He encouraged everyone over the age of 60 to have an angiogram whether or not they have heart issues. To wrap it up, the 72-year-old stayed thankful: "I'm very grateful that I now have a life to lead again…. But I'm good and I'm here and I'm ready to rock." Watch the full clip below.
Hmm … Sheer Heart Attack eh ? Well, I think I always worried a little bit about that album title. I wondered if it might upset some people who had actually had heart attacks. I'm actually quite relieved now that I'm in that club – and I don't find it upsetting at all ! Take. care folks. And … why did those discs in my spine get so squished? Well I think 50 years of running around with a guitar strap over my left shoulder holding a heavy guitar might have something to do with it ! But it probably WAS all worth it ! Bri
A post shared by Brian Harold May (@brianmayforreal) on May 24, 2020 at 7:42pm PDT
Keep up with the latest trending music news by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls/Public Domain
Brian MayQueen
Sam Meier
Ed Sheeran Drops Surprise New Track 'Afterglow': Listen
Indie Venues To Receive $15 Billion In New COVID Relief Bill
Citizen Queen Shares Original 'Call Me Queen': Listen + Watch
Watch Dua Lipa Talk New Album, Obsession With Hiphop, and Body Image | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say
Charles Arthur's site for links, observations and writing
Start Up No.1,190: ex-Apple chip execs aim at servers, track Twitter hoaxes, costing Labour's broadband plan, Amazon's externalities, and more
Posted on November 18, 2019 by charlesarthur
Ships rely on GPS – but someone in China has figured out how to spoof it reliably. CC-licensed photo by Travis on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day's Start Up post by email. You'll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 10 links for you. It's the time of year. I'm @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
Ghost ships, crop circles, and soft gold: a GPS mystery in Shanghai • MIT Technology Review
Mark Harris:
As the crew carefully maneuvered the 700-foot ship through the world's busiest port, its captain watched his navigation screens closely. By international law, all but the smallest commercial ships have to install automatic identification system (AIS) transponders. Every few seconds, these devices broadcast their identity, position, course, and speed and display AIS data from other ships in the area, helping to keep crowded waterways safe. The position data for those transponders comes from GPS satellites.
According to the Manukai's screens, another ship was steaming up the same channel at about seven knots (eight miles per hour). Suddenly, the other ship disappeared from the AIS display. A few minutes later, the screen showed the other ship back at the dock. Then it was in the channel and moving again, then back at the dock, then gone once more.
Eventually, mystified, the captain picked up his binoculars and scanned the dockside. The other ship had been stationary at the dock the entire time.
When it came time for the Manukai to head for its own berth, the bridge began echoing to multiple alarms. Both of the ship's GPS units—it carried two for redundancy—had lost their signals, and its AIS transponder had failed. Even a last-ditch emergency distress system that also relied on GPS could not get a fix.
Now, new research and previously unseen data show that the Manukai, and thousands of other vessels in Shanghai over the last year, are falling victim to a mysterious new weapon that is able to spoof GPS systems in a way never seen before.
Long talked about, it looks like aggressive GPS spoofing is now a real thing.
unique link to this extract
Gifaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi is a 1983 wordless documentary primarily made up of slow motion and time-lapse footage. If you haven't seen it, you can watch the trailer.
I wondered how easy it would be to make an internet version using random Giphy 'gifs' which have been tagged as slow motion or time-lapse, playing them along with the Philip Glass soundtrack.
(As with any random thing, there is a chance some dodgy content may get through. I have used Giphy's PG-13 setting and it seems okay, but click on a video and it will tell you an id – send me this and I'll block anything iffy. Also note that this may not work on phones, especially iPhones, as they can be weird about multiple videos, and it's quite heavy on your processor and bandwidth.)
This is good fun, and the soundtrack works with pretty much anything.
Former Apple chip executives found company to take on Intel, AMD • Reuters
Stephen Nellis:
Three of Apple former top semiconductor executives in charge of iPhone chips have founded a startup to design processors for data centers, aiming to take on current industry leaders Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
NUVIA Inc was founded by Gerard Williams III, Manu Gulati and John Bruno in early 2019 and is developing a processor code-named Phoenix. The company on Friday said it raised $53m from Dell Technologies Capital and several Silicon Valley firms, which will help it expand from 60 employees to about 100 by the end of this year.
The company's founders, backers and plans have not been previously reported.
Williams left Apple this spring after more than nine years as chief architect for all Apple central processors and systems-on-a-chip. Gulati spent eight years at Apple working on mobile systems-on-a-chip, and Bruno spent five years in Apple's platform architecture group. Gulati and Bruno also worked for Alphabet Inc's Google before coming to NUVIA.
That's some high-powered execs there. Apple bought PA Semi in 2008, and hired Williams in 2010 from ARM. But it seems like the chip group is always seeing change.
You'd have to guess that these are going to be ARM-based servers, which is a slice of the market that hasn't seen much action yet.
Hoaxy® : FAQ
What is Hoaxy?
Hoaxy is a tool that visualizes the spread of articles online. Articles can be found on Twitter, or in a corpus of claims and related fact checking.
What is the difference between Hoaxy search and Twitter search?
There are two search modes. Hoaxy search finds claims and related fact checking in a limited corpus of articles from low-credibility and fact-checking sources, dating back to 2016. This mode leverages the Hoaxy API to retrieve relevant articles, accounts, and tweets. Twitter search lets users track articles from any sources posted on Twitter, but only within the last 7 days. Twitter mode uses the Twitter Search API to retrieve relevant, popular, or mixedtweets matching your search query. It is compatible with all advanced search operators. At most, Hoaxy is capable of visualizing the top 1000 accounts and in the case of a Twitter search, this will be the most recently active 1000 accounts if sorted by Recent.
Fun! Worth adding to your bookmarks.
How feasible is Labour's free broadband plan and part-nationalisation of BT? • The Guardian
Mark Sweney and Patrick Collinson:
Could the government and BT shareholders agree a fair price for Openreach?
There is likely to be significant difficulty valuing British Broadband, which is what Labour would call a nationalised Openreach. Bloomberg has valued it at £15bn.
The Labour party has said parliament would decide what to pay but it would have to be a fair price to get the backing of employee shareholders, pension fund investors, small shareholders and big overseas investors. Germany's Deutsche Telekom, which has 12% of the business, is likely to be a tough negotiator, for instance.
But it would likely cost less than it would have done a few years ago. BT's share price was 500p in 2015 but is now only 191p. Labour has said that BT shareholders would get government bonds in return for their shares, which pay a lower dividend than BT investors currently receive.
Would nationalising broadband work?
Australia has tried to do this with its National Broadband Network and it has been branded one of the biggest infrastructure failures in its history. Set up in 2006, the government's plan was to roll out full fibre to 93% of all premises, although over the years this was watered down to a "multi-technology mix" using different technologies offering varying levels of speed and service to consumers. "Only one other country in the world has come close to going down this route, Australia," says Matthew Howett, the principal analyst at telecoms research firm Assembly. "And for a good reason – it's hard, expensive and fraught with difficulty. Australia's NBN is years late, massively overbudget and offering speeds and technology a fraction of the original political intention."
The problem with the Australia program was that it got watered down to stick with copper. Nationalising BT Openreach would be a radical move – but so was selling the public BT into the private sector in 1984. Now it's just using Openreach as a cash cow. Infrastructure shouldn't be that.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales launches Twitter and Facebook rival • Financial Times
Tim Bradshaw:
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has quietly launched a rival to Facebook and Twitter that he hopes will combat "clickbait" and misleading headlines.
WT:Social, his new social-networking site, allows users to share links to articles and discuss them in a Facebook-style news feed. Topics range from politics and technology to heavy metal and beekeeping.
While the company is completely separate to Wikipedia, Mr Wales is borrowing the online encyclopedia's business model. WT:Social will rely on donations from a small subset of users to allow the network to operate without the advertising that he blames for encouraging the wrong kind of engagement on social media.
"The business model of social media companies, of pure advertising, is problematic," Mr Wales said. "It turns out the huge winner is low-quality content."
While Facebook and Twitter's algorithms ensure that the posts with the most comments or likes rise to the top, WT:Social puts the newest links first. However, WT:Social hopes to add an "upvote" button that will allow users to recommend quality stories.
Have to say that this would have been perfect about 15 years ago. Hard to see it really making an impact now, though he's right about the problems.
Most Americans think they're being constantly tracked—and that there's nothing they can do • MIT Technology Review
Angela Chen:
More than 60% of Americans think it's impossible to go through daily life without being tracked by companies or the government, according to a new Pew Research study. The results provide important context on the long-running question of how much Americans really care about privacy.
It's not just that Americans (correctly) think companies are collecting their data. They don't like it. About 69% of Americans are skeptical that companies will use their private information in a way they're comfortable with, while 79% don't believe that companies will come clean if they misuse the information.
When it comes to who they trust, there are differences by race. About 73% of black Americans, for instance, are at least a little worried about what law enforcement knows about them, compared with 56% of white Americans. But among all respondents, more than 80% were concerned about what social-media sites and advertisers might know.
Despite these concerns, more than 80% of Americans feel they have no control over how their information is collected.
Very few people read privacy policies, the survey shows. That's understandable. A review of 150 policies from major websites found that the average one takes about 18 minutes to read and requires at least a college-level reading ability. Few people have time for that—and even if they did, most people are forced to agree anyway if they really need the service.
Brand hijacking and Amazon's China strategy • The Margins
Ranjan Roy:
For decades, we've vilified the "middleman" as an inefficiency; an unnecessary tax paid by the consumer which technology finally solved for. But, we ignored the layers of accountability and positive value that many of these conduits provided.
Think about it: If you bought a child's toy from Sears, you would assume that it didn't contain 400x the amount of lead legally allowed. But that's no longer the case:
Another musical-instrument set failing the Journal's tests, made by a company calling itself Innocheer and listed as in China, likely contributed to a New York City child's lead poisoning, according to city health officials. The city in May 2018 began tracking down contaminated products including the set bought on Amazon, a New York health-department spokesman says.
If you went to a store and bought a motorcycle helmet that was listed as DOT compliant, but it in fact, was not and your son died in an accident where it did not act as expected, you'd expect proper recourse, but you'd be wrong:
The coroner declared Mr. Stokes dead at the scene, a day before he and his girlfriend planned to find out their unborn baby's gender. His mother sued Amazon, claiming the helmet was flawed. Amazon in court argued it didn't sell the helmet but merely listed it on the seller's behalf. It settled for $5,000 without admitting liability. It declined to comment on the case.
The examples go on and on, but you get the point. What was long decried as inefficiency, in fact, imbued some semblance of accountability. When Jeff Bezos says "your margin is my opportunity" he seems to gloss over whether there was a modicum of value being delivered within that margin.
In short: problems that used to be contained within the system have become externalities.
Microsoft is killing off its Cortana app for iOS and Android in January • The Verge
Tom Warren:
Microsoft has revealed that it's planning to kill off its Cortana app for iOS and Android in January. The software maker has posted a new support article for Cortana users in the UK, Canada, and Australia that reveals Cortana for iOS and Android is disappearing in at least those markets. Microsoft has also confirmed to The Verge that the Cortana app will disappear in the UK, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India on January 31st.
"Cortana is an integral part of our broader vision to bring the power of conversational computing and productivity to all our platforms and devices," says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "To make Cortana as helpful as possible, we're integrating Cortana deeper into your Microsoft 365 productivity apps, and part of this evolution involves ending support for the Cortana mobile app on Android and iOS."
It's not clear how much longer the Cortana for iOS and Android app will continue to operate in the US after January 31st.
Come on, they say they're integrating it into Office, but the truth is it's dead. A brief history: development started in 2009, and it was introduced in April 2014. Amazon's Alexa: introduced in November 2014. Surprising how one has survived and the other hasn't.
Google Pixel 4 review: overpriced, uncompetitive, and out of touch • Ars Technica
Ron Amadeo:
When the original Google Pixel first came out, there was an abundance of things you could give Google's new smartphone division the benefit of the doubt on. The design was a year or two behind the competition, with thicker bezels and a less appealing design. Availability was very poor, as the phone was only sold in a handful of countries compared to the world-dominating distribution networks of Apple and Samsung. At a whopping $650, the original Pixel phone was shockingly expensive compared to the awesome value previously provided by the Nexus line. The fabled integration of hardware and software hadn't shown many benefits yet, but that was easy to excuse since the original Pixel was rushed out the door. "This will all get better," we all thought. Google was just getting started!
We're on generation 4 of the Pixel line now, and nothing has really gotten better. The Pixel 4 design is still dated compared to the competition, sporting a sizable bezel when most of the smartphone world has moved on to minimal cameral blemishes or completely hidden cameras. Distribution is still very bad. The Pixel 4 is only for sale in 12 countries, a laughable number compared to the 70 countries that Apple does iPhone business in and the 100+ countries that can buy the Galaxy S10. The pricing problem has gotten even worse, as the Pixel 4's entry point is now higher than the iPhone 11. Yet, the iPhone 11 has a bigger screen, a bigger battery, and a longer support window.
We're not seeing any benefits from the supposed "deeper" integration of hardware and software, either. In four generations, Google has yet to do anything special with its hardware. It mostly just produces cookie-cutter smartphones at a very high price, doing the same thing as other companies often a year or two behind the competition.
Tough crowd, the Android reviewer for a big tech site.
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
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6 thoughts on "Start Up No.1,190: ex-Apple chip execs aim at servers, track Twitter hoaxes, costing Labour's broadband plan, Amazon's externalities, and more"
stormyparis on November 18, 2019 at 9:50 am said:
Re Ars's review. Ron Amadeo's device reviews are not really Ars-level. His OS and software reviews are, but on HW he's got random opinions he thinks are gospel, and he gets excited easily.
Anandtech's review is mode balanced and more useful, https://www.anandtech.com/show/15068/the-google-pixel-4-xl-review/9
stormyparis on November 18, 2019 at 10:02 am said:
Also, I'm not on board with tech and non-tech sites' intense coverage on the Pixel. It's a marginal phone from a marginal OEM; if you're not to cover everything, I think covering the most popular devices is more useful.
I've got the same issue with most every topic (cars, hi-fi, even appliances). Companies want to push high-end stuff, and journalist have to work with what they're given + get a vanity boost from getting all embroiled in high-end stuff; but that content is mostly useless, 90% of people buy reasonable, not vanity, stuff.
Plus the action these days is in low and mid range smartphones. Those are seeing the most progress, going from crap to delightful and now possibly excellent in a few short years, while flagships added… AR and blurred backgrounds ? Tracking what one can do on a $150 device is vastly more exciting than that. As is the question of whether one should spend more, or less.
charlesarthur on November 18, 2019 at 10:11 am said:
Anandtech's review boiled down to one of their own sentences: "Overall, the Pixel 4 frankly feels more like a device that would have been extremely successful if it had been released in 2018."
In general, it's damning with faint praise. I'd say it's exactly the same as Amadeo's.
stormyparis on November 18, 2019 at 3:14 pm said:
The conclusion is fairly the same. But where Amadeo goes on long rants about tangential stuff and really REALLY insists on semi-random stuff, Anandtech mentions the good, the bad and moves on quickly. I'd rather have Anandtech's review of video-taking than Amadeo's three-too-many rants.
This looks smart: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/11/lg-patents-handset-with-extendable-display-that-doubles-screen-surface.html
Extra screen is protected rolled up in the sides, should be reasonably rigid and sturdy (I was thinking of a papryrus-scroll like unroll, but that's flimsy). Doubling the screen size is obvious, I'm fairly sure you can go up to 3x (assuming the screen rolls up tight enough), that gives you a 10″ tablet with something close to a 3:2 format (x2 gives you a square 8-incher),when starting from a Galaxy Note 10+ size (6.8″ 19:9)
BTW I'm still sad we standardized on measuring screens via the diagonal. A square 8″ screen is 30% bigger than a 19:9 8″ screen. And way more practical ^^
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Start Up No.1464: how Facebook's numbers create radicals, the virtual CES, DuckDuckGo hits 100m per day, why herd immunity takes jabs, and more
Start Up No.1463: Intel ditches its CEO, Qualcomm buys ex-Apple chip startup, Congress Covid infections show vaccine delay, and more
Start Up No.1462: the bitcoin millionaires with no money, the "clean" CES, the trouble with scotch eggs, Uganda bans social media, and more
Start Up No.1461: India's digital goldrush, Sony gets drone-y, Parler hacked, Parler sues Amazon, why Twitter was right to zap Trump, and more
Start Up No.1460: what the Trump ban means, the madness of the radicalised, why vaccination doesn't prevent onward infection, and more
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cyberwars | {
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If you were to listen to this album without knowing anything about VanderWaal, you'd immediately think you were listening to a 20-something with way more musical (and life) experience rather than someone who hasn't even entered her freshman year of high school.
Additionally, unlike many popular singers today, VanderWaal is credited as a writer on every single one of the tracks on the record. Her voice has Julien Baker and Lorde-esque qualities, which is a big responsibility for such a young girl, but, clearly through her music, she doesn't take that responsibility lightly.
The main theme of the record is to step back from the everyday responsibilities that weigh you down and just enjoy life.
This song has a very simple, light acoustic guitar that is just loud enough to add to the song and not detract from her vocals.
Additionally, she references her popularity status, saying that when she was younger, it was easy for other children to hate her and how it hurt her feelings. She sings, "Back then, it was so easy to shatter/But now in the end it doesn't really matter," signifying she's in a place in her life where she's choosing to stop caring about what others think of her.
"Insane Sometimes" shares the sentiment of losing yourself in the world around you. VanderWaal sings, "And let's just go/And lose track of time," powerfully reiterating the carefree attitude.
Again, this song is very simplistic instrumentally. There's a very light keyboard and synthesizer. While the verses start out very slowly, the song picks up and eventually matches the power of her voice.
"City Song" has a very tropical feel to it. It's very upbeat and positive, reminding the listener a lot of something that would play in a movie such as "Lilo and Stitch" or "Moana," because of its cheeriness and encouraging spirit.
If VanderWaal is coming up with these catchy, flavorful, fantastic tunes at only 13 years old, then she's probably going to just take over the music industry before she can even legally buy a lottery ticket. Her raspy voice makes for a comforting accompaniment to the soft, yet compelling tracks.
Dakota Palmer can be reached at [email protected]. | {
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Why is the Atlanta Falcons' Raheem Morris coaching wide receivers?
After a career playing and coaching defense, Morris has taken his power to the offensive side
Atlanta Falcons assistant head coach Raheem Morris before an NFL football game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday, Dec. 6, 2015, in Tampa, Fla. Morris is a former Buccaneer's head coach. AP Photo/Chris O'Meara
By Jason Reid @JReidESPN
Raheem Morris knows a little something about defense. During his playing days, he was a safety, after all. As a young college coach, he worked with defensive backs. He had similar gigs at several stops in the NFL. For most of his career, the Atlanta Falcons' assistant head coach grinded it out on D. Which is why it was more than just puzzling when Morris completely flipped the script. This season, he switched to offense and began coaching the Falcons' wide receivers. What could Morris possibly know about that? Apparently, a lot.
Under Morris, the Falcons' new-look receiving corps has been sensational — a big reason for the team's appearance in Super Bowl LI. Julio Jones is still the showstopper he's always been, but now the rest of the group is also delivering for quarterback Matt Ryan, the likely recipient of The Associated Press' NFL MVP Award. Morris brought a unique perspective to a bewilderingly new job and quickly earned the players' trust. The reviews have been so good that Morris – who in 2009 became the youngest African-American head coach in NFL history when he was picked to lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – could be back on the path to running his own shop.
"Raheem has been one of the main differences this year," Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan said. "We couldn't have had this success without him."
And don't say that way back before the season began, you could have predicted this.
Last season, first-year head coach Dan Quinn got off to a great start. At 5-0, the Falcons seemed destined to reach the postseason. They finished 8-8. For the third consecutive season, Atlanta missed the playoffs. Changes on the coaching staff were expected. However, Falcons observers never envisioned that Morris would be part of the reshuffling.
Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett (left) talks with Raheem Morris (right) the Atlanta Falcons' assistant head coach and wide receivers coach, before an NFL football game on Oct. 16, 2016, in Seattle.
AP Photo/Stephen Brashear
Quinn and Morris have been tight for 20 years. After Quinn took over the Falcons, Morris was one of his first hires. Quinn, formerly the Seattle Seahawks' defensive playcaller, relied on Morris, who directed the Falcons' passing defense. But the loss of receivers coach Terry Robiskie, who bolted to become the Tennessee Titans' offensive coordinator, created an opening. Quinn shifted Morris to fill the vacuum. Predictably, chatter from around the league ensued. Was Quinn dissatisfied with his longtime friend's performance? Was Morris demoted? Was he on his way out? Internally, the speculation about Morris stirred laughter. Quinn wasn't down on Morris. Coach just needed someone he could trust to lead a key unit in transition.
For years, the Falcons were set at wideout. Roddy White and Jones were a dominant tandem. But by early in the 2015 season, it was clear that White's career was winding down. Jones led the NFL in receiving yards, but in March 2016, the Falcons released White. That left an already dependent Ryan with Jones as his only reliable look. The Falcons needed a major infusion of talent at wide receiver. Fast.
In free agency, Atlanta lured Mohamed Sanu from the Cincinnati Bengals. The Falcons claimed Taylor Gabriel off waivers from the Cleveland Browns. The Falcons envisioned Sanu being a productive No. 2 receiver behind Jones. Quinn and Shanahan were intrigued by Gabriel's stretch-the-defense speed. Now, Morris had to make them all fit together.
Morris took a different approach to developing wideouts. He pulled from what he knew best: defense. Morris brought a defensive back's mentality to the wide receivers room. He knows how cornerbacks and safeties think. After all, Morris spent most of his career training them. Although Morris mostly guides receivers in a traditional way — helping them refine their route running, understanding their roles within the offense, minimizing mistakes, etc. — he also shares tips about ways in which defensive backs reveal coverage before the snap. He's great about assessing a defensive back's strengths and weaknesses. Receivers use his scouting reports to gain an edge in one-on-one matchups. Tricks-of-the-trade stuff that's invaluable. From his first meeting with the players, Morris had their attention. He hasn't lost it.
"He did an awesome job," wideout Nick Williams said. "He really broke down what the defense is trying to do to you. He wanted us to be open to rethinking some things, and everyone trusted him. As you can see, we had a pretty good unit this year.
"The biggest thing was that he approached everything from a defensive perspective. It's really rare to have an offensive position coach who comes from defense. It just doesn't happen. So he sees the offense differently. Then we saw it differently. It helps."
Pro Bowl cornerback DeAngelo Hall figured Morris would pull back the curtain to help Atlanta's receivers. During Morris' stint as the Washington Redskins' defensive backs coach, he became close with Hall. Initially, the 13-year veteran was surprised that his dude changed jobs, "but when you think about it, it actually makes sense," Hall said. "He's thinking from a DB's standpoint, playing receiver.
"He's thinking outside the box from a coverage standpoint, what the defense is trying to do on every play and how to get his guys open. It definitely made him a way better coach. He's bringing all these ideas that most guys in that job don't know about. He's also making his guys better. They're getting a way of looking at something that just isn't the normal way it's done."
Morris' methods work. Jones, despite battling a foot injury, has been typically spectacular. During a blowout victory over the Carolina Panthers in early October, he set a team record with 300 yards receiving. Of course, the Falcons knew what to expect from Jones. But Sanu and Gabriel have been outstanding, too, and that's changed the game.
The sure-handed Sanu is impressively steady. Since Week 8, he's caught 86.5 percent of his targets (45 of 52) — the highest total among NFL wideouts, according to ESPN Stats & Information. Behind Jones, Gabriel emerged as Ryan's No. 2 deep threat. On his six receiving touchdowns, Gabriel has averaged a whopping 42.7 yards. That's the second-highest total among wideouts with at least five touchdown catches.
Atlanta averaged an NFL-leading 33.8 points, finished 11-5 and won the NFC South. The Falcons' offense has been even better in the postseason. Jones and Sanu each linked up with Ryan for touchdowns in a blowout of the Seattle Seahawks. Then in the NFC title game against the Green Bay Packers, Jones delivered a 180-yard, two-touchdown knockout punch. He manhandled the Packers' secondary en route to a 73-yard score.
The Falcons are averaging 40 points in the postseason. Their margin of victory is 19.5 points. Ryan remains aflame. It's nice to have a gaggle of dependable receivers.
And it's Morris who has made them better, Sanu said. "He came to us and helped us grow," Sanu said. "Mentally, physically and emotionally, he found out what each of us needed and helped us. After getting to know him, I wasn't surprised by what he did. I learned that's just the type of person he is."
Along the path to building a bond with the receivers, Morris also got a newfound respect for defense. The countless hours spent coaching and counseling top-notch wideouts made him appreciate how hard it is to play defensive back in the NFL. "We were sitting in his house last weekend talking about the difference with him now coaching offense, and it was just so interesting to hear him talk," Hall said. "He was like, 'Man, I don't know how y'all ever play DB in this league. With all the rules, it's basically impossible to [cover] guys like that.' He was seeing it for the millionth time, just in a totally different way. Then, he did a great job of taking what he knows and kind of flipping it around to his advantage."
Morris also effectively articulated Shanahan's vision of the offense. He's largely responsible for improving communication issues that plagued the offense throughout last season's collapse. Once low-level coaches together on Jon Gruden's staff in Tampa Bay, Morris and Shanahan are longtime friends. Shanahan jumped at the chance to add Morris to Atlanta's offensive staff, "because to get a coach who can relate to players better than anyone who I've been around, yet still always hold them accountable, is exactly the type of coach you want to work with," he said. "It's what makes him special."
Better than most coaches, Morris connects with players. His ability to reach them fueled his meteoric ascent to a head coaching job at only 32. In NFL history, there have only been four head coaches who were younger than Morris. Initially promoted to be the Buccaneers' defensive coordinator, Morris received another bump to the franchise's top position after Gruden was fired in January 2009. Morris had some success – Tampa Bay went 10-6 in his second season – but he didn't reach the playoffs and was fired after three seasons. Among the criticisms of Morris, besides his poor 17-31 record, was that he got too close to players. Supposedly Morris didn't run a tight ship. Hall heard the talk. Having played for Morris, he doesn't buy it.
"When you lose, a lot of people talk stuff," Hall said. "A lot of stuff goes on. But talk to guys who have played for Raheem. They go out there and play hard for him. There's respect there.
"He knows how to deal with guys to get the best out of them. But he also knows the game. He's not just somebody who motivates guys. Raheem is prepared. He's always trying to get better. I've seen it. That's the guy who I know."
With his job duties this season, Morris has shown growth. To the Falcons, that's obvious.
In Shanahan's offense, a lot is expected of wideouts. Their responsibilities change quickly based on Ryan's pre-snap calls in response to the defense's alignment, and Morris has "had them on top of it all year," backup quarterback Matt Schaub said. "With all they have to know on every play, and we ask a lot of them on checks and alerts, you can tell if guys are not ready. You'll see it. He's had them ready. And they've done a great job to help us get to this point."
At only 40, Morris is still young enough to have a second act as a head coach. African-Americans who are perceived to have failed in their first chance to lead a program, however, are far less likely than their white counterparts to get additional opportunities. It'll be interesting to see whether the Falcons' run to the Super Bowl – combined with Morris' well-received performance – will open doors for him in the next few seasons, either for openings as a coordinator or a head coach. Now that Morris has been an integral part of an elite offense, maybe a position as an offensive playcaller is his next step. We know NFL owners love offense. For a good stretch now, they've often looked first to that side of the ball when positions come open. It seems Morris is now in the right spot.
No matter the outcome of the Super Bowl, Atlanta's coaching staff figures to undergo a makeover. Reportedly, Shanahan has been in negotiations for some time to become the San Francisco 49ers' head coach. Undoubtedly Shanahan will take some Falcons coaches with him. Perhaps Morris will make another move. If Shanahan hopes to assemble a highly versatile staff, he knows where he can find someone who's already proven he can get it done on both sides of the ball.
Jason Reid is the senior NFL writer at The Undefeated. He enjoys watching sports, especially any games involving his son and daughter.
This Story Tagged: Super Bowl Atlanta Falcons Raheem Morris | {
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Ex-employees of petrochemicals giant, Sasol, are seeing red due to what they see as an unjust exclusion in the winding down of the Sasol Inzalo B-BBEE transaction and in the establishment of the new initiative titled Sasol Khanyisa.
Many claim that they were lured into taking voluntary retrenchment packages on a promise that they will realise a considerable cash payout from the Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOP) chapter of the 2008 Sasol Inzalo transaction which terminated recently. But this pay-out did not happen and unlike the other participants in the Sasol Inzalo scheme, ex-employees were not allocated shares in the new Sasol Khanyisa B-BBEE scheme.
The ex-employees are crying foul. Their protests are all over social media platforms including on ProBonoMatters, a social media platform which has picked up the Sasol Inzalo grievances and is preparing to lodge them with the BEE Commission.
What is the position of Sasol ex-employees in the winding down of the Sasol Inzalo transaction and the making of Sasol Khanyisa?
The Sasol Inzalo transaction for the Sasol Inzalo Employee and Management Share Ownership Plans (ESOP and MSOP) came to an end on 4 June 2018. For there to be any pay-out for employees the Sasol share price needed to be R905 per share. The Sasol share price on 4 June 2018 was R479 per share. This meant that the Sasol share price had not increased sufficiently over the 10 year period of the Sasol Inzalo transaction to repay the funding used to finance the Sasol Inzalo employee transaction.
Thus, no further payouts are expected and no Sasol shares were transferred to employees and ex-employees. Ex-employees who were not employed by Sasol on 1 June 2018 were ineligible to participate in the Sasol Khanyisa transaction.
If I was a Sasol employee from 2008 and quit the company at the end of 2017, what benefit would I have derived from the deal?
Employees who participated in the Inzalo Employee Share Ownership Plan did not make any upfront payment. Over the past ten years, dividends to ESOP and MSOP participants were declared on their "rights to shares", half of which was used to help settle the funding. The other half was paid to employees in the form of dividends. The last Sasol Inzalo dividend was paid to employees in April 2018, before the Sasol Inzalo transaction came to an end.
Employees received approximately R57 000 in dividends per employee over the ten year period of the Sasol Inzalo transaction.
Is there anything else I need to know about the position Sasol ex-employees in this regard?
Over the past year, we have communicated extensively through various channels with our employees, as well as former employees. We welcome further queries from former employees to provide further clarity. | {
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Analysis: Motivating Factors Behind Pfizer's Restructuring
Jacob Berstein
Jacob Berstein is a writer for Forbes' 30-Under-30 and an Investopedia contributor covering a range of topics, from trade wars to pharmaceuticals.
Thomas Brock
Reviewed by Thomas Brock
Thomas J. Brock is a CFA and CPA with more than 20 years of experience in various areas including investing, insurance portfolio management, finance and accounting, personal investment and financial planning advice, and development of educational materials about life insurance and annuities.
Yarilet Perez
Fact checked by Yarilet Perez
Yarilet Perez is an experienced multimedia journalist and fact-checker with a Master of Science in Journalism. She has worked in multiple cities covering breaking news, politics, education, and more. Her expertise is in personal finance and investing, and real estate.
In July 2018, Pfizer, the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company, announced plans to split into three separate businesses. The reorganization of the $188 billion company was set to occur at the start of the 2019 fiscal year.
The plan was for operations to be split into three divisions: Innovative Medicines, which was to focus on the biological science and new hospital medicines business and would bring in most of Pfizer's revenue; Established Medicines, which was to include the sale of older Pfizer drugs that had lost their patent protection; and Consumer Healthcare, which would handle over-the-counter medicines.
The Innovative Medicines division was expected to bring in most of Pfizer's revenue. In a press release, the company said that the growth potential for that business was strongest in part because of the older population that was increasing demand for new medicines. "The new Innovative Medicines division will include their biosimilars business and a new hospital business unit. This design gives us a sharper focus on diverse patients in diverse markets," said Dr. Albert Bourla, then Chief Operating Officer of Pfizer, now CEO, in a statement following the announcement.
At the beginning of fiscal year 2019, Pfizer began managing its new global structure composed of three businesses, each led by a single manager—Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group (Biopharma), Upjohn and, through July 31, 2019, Pfizer's Consumer Healthcare business.
Then, in November 2020, Pfizer announced that it had completed a transaction to spin off its Upjohn business and combine it with Mylan N.V. (Mylan) to form Viatris Inc. (Viatris).
Why all this activity? Part of the reason for corporate splits is to appease shareholders when growth is waning. Pfizer generated $51.8 billion in revenue in 2019, which was a 4% decline compared to 2018. And, in 2020, Pfizer reported full-year revenues for the year of $41.9 billion.
In 2015, eBay separated from PayPal, and, in October 2020, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) announced that it was splitting itself into two public companies so that it could focus on its cloud business, Typically, the stock price goes up when big companies split. eBay's stock rose 7.5% following their announcement, and IBM's stock rose 6% after their announcement.
"Investors prefer more focused, nimble companies," explained Joe Cornell, publisher of Spin-Off Research, a firm that tracks corporate splits. On the business end, when the whole of a diversified organization is no longer greater than the sum of its parts, it's time to split.
Demographic Changes: An Older Population, an Emerging Market
But there is another reason for Pfizer's restructuring. It comes at the start of what will become a global demographic shift in the global population's age. The United Nations reports that in 2019, there were 703 million persons aged 65 years or over in the world. That number is expected to double to 1.5 billion by 2050. In terms of the share of the global population, those aged 65 years or over, represented 6% of the population in 1990, 9% in 2019, and the proportion is expected to reach 16% by 2050. In other words, one in six people in the world will be aged 65 years or over.
The United States and other countries will face challenges in meeting the needs of this older population. As people age, they suffer from more illness, and these chronic illnesses place an increasing burden on health systems. "Governments need to recognize the effects of demographic change, not merely on public services, but on the social climate of each nation. Countries will have to reconsider all aspects of their communities, from healthcare systems and methods of delivering care, to how whole cities are structured" says William A. Haseltine, an American biologist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former professor at Harvard Medical School.
We can attribute this older population to advances in medicine and technology that increase longevity. Older individuals today are generally healthier than their counterparts in past generations and live much longer. While some see these changes as a source of growing challenges, many see an older population as a dynamic emerging market. Pfizer's split was rooted in the desire to provide space and resources to the sector of the company that deals with innovative geriatric medicines. In fact, Ian Read, former CEO of Pfizer said in a statement that he expects Pfizer to win 25 to 30 approvals for new medicines through 2022.
With a diverse portfolio of growing in-market products and this new wave of expected new product launches, Pfizer has positioned itself for growth as we brace for the impacts of an older population. In the press release announcing Pfizer's split, the company stated, "The growth fundamentals for the Innovative Medicines business are strong with an aging population that is leading to increasing demand for new innovative medicines and quickly advancing biological science that is delivering breakthrough solutions."
As our population gets older, markets must evolve to meet their needs. According to Paul Irving, Chair of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, and scholar-in-residence at the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology, "with consumption habits and service needs distinct from those of younger adults, Americans over 50 already account for $7.6 trillion in direct spending and related economic activity annually and control more than 80% of household wealth."
While it's too early to tell if Pfizer's split will ultimately be profitable, the move signals a growing trend in the tech and business world—strategic moves to anticipate and prepare for an older population. With the proper awareness and new approaches, an older population can be a blessing for business.
Yahoo! Finance. "Pfizer Inc. (PFE)."
Pfizer. "Pfizer To Organize For Future Growth."
Pfizer. "Appendix A 2019 Financial Report," Page 8.
Pfizer. "Pfizer Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2020 Results and Releases 5-Year Pipeline Metrics."
Reuters. "EBay Follows Icahn's Advice, Plans PayPal Spinoff in 2015."
BBC. "IBM to Split Into Two as It Reinvents Itself."
CNN Business. "Breaking up is the latest Wall Street craze."
United Nations. "World Population Aging 2019," Page 1.
Forbes. "Aging Populations Will Challenge Healthcare Systems All Over The World."
Pfizer. "Pfizer Announces CEO Succession."
Forbes. "Aging Populations: A Blessing For Business."
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A spin out is a type of corporate realignment involving the separation of a division to form a new independent corporation.
Icahn Lift
The Icahn Lift is the name given to the rise in stock price that occurs when investor Carl Icahn begins to purchase shares in a company.
Who Is Mac Crawford?
Mac Crawford is a veteran healthcare CEO and M&A expert, known as one of the most successful turnarounds and restructuring executives in the industry.
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The healthcare sector consists of companies that provide medical services, manufacture medical equipment or drugs, provide medical insurance, or otherwise facilitate the provision of healthcare to patients.
Multicultural Organization
A multicultural organization promotes diversity and inclusion among its employees and does not discriminate by race, sex, age, or any other ascribed characteristic. | {
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Can Charter Trip Up the Comcast-Time Warner Cable Mega-Merger?
Sometimes, it can be hard to convince investors that mega-mergers will actually create value. This is because sometimes (often, really) mega-mergers don't actually create value — they just cause a lot of headaches, make a select few people rich, and open the door to all sorts of unattractive corporate politics.
Cue Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA)(NASDAQ:CMCSK) and the $45.2 billion deal it wants to make for Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC). Comcast will purchase 100 percent of Time Warner in a stock-for-stock transaction, acquiring each of Time Warner's 284.9 million outstanding shares for 2.875 shares of Comcast Class A common stock. Comcast's normal Class A common stock, which trades under the CMCSA ticker, has fractional voting rights, whereas the special Class A common stock, CMCSK, has no voting rights. Comcast also has a non-publicly traded Class B stock, which has 15 votes per share and is controlled entirely by President and CEO Brian Roberts.
Comcast and Time Warner executives believe the deal will be accretive to cash flow and that they can squeeze about $1.5 billion in efficiencies from the combined entity — that is, executives believe that can pull off that rarest and neatest of tricks: creating value.
The veracity of this claim has been questioned by skeptics of the deal, but scale is a compelling argument. The new Comcast would have a full 30 percent of the U.S. pay television market (about 30 million subscribers) under its belt, and a presence in 19 out of 20 of the nation's largest television markets.
"If" is an operative word, though. The proposed mega-merger has attracted no shortage of attention, much of it critical. Regulators have yet to sign off on the deal — although company executives are confident they will — and certain factions within the Time Warner Cable shareholder base are looking to extract an even sweeter deal from Comcast. A rival suitor, Charter Communications (NASDAQ:CHTR), has also complicated the matter.
Charter has made no less than four bids for Time Warner Cable, all of which were rejected for being too low. Its last and best offer was for approximately $130 per share, which compares to the approximately $159 per-share deal that Comcast put on the table. However, the problem with the stock-for-stock transaction is that Comcast stock has meaningfully declined since the deal was announced, effectively lowering the value of the offer on the table. Comcast stock is down nearly 4 percent since February 13, when the deal was announced.
If the stock continues to fall, Charter can lean on Time Warner Cable shareholders and tempt them with an alternative deal. A Time Warner Cable spokesperson told The New York Times, "We are fully committed to our merger with Comcast, which we believe is in the best interests of shareholders," but Charter appears committed to the game. The company hasn't withdrawn its candidates for Time Warner Cable's board of directors, and The Wall Street Journal reports that Time Warner Cable shareholders could be tempted with a more cash-heavy deal.
If the merger goes through, the new company would become the biggest, baddest provider in the country. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, at the end of 2013, the next-largest competitor, AT&T (NYSE:T), had 21.9 million video and broadband subscribers, and Verizon (NYSE:VZ) had 14.3 million.
The sheer size of the new entity has caused a lot of concern. Customers are clearly worried about the quality of their service. Both Comcast and Time Warner have earned a reputation as some of the worst in the country. They are the two worst-ranked businesses in the cable industry, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, and pretty much no one is expecting service to get better after the merger. | {
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This webinar highlights ways to expand business with your current clients, obtain more clients, all while creating more efficiency internally. Aleyant Pressero™ client, Peter Lineal, Owner of Plum Grove Inc., shares his experience on how simply creating marketing portals or B2B online storefronts with his print clients and continually promoting them has helped his business (and his clients!) grow. A video recording of this webinar is available here. | {
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CategorySocial Media
robot-concept-or-robot-hand-chatbot-pressing-computer-keyboard-enter-stockpack-adobe-stock
Caitlin Bassett
Artificial Intelligence, Social Media
Artificial Intelligence, Facebook, Sarah T. Roberts, social media, TikTok
Will AI Take Over Content Moderation?
While content moderators report psychological trauma, experts weigh in on whether artificial intelligence could remove humans from the equation
How do Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and other platforms keep up with the millions upon millions of posts, comments, videos, and photos posted to their sites on a daily basis? It takes a partnership between artificial intelligence and human content moderators. In recent years, however, content moderators have begun to reveal that their work is often traumatizing. Moderators for Facebook and TikTok have gone so far as to sue for the psychological harm they have experienced at their workplaces, regularly reviewing images and videos that you and I never have to see depicting rape, murder, child trafficking, and other violent and graphic content. Subjecting workers to violent and graphic imagery is an unsustainable way of keeping the internet free of such…
Censorship, Global Technology, Social Media
China, Chinese Communist Party, Denise Ho, Hannah Arendt, Jack Ma, Peng Shuai, Rui Zhong, The Origins of Totalitarianism (book), Zhuoran Li
China's Internet: The Biggest Influencer Is the State
How China uses social metrics to guide its censorship strategy
The Chinese Communist Party's response to champion doubles tennis player Peng Shuai was about more than just dismissing an accusation and protecting a high-ranking Party member. It was about silencing influencers and suppressing social mobilization. In a previous article, we looked at how Beijing's propaganda machine used fake Twitter accounts to amplify messaging around tennis champion Peng Shuai after she disappeared from the public and was censored on the Chinese internet. Wilson Center scholar Rui Zhong writes in Wired magazine, "This is not about topics. This censorship is fundamentally about the dismantling of social resources." Rui Zhong's article is helpful in contextualizing the Chinese Communist Party's targets for online censorship. She says that most analyses of Chinese internet censorship focus on specific words, phrases, or topics, rather…
Woman walking smartphone tik tok
Artificial Intelligence, Candie Frazier, Casey Newton, Content moderation, Facebook, Google, social media, The Verge, TikTok, YouTube
Social Media Content Moderator Sues TikTok for PTSD
Social media moderators protect users from graphic content, but who protects the moderators?
A social media content moderator is suing TikTok, a popular video app, for psychological trauma developed from 12-hour shifts moderating endless graphic videos. Candie Frazier works for Telus International, a Canadian contracting firm providing moderation services to social media apps like TikTok. Frazier filed a complaint with the California Central District Court in December, alleging that TikTok and parent company ByteDance do not provide enough support for the psychological wellbeing of their contracted moderators, whose job it is to remove violent, graphic, and otherwise inappropriate content from the platform. TikTok's popularity exploded in the aftermath of pandemic lockdowns, especially among millennials and Generation Z. As of September, TikTok reported 1 billion users every month. In her complaint, Frazier explains that…
miniature people
Relationships, Social Media
Google' Selfish ledger
The Strange Story of Google's "Selfish Ledger"
If you need Google to run your life, this is definitely for you
At one time, not too many years ago, Google top hats developed the idea to push the rest of us to change society, as follows: The video was obtained and published on Thursday by The Verge. It describes a so-called "Selfish Ledger" that would collect all of your data, including actions you make on your phone, preference settings, and decisions you make, and not just keep it there for future evaluation. Instead, the ledger, which would be designed and managed by Google, would interpret that information and guide you down a path towards reaching a goal, or on a broader scale, doing your part to help solve poverty or other societal problems. In one example, the video describes how the…
crowd of same person
Stephen Berger
Belief systems, Faith, ghetto, myths, Worldview
How Do I Know If I Am Living in a Digital Ghetto?
AI-enabled tools can help to achieve the objectives of those motivated to create anger, fear, isolationism, or bigotry by manipulating our attention
I have recently been enjoying the PBS documentary on the history of New York City, part of the "An American Experience" series. With that in the back of my mind, I read design theorist William Dembski's thought-provoking article, "How Does Worldview Differ from Cultural Environment?" I found myself contemplating various aspects of his argument and in this article, I would like to present some thoughts, using this statement as a launching point: When I taught apologetics at seminary, I would stress to my students that in doing apologetics, they needed to get out of the ghetto. Some seem to think that there is a Christian community in which one can isolate oneself. Beyond this Christian community there is a secular…
fetus hands
Ethics, Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Relationships, Social Media
Abortion (advocacy), Featured, FiveThirtyEight, George Tiller, Prenatal counseling, Spina bifida (diagnosis), Twitchy
Political Website's Christmas Gift to Readers: Promoting Abortion
FiveThirtyEight asked readers to share their abortion stories and got something it hadn't bargained on: Many were glad it didn't happen
If you want to understand the mindset of the abortion lobby, note that this plea for accounts of killing of children in the womb appeared on Twitter on Christmas Day. Read More ›
group-of-fashion-friends-watching-on-their-smart-mobile-phones-millennial-generation-z-addicted-to-new-technology-trends-concept-of-people-tech-social-media-friendship-and-youth-lifestyle-stockpack-adobe-stock
Facebook (and teenagers), Facebook/Meta, Frances Haugen, Mark Zuckerberg, Suicide (and social media), Teenagers (suicide and social media)
If Facebook Kills Holly, Shouldn't Zuckerberg Take the Stand?
When social media is associated with suicide, legislators must ponder what to do next
(This article by Karl D. Stephan originally appeared at Engineering Ethics Blog (15 December 2021) under the title "Will Facebook kill Holly?" and is reprinted with permission.) I have to be careful about how I write today's column. I do not want to betray any trusts. But on the other hand, a topic that up to now has been an abstraction for me has become personal. A statistic has turned into someone I know by only two degrees of separation. To protect anonymity, I have changed names and some details of what I will write here. But I assure you that what I am going to write is based on facts as personally told to me yesterday by someone I…
social-media-concept-stockpack-adobe-stock
Arts & Culture, Social Media
Ethan Godel, Individuality (and social media), Joseph Anctil, Kasi McAuley, Science fiction, Tim Blair, Veronica Baron, Vessel (film)
What If Social Media Thinks for You? — Sci-fi Saturday
We get a good chance to find out in a short sci-fi about a couple on a date
"Vessel" at DUST by Ethan Godel (November 29, 2021, 8:14 min) Thomas and Lucy are on a date. It's going well. Really well. The chemistry is palpable – there is never a dull moment, never a lull in conversation. These two seem perfect for each other. Thomas waxes poetic on T.S. Elliot's prose, Lucy recites her favourite stanzas… They are the envy of every couple in the restaurant. But if these jealous couples just looked a little closer, beyond the big words and fancy clothes, they would find something very peculiar. Unbeknownst to each other and other restaurant patrons, Thomas and Lucy each sport a discreet earpiece. And, through their respective earpieces, these "passionate" and "soulful" "lovers'' are being told…
pre-adolescent-teen-girl-texting-on-a-smartphone-lying-in-bed-at-home-candid-indoor-photo-withfocus-on-the-foreground-and-copy-space-stockpack-adobe-stock
Facebook, Facebook Files, Frances Haugen, Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Wall Street Journal (on Facebook/Meta)
Facebook's…Er, Meta's Instagram Problem
Despite employee-recommended solutions, Facebook has largely turned a blind eye to the harms their own algorithms have caused in teenage girls using Instagram
The Wall Street Journal's series of articles based on leaked internal documents from Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) gave us a peek inside the company's business model, including what the company knew about Instagram's harmful mental health effects on teen girls.* Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, provided thousands of pages of internal documents and Slack conversations to the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horwitz, and has since made the documents available to other media outlets. Gizmodo is working with a group of experts to make the documents public, which can be viewed here. On October 5th, Haugen testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Facebook's lack of transparency regarding the harms of its platforms. The full testimony can be seen in the video below. Haugen…
Business and Finance, Social Media
Free speech, Jack Dorsey, Jack Dorsey (steps down), Parag Agrawal, social media, Twitter
Jack Dorsey Resigns from Twitter: "now is the right time"
Some are concerned that his replacement is bad news for free speech
On Monday, Jack Dorsey announced his resignation as Twitter CEO, explaining that he has "worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders" and that "now is the right time." "I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it," wrote Dorsey in an email to his colleagues that he then posted to Twitter. "It was a tough one for me, of course. I love this service and company… and all of you so much. I'm really sad… yet really happy. There aren't many companies that get to this level. And there aren't many founders that choose their company over their own ego. I know we'll prove this was the right move."…
young-cute-girl-hipster-sitting-at-a-cafe-holding-a-smart-phone-answering-texts-phone-calls-letters-posts-photos-in-instagram-outdoor-portrait-close-up-elaborated-and-bracelets-on-the-hands-stockpack-adobe-stock
Andrew Klavan, Facebook, Frances Haugen, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta (Facebook), The Social Dilemma, Wall Street Journal (on Facebook/Meta)
I've Been on Facebook for 13 Years. Here's Why I'm Leaving Now.
Has Facebook actually improved the ways we connect with each other? And does Meta have a chance to improve upon that?
When I first joined Facebook in 2008, it was primarily a way to remain in contact with my dad while he was deployed overseas for a year. As I went through school, and then graduated and moved across the country for college, it became a way for me to connect with new and old friends. Now, thirteen years later, I am looking at deleting my Facebook. Here's why: Last month, Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made waves when he announced the creation of a parent company over Facebook called "Meta." The basic idea is what Zuckerberg calls "the next frontier" of the internet – a virtual reality in which people can engage in connection and creativity with one another.…
stand-out-from-the-crowd-and-different-creative-idea-concepts-one-red-3d-social-media-notification-love-like-heart-pin-icon-pop-up-from-others-on-light-green-pastel-color-wall-background-3d-rendering-stockpack-adobe-stock
Denyse O'Leary
Censorship, Social Media
Chris Pavlovski, Ghost (subscription service), Locals.com, Narya Capital, Peter Thiel, Rumble, Steven Malanga, Substack, YouTube (and Rumble)
Indie Social Medium Now Shows Big Gain Due to Big Tech Censorship
Rumble recently received backing from venture capitalist Peter Thiel, PayPal and Facebook co-founder
In the current issue of City Journal, Steven Malanga looks at the traffic Silicon Valley is losing. Not much was expected of Rumble, an alternative YouTube founded in 2013 by Canadian entrepreneur Chris Pavlovski. But it hung on until 2020, when YouTube stepped up its efforts to remove content inconsistent with its public-spirited values or with its parent company Google's political alliances — depending on who you talk to. At any rate, high-profile commentators were looking fora new home. And they found one: In just ten months, Rumble's online viewership has increased 25-fold. The company has attracted funding from prominent venture capitalists and recently completed a series of deals to bring such outspoken voices as Greenwald, Gabbard, and Joe Rogan…
couple-in-bed-on-mobile-phones-ignoring-each-other-in-relationship-problems-and-technology-addiction-stockpack-adobe-stock
Board games (social value), Books (reading aloud), Digital Assistants (and surveillance), Loneliness (social media's role), Retro artifacts (their value), Robert A. Bjork, Thomas Lipton, Unplug box concept
5 Ways to Keep the Digital Marketplace Out of Your Home
Today, people who share living quarters interact much less, due to the constant presence of social media and other digital alternatives
After a busy day in the public sphere, it's a beautiful thing to come home. Our house is a sanctuary, a safe place to relax and regroup. And it's where we cultivate some of our most intimate relationships. Up until the early decades of the 20th century, the family home was viewed as a private domain that should not be intruded upon by the marketplace. But the development of new technologies like the telephone, radio, and television blurred the line between our public and private spheres. Today, we give a host of companies and organizations intimate access to our family through our screens, subscriptions, digital assistants, and smart appliances. This erosion of our private time and our place of refuge…
machine-learning-systems-and-accurate-facial-recognition-concept-smart-phone-with-blue-screen-and-blur-human-faces-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Business and Finance, Data Privacy, Social Media, Surveillance
DeepFace (Meta), Facebook (DeepFace), Facebook (facial recognition), Facebook (Meta), Jerome Pesenti, Meta (DeepFace), Meta (Facebook name change and sci fi), Meta (Facebook), Meta (facial recognition)
Facebook (Meta) is strengthening, not dumping facial recognition
They're getting rid of the annoying parts but read the fine print
Jerome Pesenti, Facebook's VP of Artificial Intelligence, explains the changes to the face recognition system that have accompanied the very recent brand name change from Facebook to Meta: In the coming weeks, Meta will shut down the Face Recognition system on Facebook as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products. As part of this change, people who have opted in to our Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and we will delete the facial recognition template used to identify them. This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history. Jerome Pesenti, "An Update On Our Use of…
shocked-woman-holding-laptop-being-picked-blamed-by-many-people-in-the-internet-stockpack-adobe-stock
Apple (and 1984), Jon Askonas, Silicon Valley (laidback early years), Social media (and authoritarianism)
Silicon Valley: From Laid Back Hippies to Top Cops…What Happened?
A political science prof traces the steps by which the naive assumptions of the early Valley morphed into shadow banning, outright banning, and so forth
Political scientist Jon Askonas offers a grim but somehow strengthening look at how Silicon Valley morphed from Apple's revolt against 1984 to an increasingly comfortable relationship with totalitarian China. We must, he says, go back to the beginning. First, this is how Apple saw itself in 1984: Most of Silicon Valley saw itself that way — liberating people from authoritarianism. So what happened? In an incisive essay at The New Atlantis, Askonas offers some thoughts on what's changed: ➤ First, he says, the Valley was very much influenced by 1970s California hippie beliefs about human nature that did not long survive realities like this: Faced with deadly riots in unstable societies caused by Facebook posts, Facebook tweaked its algorithms in…
old-fashioned-telephones-mounted-on-wall-stockpack-adobe-stock
Business and Finance, Events, Global Technology, Social Media
Cell phone (vs telephone), Connectivity (vs territory), COSM 2021, Daniel Berninger, Featured, Telephone (vs cell phone), Territory (vs connectivity)
COSM: The Trek From Phone to Smart Phone: What Have We Learned?
Daniel Berninger, a pioneer and activist in VOIP communications, shares his insights about keeping the internet free and accessible
Daniel Berninger, an activist in the transition from plain old telephone service (POTS) to the online world of the cell phone ("disruptive communications"), will be speaking at COSM 2021. He has been involved in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) since 1995, starting with the original assessment of VoIP at Bell Laboratories and was a founder of the VON Coalition, "keeping IP communications free from government regulation." He is a frequently cited resource on regulatory, antitrust, and VoIP issues (for example, in Business Week, WSJ, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg, Forbes, Associated Press, Dow Jones, Info World and the trade press). He is also a founder of VCXC (Voice Communication Exchange Committee). His interests and approach: ➤ the decline of the…
cute-white-english-bulldog-puppy-in-a-graduation-cap-stockpack-adobe-stock
Mathematics, Relationships, Social Media
Ability (Dunning-Kruger effect), Alexander Danvers, David Dunning, Dunning-Kruger effect, Jonathan Jarry, Patrick McKnight, Psychology, Social psychology
Tested!: Are the Least Expert People the Most Confident? No.
The claimed Dunning–Kruger effect in psychology is a very shakeable truth frequently exploited by online social bullies
Have you ever been in an online discussion where a vocal proponent confidently claimed that his opponent was the victim of the dreaded "Dunning–Kruger" effect? At Vox, Brian Resnick explains, "That's where people of low ability — let's say, those who fail to answer logic puzzles correctly — tend to unduly overestimate their abilities": An obvious example people have been using lately to describe the Dunning-Kruger effect is President Donald Trump, whose confidence and bluster never wavers, despite his weak interest in and understanding of policy matters. But you don't need to look to Trump to find an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You don't even need to look at cable news. Brian Resnick, "An expert on human blind spots…
group-young-people-using-mobile-smartphone-outdoor-millennial-generation-having-fun-with-new-trends-social-media-apps-youth-technology-addicted-red-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
Data Privacy, Social Media
Eric Hobsbawm, Featured, Frances Haugen, Katherine Dee, Luddites, Technology (taking control)
Are We Really Luddites Just for Logging Off?
We can be wiser about boundaries for technology
(This piece is reprinted with permission from the Houston Chronicle, October 7, 2021.) Have you ever been called a Luddite? If so, you were probably not being credited with fueling a skilled labor movement in 19th century England. You were being jabbed for your relationship to technology. Today, the term is largely pejorative and can be directed at anyone who questions, rejects or even fumbles with technology. If you resist a new technology in favor of an old one, you're a Luddite. If the recent testimony from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen persuaded you to quit social media, you're a Luddite. If you don't know how to use a newer technology efficiently, you're a Luddite. You're swimming upstream down the river…
group-of-demonstrators-on-road-young-people-from-different-culture-and-race-fight-for-climate-change-global-warming-and-enviroment-concept-focus-on-banners-stockpack-adobe-stock
Censorship, Environment, Social Media
Climate change, demonetization, Dr. Richard Lindzen, Google, Joe Biden, Mark Zuckerberg, Section 230, YouTube
Google and YouTube Demonetize Climate Change Skeptics
But how did Google acquire the authority to declare what is "misinformation" or "scientific consensus"?
The Google Ads team announced a new policy last week banning the monetization of content critical of a current consensus around climate change. Beginning in November, both Google and YouTube will: …prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change. Google Ads team, "Updating our ads and monetization policies on climate change," posted October 7, 2021 This does not mean that Google and YouTube will block any and all content that denies…
computer-system-error-stockpack-adobe-stock
Censorship, Data Privacy, Social Media, Surveillance
Facebook (as near monopoly), Facebook (October 2021 outage), Signal (social media app), Telegram (social media app)
Facebook Outage: Not a Hack But Shows Dire Need for Competition
Monday's Facebook outage was a sobering lesson on the power (and, ironically, helplessness) of monopoly Big Social Media
As the New York Times put it, "When apps used by billions of people worldwide blinked out, lives were disrupted, businesses were cut off from customers — and some Facebook employees were locked out of their offices." (October 4, 2021) A less sympathetic source writes, As of publishing time, Facebook has been down for several hours, along with WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Oculus VR. But that's just the beginning. The social media behemoth's stock prices also crashed on Monday, making the company's already bad day even worse. The plummet in stock prices came as a Facebook executive was on CNBC defending the company against claims by a whistleblower that the company prioritized profit over the safety of young Facebook users.…
What Is AI Doing To Me? How AI Influences Our Concept of Reality | {
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Arizona Man Accidentally Shoots Himself in Groin in Walmart
November 30, 2018 - 12:52 pm Chris 230 views
Thoughts and prayers:
A man was taken to hospital in Arizona this week after shooting himself in the groin area inside a Walmart in Buckeye, Maricopa County.
The local police department tweeted on Tuesday officers were working what appeared to be a "self-inflicted accidental shooting" inside the Watson and Yuma Walmart.
Buckeye PD later confirmed in an update: "Adult male accidentally shot himself in the groin area inside the Walmart Watson & Yuma. Being transported to hospital. No other injuries."
The Arizona Republic newspaper reported the incident occurred at around 6:30 p.m. after a semiautomatic handgun that was being held in the man's waistband began to slip. The gun, which was not in a holster, discharged as he attempted to reposition it, the man told cops.
Marriott says its Starwood database was hacked for approximately 500 million guests
November 30, 2018 - 10:44 am Chris 218 views
I guess it's safe to say that all of our info is in the hands of hackers at the moment. It's not just this breach. It's every breach including the ones we don't even know about yet.
Marriott International said on Friday that hackers illegally accessed its Starwood Hotels brand's reservation database since 2014, potentially exposing personal information on about 500 million guests.
Shares of the company fell nearly 6 percent to about $115 in trading before the bell.
The company said for 327 million guests, personal information compromised could include passport details, phone numbers and email addresses. For some others, it could include credit card information.
The company said it learned about the breach after an internal security tool sent an alert on Sept. 8. On further investigation, the hotel chain learned data had been hacked long before.
The company, which bought Starwood in 2016, said it had reported the incident to law enforcement and had begun notifying regulatory authorities.
9 Shocking tricks advertisers use to make food look delicious!
November 30, 2018 - 10:40 am November 30, 2018 - 10:40 am Chris 216 views
I watched this on mute because…. that music…
The Office of Trump's Former Tax Attorney Was Just Raided by the FBI
November 29, 2018 - 1:50 pm Chris 219 views
Oh boy:
Federal agents showed up unannounced at the City Hall office of Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke, kicked everyone out and papered over the windows Thursday morning.
The nature of their visit was not known, but Ald. Burke (14th) has dodged dozens of federal investigations over five decades in Chicago politics.
Federal agents also showed up to Burke's ward office and papered over the windows there.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment. Calls to the FBI office in Chicago and the IRS criminal investigations division were not immediately returned.
A reporter knocked on the City Hall office door Thursday morning; the man who answered, who was not a member of Burke's office staff, had no comment.
Trump's former tax attorney just had his offices raided by the FBI pic.twitter.com/CXuKRMD05z
— jordan (@JordanUhl) November 29, 2018
The Stupid is Strong With These People
These people are so damn stupid:
Corsi says he 'absolutely' intended to help Trump campaign by trying to get Clinton emails:
Conservative author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi agreed in a new interview that he "absolutely" intended to help President Trump's campaign by trying to get stolen Hillary Clinton emails from WikiLeaks.
Appearing Wednesday on Ari Melber's MSNBC show, Corsi was grilled about his involvement in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's election interference and possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Moscow in 2016.
"Everybody in the world who was in news or political operations after July 22 2016 when Assange dumped all these emails on [then-Democratic National Committee Chairwoman] Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and said he had more, everyone wanted to know what they were," Corsi explained.
"You wanted them out though to help the Trump campaign," Melber interjected.
Corsi responded "absolutely" and said that he didn't see anything wrong with it.
And then there's coffee boy:
Investigators are probing a letter that claims George Papadopoulos said he was pursuing a lucrative Russian business deal for himself and Trump after the election:
FBI and congressional investigators are looking into a new and uncorroborated claim that the former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos said he was pursuing a business deal with Russians "which would result in large financial gains for himself" and President Donald Trump, The Atlantic reported.
A Democratic source on the House Intelligence Committee confirmed to INSIDER that the letter was sent to ranking member Adam Schiff's office earlier this month from someone who claims to have been close to Papadopoulos in late 2016 and early 2017. Two US officials also told The Atlantic that federal authorities are investigating the letter and taking its claims "very seriously."
Trumptopia
Michael Cohen just made a plea deal with Robert Mueller
Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has cut a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's team, ABC's George Stephanopoulos reports. The deal was announced in a New York federal court Thursday.
As part of the deal, Cohen will admit making false statements to Congress committees investigating the Russia scandal. The Associated Press reports that the false statements relate to a Trump real estate project in Russia — specifically, efforts to build a "Trump Tower Moscow."
Stephanopoulos also claims, per his sources, that Cohen will provide "dozens of hours of testimony potentially damaging to" President Trump.
Cohen had already pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance charges as part of an investigation run by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. But he had not previously been charged as part of the Russia probe or officially agreed to cooperate with that investigation.
Cohen's team has, however, been telling reporters for months that Cohen had bombshell information about the Trump-Russia scandal. But the claims about what Cohen purportedly knew sometimes changed, which has led to skepticism about whether he knew anything worthwhile.
Also known as President T. https://t.co/FSnbyZJsvj
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) November 29, 2018
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!https://t.co/rvt09t74hu
— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) November 29, 2018
Michael Cohen plea documents (via CNN)
1. Moscow Project deal lasted until into Summer 2016
2. Cohen discussed deal more than three times with candidate Trump
3. Cohen briefed Trump family members
4. Cohen took steps in contemplation of Trump's travel to Russia
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) November 29, 2018
With Michael Cohen's plea and information, the Mueller Investigation has now connected Trump's business dealings with Russia and supplied a motive for cooperation.
This thing is just about baked.
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) November 29, 2018
The Best Decision Maker
Trump vented repeatedly about Fed Chair Jerome Powell today. But after meeting with Janet Yellen for post, Trump was impressed with her intellect & rates decisions. But he told advisers she was too short for the job and kept asking others if they agreed. https://t.co/JraIfKS5Zw | {
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Q: How can I determine a computer's specs? I have a client who has a computer they want to upgrade. They are unable to tell me the specs of this computer and they're not the type of person I could walk it through with.
Ideally, I'd like to send them an application (or a link to an application) which will generate a report telling me everything I need to know about their hardware and OS. It would have to be very easy to use. Ideally only two or three steps to generate a report.
Any ideas?
A: PC Wizard should have some easy centralized computer information to tell you.
This is from the same makers of CPU-Z and it is completely free.
http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php
A: Speccy:
Speccy will give you detailed statistics on every piece of hardware in your computer, including CPU, Motherboard, RAM, Graphics Cards, Hard Disks, Optical Drives, [and] Audio support. Additionally Speccy adds the temperatures of your different components, so you can easily see if there's a problem!
If you need to add more memory to your system, for example, you can check how many memory slots your computer has and what memory's already installed.
The basic version of Speccy (with no support) is free.
A: System Information for Windows
SIW is an advanced System Information for Windows tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings and displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.
The system information is divided into few major categories:
*
*Software Inventory: Operating System, Installed Software and Hotfixes, Processes, Services, Users, Open Files, System Uptime, Installed Codecs, Software Licenses (Product Keys / Serial Numbers / CD Key), Passwords Recovery.
*Hardware Inventory: Motherboard, CPU, Sensors, BIOS, chipset, PCI/AGP, USB and ISA/PnP Devices, Memory, Video Card, Monitor, Disk Drives, CD/DVD Devices, SCSI Devices, S.M.A.R.T., Ports, Printers.
*Network Information: Network Cards, Network Shares, currently active Network Connections, Open Ports.
*Network Tools: MAC Address Changer, Neighborhood Scan, Ping, Trace, Statistics
*Miscellaneous Tools: Eureka! (Reveal lost passwords hidden behind asterisks), Monitor Test, Shutdown / Restart.
*Real-time monitors: CPU, Memory, Page File usage and Network Traffic.
A: belarc is also great at this.
A: msinfo32 is built into windows and gives lots of information.
A: For years Karen Kenworthy has written VB utility programs for free distribution as part of a newsletter she puts out (source code available). There are several that are fantastic and can be found at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp
There is one that could be of particular value in this case called "Computer Profiler". I can recommend several of these little gems personally.
A: Astra32 is another good choice, but you can't save reports with the free version. Great for onsite with a thumb drive, though.
A: Could use Belarc Advisor. Its wonderful and free!And u can save report too
A: dxdiag
also allows you to save the information to a text file.
| {
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Scary Movies 9: Shrew's Nest
Montse lives in 1950s Madrid, but she shares a close kinship with the sisters in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? You could say Montse has issues. Oh my, does she ever. Unfortunately, that means everyone around her also has issues. At least as a shut-in seamstress, she has a limited social circle, but she still manages to do extensive damage in Jaunfer Andrés & Esteban Roel's Shrew's Nest (trailer here), which screens as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Scary Movies 9.
It is pretty obvious Montse's abusive father is to blame for her dysfunctional state of mind. He has been dead for years, but she is still tormented by hallucinations of the sanctimonious hypocrite. The film hints darkly at what may have transpired between them, eventually confirming everything. Montse largely shielded her younger sister, known simply as "La Niña" from their father, but she became problematically controlling and sometimes even frightening in her own way. The two grown sisters still live together in their family's flat, but Montse's chronic agoraphobia prevents her from stepping outside. As a result, she relies on La Niña to be her connection the outside world.
One day, Montse discovers the playboy from the upstairs flat is lying wounded on their landing. Somehow she skootches him inside and starts nursing Carlos. Rather taken with the handsome ladies' man, Montse decides to keep him. At first, she tries to hide his presence from her sister and their clients, but that simply is not realistic. At first, Hugo is grateful for Montse's care and the haven she provides from his pregnant lover and her unamused father. However, as his broken leg turns black and festering, he will look to La Niña for help.
Yes, Nest is more than a little Misery-like, except Montse might just top Annie Wilkes' hobbling scene. Yet, we also understand the twitchy, bug-eyed, morphine-addicted Montse is the film's original victim, who is still be victimized by her father, from beyond the grave. Frankly, it is absolutely amazing how much compassion Andrés & Roel preserve for Montse, because great gosh almighty, can she dish out the pain.
Whether you love Nest or utterly despise it, you will never forget Macarena Gomez's performance as Montse. It is one for the ages. She manages to do acutely subtle bits of character-establishing business, as well as wildly over the top scenery chewing, often simultaneously. In contrast, Nadia de Santiago is a paragon of sensitivity and reserve as La Niña, but there is no way she can avoid the gargantuan shadow cast by Gomez's Montse.
Nest is another fine example of the meticulous care given to set dressing and general mise-en-scène in Spanish horror films. The fact that this Grand Guignol of domestic carnage is set foursquare in the Franco era is hardly accidental either, especially with Álex de la Iglesia on board as a producer. Regardless, as a claustrophobic Iberian psycho-thriller, it is pretty darn effective. Recommended for fans of Spanish horror movies, Shrew's Nest screens this coming Monday (11/2) at the Walter Reade, as part of Scary Movies 9.
Labels: Alex de la Iglesia, Horror Movies, Scary Movies 9, Spanish Cinema
Scary Movies 9: Summer Camp
Morbido '15: Honeymoon
Why Horror? Its an Age-Old Question
Scary Movies 9: Emelie
Hard Labor: This Store is Cursed
Nightmare Code: It's Worse than Windows Vista
Korla: Godfather of Exotica, Man of Mystery
Submitted by Spain: Flowers
The London Firm: Two Hitman and a Lorry Full of Tr...
NewFest '15: Girls Lost | {
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9th grade english teacher, and founder of YES RI, Erin Hall, chats with us about finding a way to connect the social and professional experiences for educators, keeping teachers supported and motivated, and reflecting on everything you do.
Erin shares why communication is key, and explains how students liking you and students respecting you do not need to be exclusive.
2:08 – Erin introduces herself.
2:54 – Erin tells us about YES RI.
10:40 – Erin talks a bit about gamification.
13:08 – What's got Erin excited about education right now.
14:32 – Erin's advice for new teachers.
16:52 – Diving deeper into establishing respect and building relationships.
19:21 – 6 questions in 15 seconds or less.
21:25 – Erin talks about the Highlander Institute.
23:18 – How to connect with Erin.
Daily/Weekly/Monthly Routine: Find a new hobby that is completely out of your profession. | {
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Media Usage›
Level of interest in news categories in Ireland 2016
How interested are you in the following types of news?
by Statista Research Department, last edited Jun 15, 2016
This statistic shows the results of a survey regarding the level of interest in different types of news categories in Ireland in 2016. The survey found that 70 percent of Irish adults were interested in regional news, making it the most popular news category that year.
January 29 to February 17, 2016
Books & Publishing
Online news, newspaper and magazine consumption in Great Britain 2007-2018
The Guardian newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
The Sun newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Newsbrand advertising revenue in the United Kingdom (UK) 2011-2020
Statistics on "Digital news in the United Kingdom (UK)"
Reach of leading digital news sites
Digital newsbrand advertising
News on social media
User demographics and behavior
Paid digital news content
Leading online news brands accessed in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2018Leading online news brands accessed in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2018
Unique audience for the top 10 selected news sites in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018 (in 1,000s)News sites ranked by unique audience in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018
Number of individuals reached digitally by leading newsbrands in Great Britain (UK) from October 2016 to September 2017, by device* (in 1,000s)Leading newsbrands ranked by digital audience size in Great Britain 2017, by device
Share of individuals reading online news sites, newspapers or news magazines in selected European countries in 2017Online news consumption in European countries 2017
Share of individuals reading or downloading online news, newspapers or magazines in Great Britain from 2007 to 2018Online news, newspaper and magazine consumption in Great Britain 2007-2018
Ranking of websites and news apps in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, by perceived opinion rangeRanking of digital news sources in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by opinion range
Unique visitors accessing online newsbrands sites daily in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018 (visitors in million)Online newsbrands in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by daily average unique browsers
Unique visitors accessing online newspaper sites monthly in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018 (visitors in million)Online newspapers in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by total monthly unique browsers
Website visitors to dailymail.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)Daily Mail newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Website visitors to theguardian.com in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)The Guardian newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Website visitors to telegraph.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)The Daily Telegraph newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Website visitors to independent.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to March 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)The Independent newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Website visitors to mirror.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)Daily Mirror newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Website visitors to thesun.co.uk/thescottishsun.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)The Sun newspaper: website visitors in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013-2017
Content and native advertising expenditure in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2014 to 2017 (in million GBP)Content and native advertising spending in the United Kingdom (UK) 2014-2017
Digital advertising formats ranked by advertising expenditure in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2016 and 2017 (in million GBP)Leading digital advertising formats in the United Kingdom (UK) 2016-2017, by ad spend
Digital newspaper advertising revenue worldwide from 2013 to 2017 (in billion U.S. dollars)Global digital newspaper advertising revenue 2013-2017
Newsbrand advertising revenue in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2012 to 2019, by platform (in million GBP)Newsbrand advertising revenue in the UK 2012-2019, by platform
Newsbrand advertising revenue in the United Kingdom from 2011 to 2020 (in billion GBP)*Newsbrand advertising revenue in the United Kingdom (UK) 2011-2020
Leading social networks used weekly for news in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018*Leading social networks used for news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018
Social media interactions from UK newsbrand articles from May 2017 to April 2018 (in millions)*Social media interactions from UK newsbrand articles 2018
Distribution of shares via Facebook and Twitter for UK newsbrands in 2018Shares via Facebook and Twitter for UK newsbrands 2018
Share of news consumers who used Facebook for news in European countries in 2016 and 2018*Facebook usage for news in selected European countries 2016-2018
Number of social media interactions driven by UK newsbrands in 2017, by platform (in millions)*Social media interactions driven by newsbrands in the UK 2017, by platform
Digital news gateways used online in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2018Digital news gateways used online in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2018
Share of internet users who looked at news websites or apps at least weekly in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2014, 2015 and 2017, by age group*Looking at news websites or apps at least weekly in the UK 2014-2017, by age
Most important new platforms to news consumers in the United Kingdom (UK) from in 2018, by age group*Most important news platform to consumers in the UK in 2018, by age group
Which of the following platforms do you use for news nowadays?Platforms used to consume news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by nation
Have you ever accessed online news or websites about politics or current affairs?*UK: accessing websites containing news, politics or current affairs websites 2017
Which is your main way of accessing online news?Online news consumption in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by device
Distribution of individuals who read newsbrands on smartphones in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, by ageNewsbrand readers via smartphone in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by age
Distribution of individuals who read newsbrands on PC in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, by age and frequencyNewsbrand readers via PC in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018, by age and frequency
Share of consumers who paid for online news content in selected countries worldwide the last year as of February 2019Digital news purchases worldwide 2019
Have you paid for online news content, or accessed a paid for online news service in the last year?Paying for digital news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2012-2018
Penetration of newspaper website and apps usage in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2015 to 2016, by paid and freeOnline newspaper usage in the United Kingdom (UK) 2015-2016, paid and free
Share of consumers willing to pay for access to digital newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2017, by age*Share of consumers willing to pay for access to digital newspapers UK 2017
Most popular news categories in Ireland 2016, by age group
Most popular news categories in Ireland 2016, by gender
Reasons for following news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018
News topics of personal interest in the United Kingdom (UK) 2014
Reasons for following news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2015, by age
Topic structure of selected TV news shows in Germany 2018
Italy: most interesting topics in the news 2017
Ability to separate real and fake news in the Netherlands 2017
Italy: least interesting topics in the news 2017
Italy: most striking news of the week July 18-24, 2017
News topics consumers follow closely in the U.S. 2017, by age
Canada's top international news stories 2016
Interest in entertainment and celebrity news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013
News topics among business executives worldwide 2016
Canada's top news stories 2016
Most important news topics for children in the U.S. 2017
Interest in international news in the United Kingdom (UK) 2013
Magazine Industry
Newspaper Industry
News Industry
Newspaper industry in the United Kingdom (UK)
News media in the United Kingdom (UK)
Digital news in the United Kingdom (UK)
Newspaper industry in Italy
Newspaper reading habits in Italy
TV news in the U.S.
Fake news in Italy
Flash Eurobarometer 464
Nyhetsintresse och nyhetskonsumption
Bruksmangfold: en analyse av nordmenns nyhetskonsum 2016
Leading online news brands accessed in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2018
Unique audience for the top 10 selected news sites in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018 (in 1,000s)
Number of individuals reached digitally by leading newsbrands in Great Britain (UK) from October 2016 to September 2017, by device* (in 1,000s)
Share of individuals reading online news sites, newspapers or news magazines in selected European countries in 2017
Share of individuals reading or downloading online news, newspapers or magazines in Great Britain from 2007 to 2018
Ranking of websites and news apps in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, by perceived opinion range
Unique visitors accessing online newsbrands sites daily in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018 (visitors in million)
Unique visitors accessing online newspaper sites monthly in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018 (visitors in million)
Website visitors to dailymail.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Website visitors to theguardian.com in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Website visitors to telegraph.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Website visitors to independent.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to March 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Website visitors to mirror.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Website visitors to thesun.co.uk/thescottishsun.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Website visitors to metro.co.uk in the United Kingdom (UK) from November 2013 to September 2017 (visitors in 1,000s)
Content and native advertising expenditure in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2014 to 2017 (in million GBP)
Digital advertising formats ranked by advertising expenditure in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2016 and 2017 (in million GBP)
Digital newspaper advertising revenue worldwide from 2013 to 2017 (in billion U.S. dollars)
Newsbrand advertising revenue in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2012 to 2019, by platform (in million GBP)
Newsbrand advertising revenue in the United Kingdom from 2011 to 2020 (in billion GBP)*
Leading social networks used weekly for news in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018*
Social media interactions from UK newsbrand articles from May 2017 to April 2018 (in millions)*
Distribution of shares via Facebook and Twitter for UK newsbrands in 2018
Share of news consumers who used Facebook for news in European countries in 2016 and 2018*
Number of social media interactions driven by UK newsbrands in 2017, by platform (in millions)*
Digital news gateways used online in the United Kingdom (UK) as of February 2018
Share of internet users who looked at news websites or apps at least weekly in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2014, 2015 and 2017, by age group*
Most important new platforms to news consumers in the United Kingdom (UK) from in 2018, by age group*
Which of the following platforms do you use for news nowadays?
Have you ever accessed online news or websites about politics or current affairs?*
Which is your main way of accessing online news?
Distribution of individuals who read newsbrands on smartphones in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, by age
Distribution of individuals who read newsbrands on PC in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, by age and frequency
Share of consumers who paid for online news content in selected countries worldwide the last year as of February 2019
Have you paid for online news content, or accessed a paid for online news service in the last year?
Penetration of newspaper website and apps usage in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2015 to 2016, by paid and free
Share of consumers willing to pay for access to digital newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2017, by age*
Most popular news categories in Ireland in 2016, by age group
Most popular news categories in Ireland in 2016, by gender
Thinking about some of the reasons people might have for following news, which of these reasons apply to you?
Which types of news are you personally interested in?
Television news topic structure of ARD, ZDF, RTL and Sat.1 in Germany in 2018, by air time share
What kind of news are you most interested in?
Do you agree or disagree with the statement: "I am able to distinguish real news and fake news well"?
According to you, what are the least followed topics in the news?
Which of the events over last week did get your attention more?
News topics followed most closely by consumers in the United States as of March 2017, by age
Leading international news stories according to consumers in Canada in 2016
How interested would you say you are in entertainment and celebrity news?
Most popular news categories among executives worldwide as of October 2016
Leading national news stories according to consumers in Canada in 2016
Most important news topics among children and teenagers in the United States as of January 2017
How interested would you say you are in international news? | {
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Jacque Dana started her career with Mesa in 2005 to earn additional income for a family trip. She stayed because she loves the students.
Bus drivers at Mesa Public Schools provide transportation for more than 35,840 daily riders. They make sure students arrive at school and return safely home every day. This equates to 6,451,200 bus rides per year, covering 5,634,000 miles total. This impressive feat requires the extraordinary dedication and teamwork of the entire transportation department. And they are looking for exceptional people to join their team.
Jose Villarino Fierro, safety and training supervisor, shares that becoming a driver appeals to a wide variety of people. Potential drivers range from college students looking for a flexible schedule to retired citizens looking to give back to the community and truck drivers wanting a stable career with weekends off. It's also a popular option with stay-at-home parents wishing to align their work schedule with their children's school day.
October 22 to October 26 is National School Bus Safety Week, which spotlights the important work school bus drivers do.
Those with great people skills, who enjoy working with children and desire a job with rewarding benefits can apply to become a Mesa Public Schools bus driver at mpsaz.org/careers 480-472-7200. | {
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Mexico Bans GMO Corn Growth
Yet another nation has joined against the planting of Monsanto's genetically modified creations, with a Mexican judge launching a complete ban on the growth of GMO corn field trials that were planned to move forward.
Specifically, the judge cited numerous environmental risks regarding the implementation of GMO corn into the food supply of the nation, knowing full well that unleashing genetically modified strains of corn into nature can lead to a complete loss of genetic integrity.
And while the notion is already disturbing, the reality is that we've already seen incidents of large-scale genetic contamination on behalf of Monsanto. Going back to the escape of genetically modified wheat in traditional crops, for example, is a perfect example of genetic contamination in action.
Even Reuters reported on the spread of the GM wheat beyond Monsanto test fields — a contamination event that incited lawsuits from farmers who wanted nothing to do with Monsanto's GMOs.
Mexican citizens and even high ranking judges can see this reality, and Mexico is now joining nations like Peru and Hungary in taking a stand against Monsanto's complete domination of the international food supply.
The announcement reminds me of Hungary's direct opposition to Monsanto's GM maize, in which Hungarians actually burned acres of genetically modified crops to the ground. It was this monumental opposition, in fact, that really ignited a new wave of activism against Monsanto after my 2011 article on the subject achieved hundreds of thousands of shares on social media worldwide.
This decision reminds us of just how much power we truly do wield against Monsanto. As reported in Grist, it was this Mexican judge who went against the powerful Monsanto-backed lobbyists that were seeking to infiltrate the food supply with Monsanto's mutated varieties. And by doing so, armed with the support of the people, Monsanto has been given the boot.
Monsanto Insiders Dump Stock as the Truth about GMOs Spreads across Wall Street
China Incinerates 3 US Shipments of Genetically Modified Corn
Peru joins the List of Countries Banning Monsanto and GMOs!
Which Countries Have Banned GMO Crops?
4 Ways to Detox GMOs from Your Body to Minimize Damaging Effects
A List of GMO Free Food Companies
Source: Natural Society | {
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Regulatory Developments in the Mexican Power and Oil & Gas Sectors — Protecting Private Investment
Throughout the past year, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his administration (the "AMLO Administration") have vigorously pursued regulatory changes in favor of the state-owned companies the Federal Electricity Commission (Comisión Federal de Electricidad—CFE) and Mexican Petroleum (Petroleos Mexicanos—PEMEX), culminating in the past few months in the submission of amendments to existing law that, if fully implemented, would reorder these sectors in the Mexican economy. We recently explored the AMLO Administration's amendments to the Oil & Gas Law (Ley de Hidrocarburos—LH) (such amendments, the "LH Amendments") and their potential impacts on private investment in a client alert dated May 18, 2021.[1]
In this note, we will discuss the main provisions of the AMLO Administration's amendments to the Electric Industry Law (Ley de la Industria Eléctrica—LIE) (such amendments, the "LIE Amendment") and likely impacts on private investment in the power sector in Mexico. We will also analyze the potential options available to investors that are likely to suffer the economic consequences of the LIE Amendment and/or the LH Amendments.
On March 9, 2021, the Mexican Ministry of Energy (Secretaría de Energía—Sener) published the LIE Amendment in the Official Gazette.[2] The LIE Amendment is, hopefully, the conclusion to a series of governmental actions taken by the AMLO Administration to tip the scales of regulatory power in favor of the CFE, and to reverse the private-investment-friendly Constitutional energy reforms of 2013 and ensuing legislation that was enacted in 2014 (collectively, the "Energy Reform"). For further discussion of the regulatory actions of the AMLO Administration in the Mexican power sector leading up to the LIE Amendment, please see our prior three chapters in this series: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
Key changes in the LIE Amendment include: (i) modifying the dispatch order of power plants to prioritize power produced by CFE irrespective of economic or efficiency merit; (ii) permitting legacy, including in particular CFE, power plants (i.e., those operating before the Energy Reform) to qualify for clean energy certificates (Certificados de Energía Limpia—CELs) for power generated; (iii) allowing CFE (as residential supplier) to purchase power directly from market participants and not exclusively from public energy auctions administered by the National Energy Control Center (Centro Nacional de Control de Energía—CENACE); (iv) mandating that the Energy Regulatory Commission (Comisión Reguladora de Energía—CRE) terminate all existing legacy self-supply permits; (v) mandating that new generation or supply permits by CRE only be granted if the relevant generation activities are consistent with the planning criteria outlined by SENER for the National Electric System (Sistema Eléctrico Nacional—SEN); and (vi) allowing CFE to renegotiate or terminate existing long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) executed with independent power producers (IPPs) for certain legacy projects, to ensure adherence to law and profitability for the State.[3]
The LIE Amendment may have serious adverse impacts on existing private investment in the Mexican power sector, while also jeopardizing the development of future projects and any appetite for investment therein.[4] [5] Some of the main consequences of the LIE Amendment include:
Curtailment of privately-owned power generation facilities: As a result of the new dispatch priority outlined under the LIE Amendment, private generation facilities may suffer a substantially increased risk of curtailment from the risk that was originally envisioned and included in the financial models prepared in connection with the investments in these generation facilities. This will adversely impact not only their rate of return but also their ability to honor their other obligations. Most of these projects sized their projected generation output considering the "cost efficiency" dispatch preference in force before the enactment of the LIE Amendment. However, with the shift of the dispatch preference in favor of CFE's power plants (including coal-fired and fuel-oil facilities), certain privately-owned renewable generation projects may no longer be able to generate enough revenues to pay their operational costs and/or to service their debt under their financing arrangements. The new dispatch priority policy would particularly discriminate against private renewable power projects with the prior preferred dispatch of more expensive and polluting CFE-sponsored power projects.
CELs for CFE's legacy power plants: Under the Energy Reform, CELs were designed to promote the clean energy transition by forcing energy suppliers to comply with a minimum clean energy consumption requirement to be increased on a yearly basis.[6] By tying CELs to clean energy generation, CELs have an associated market value, which served as a way to promote the development of renewable projects throughout the country. Consistent with such policy, CFE's existing facilities were precluded from receiving CELs, which acted as a de facto booster for CEL prices based on their scarcity. However, following the enactment of the LIE Amendment, market experts have forecasted that the CEL prices will suffer a significant decrease in market value,[7] dropping below even the most conservative prior estimates. This situation could present a huge challenge for developers who relied on the additional revenue generated by the previously projected CEL prices in their financial models, causing potential cash shortfalls, impacts on rates of return and defaults under their financing arrangements and assumptions.
CFE's option to acquire energy directly from the market: Considering that the Mexican Energy Market (Mercado Eléctrico Mayorista—MEM) is still incipient and historical information on Marginal Local Prices (Precio Marginal Local—PML) is quite limited, auctions administered by CENACE for mid-term and long-term PPAs for CFE (as residential supplier) resulted in bankable PPAs that helped project sponsors obtain financing for their projects by providing fixed energy rates and revenues. The auctions held by CENACE were highly competitive and resulted in attractive rates for CFE—with one of the lowest average rates per MWh in the world—while acting as an effective catalyst for Mexico's clean energy transition.[8] The auctions proved to be a viable way for developers and sponsors to secure bankable PPAs through transparent, competitive processes. By allowing CFE to purchase energy outside of the auction process, potential developers interested in investing in Mexico's renewable resources may face additional challenges for developing new projects as it will likely be difficult to obtain bankable PPAs. In addition, it is not clear whether CFE will be subject to the same transparency rules in contracting with third parties as it did through the auctions, which may prove to be an additional obstacle for parties interested in supplying energy to CFE.
Furthermore, if the trend to develop new renewable projects halts, Mexico's ability to benefit from cleaner and cheaper energy offered by renewable projects will be compromised. With the Energy Reform requirement that energy be dispatched on the most economic basis being discarded, power prices are likely to rise, with those costs ultimately being passed down to the Mexican consumer either directly or through the funding of subsidies.
Termination of existing legacy self-supply permits: In the explanatory statements (exposición de motivos) of the LIE Amendment bill sent by AMLO to Congress (which was ultimately enacted with almost no changes), the AMLO Administration claims that the legacy self-supply (auotabastecimiento) regime was "abused" by private companies because third-party offtakers became minority shareholders of the generator with the sole purpose of purchasing energy under that regime.[9] The so called "fraudulent" (or "socios de paja") scheme was, according to the AMLO Administration, against the spirit of the law, which was intended to limit such purchasers to actual or genuine affiliates.[10] Notwithstanding such claims, the corporate structure of each self-supply legacy permit holder was analyzed and authorized on a case-by-case basis by the CRE before the permit was granted. Therefore, terminating existing permits under the AMLO Administration's interpretation of the law could be deemed a retroactive application of the law and unduly discriminatory.
In any event, any such revocation of permits by CRE will be devastating for permit holders as it would render it impossible for them to comply with their energy commitments with offtakers, causing them to default on their existing contractual arrangements across the board, stranding generation assets in the industry and throwing the entire self-supply regime into disarray. Financings in place for these assets will face setbacks from the reduced or limited revenue generating potential.
Conditions for granting new permits: Power generation regulations in Mexico provide for a permit-based regime (i.e. all participants meeting certain requirements are entitled to obtain a permit) as opposed to a concession-based regime (where the Mexican State would grant discretionary concessions to private parties for the use of public goods).[11] The Energy Reform laws required the CRE to authorize permits to applicants that complied with the relevant requirements. CENACE was, in turn, charged with independently verifying if the interconnection of the project was feasible or not and, if not feasible, recommending technical improvements that the permit holder could complete in order to be able to interconnect the project to the grid.[12] Under the LIE Amendment, CRE may now deny a power generation permit on a discriminatory basis to any given applicant ex ante, determining that the power generation project is not consistent with the SEN's planning. This could be a significant bottleneck for any new private generation project in Mexico that would compete with the CFE. The less transparency in the SEN planning, the riper the possibilities for projects to not get off the ground.
Renegotiation and termination of existing PPAs executed with IPPs: Before the enactment of the Energy Reform, CFE was permitted under an exception available pursuant to the Electrical Power Public Service Law (Ley del Servicio Público de Energía Eléctrica) to acquire energy from private producers known as IPPs.[13] Under the IPP structure, power generation projects were auctioned by CFE and a long-term IPP PPA was executed between CFE and the awarded party.
With the enactment of the LIE Amendment, CFE is now able to renegotiate existing IPP PPAs with the relevant sponsors to ensure adherence to (i) law and (ii) "profitability principles" for the Federal Government. Therefore, CFE may now seek to replicate the de facto renegotiations that occurred last year in connection with several gas transportation agreements executed by CFE with private entities—such as the Sempra-TransCanada project to transport natural gas from Texas to Tuxpan through a submarine pipeline.[14] Unlike the natural gas contract renegotiations, which occurred on an ad hoc basis and not on the basis of any legal regime, all IPP project sponsors will now be legally required to sit down and renegotiate their IPP PPAs with CFE or otherwise face potential termination. Such renegotiations pose a serious threat to the economics of such IPPs and their ability to honor their other contractual and financial commitments. They further bring into question the Rule of Law and principles surrounding sanctity of contract.
Considering these potential risks associated with the LIE Amendments, several industry players have expressed concern about possible negative effects on their projects and are now looking more closely to the dispute resolution mechanisms and other options and means of recourse that may be available to them to protect their investments in Mexico. On the local side, judicial claims have been filed by various permit holders resulting in temporary and definitive injunctions suspending the effects of the LIE Amendment nationwide.[15] However, AMLO has stated that his administration will pursue any means available to uphold the LIE Amendment, including sending a new bill to the Mexican congress to amend the Mexican Constitution and Amparo Law to render the LIE Amendment constitutional.[16] Although AMLO's Morena party does not hold enough seats in the Mexican Federal congress—nor in the local State congresses—to pass such a Constitutional amendment, AMLO's statements make it clear that, hell or high water, unwinding the Energy Reform is a top priority for the AMLO Administration.
As can be surmised, the LIE Amendment is likely to create commercial and operational issues for power generators operating in Mexico, particularly as they confer specific advantages upon CFE. Similarly, the LH Amendments' preferential treatment of Pemex and increases in the government's discretionary powers could create significant adverse economic impacts on private investors in the oil and gas sector. Such issues may give rise to a number of complex commercial and investor-state disputes. The nature of any commercial dispute will depend on the specific terms of an investor's commercial contracts, but could include claims against their counterparties (whether state-owned or otherwise) relating to breach of contract, force majeure, "material adverse change" and changes to local laws and regulations.
The nature of any investor-state dispute will turn on a combination of the specific actions taken by the government and the terms of the applicable investment treaties or laws. Mexico is a party to over 40 bilateral and multilateral investment treaties, which give foreign investors a direct right of action against the Mexican government for breaches of international law. Such treaties include bilateral agreements between Mexico and countries like Spain, France, Netherlands, China, Germany, the UAE, Korea and the United Kingdom, as well as multilateral treaties such as NAFTA, the USMCA and the CPTPP.
While the specific terms of each treaty will vary, they each will cover qualifying "investments" made by qualifying "investors," as those terms are defined in the relevant treaties. These treaties will include investments such as physical assets owned in Mexico, equity shares held in a company, debt instruments, property interests, certain contractual rights and other tangible and intangible interests arising out of capital investments made in Mexico. Subject to the nationality of the ultimate investor (or any intermediate company through which the investment is channeled), virtually all of the treaties should apply to investments in the Mexican power sector and oil and gas sector affected by the LIE Amendment and LH Amendments, respectively.
These treaties are intended to protect foreign investors from adverse government actions falling into three general categories:
First, investors are protected against the uncompensated expropriation (or taking) of their property. An expropriation can occur directly, where a government formally seizes title and possession to an investor's property, or indirectly, where the investor retains title and possession of its property, but the value of that property is materially diminished through a government's action (including the passage of laws and regulations). For example, the LH Amendments provide the Mexican government with a discretionary right to "intervene" in the operations of oil and gas permit holders if the government finds there is an imminent danger to national security, energy security or the national economy. These provisions, if acted upon, could be ripe for expropriation claims.
Second, the treaties protect foreign investors against discriminatory treatment. In particular, under the concept of National Treatment, a foreign investor may not be treated worse than a similarly situated domestic investor. Thus, for example, Mexico would have difficulty enacting measures that prefer domestic power generators over foreign power generators operating in the same sectors. Similarly, under the concept of Most Favored Nation, Mexico could not enact measures or take actions that treated foreign investors from one country better than foreign investors from other countries. Overall, the anti-discrimination provisions in investment treaties are intended to ensure that similarly situated parties are treated equally, regardless of nationality. The LIE Amendment appears to give CFE preferential treatment on commercially significant matters such as the electric grid dispatch order rules and access to clean energy certificates in a manner that will disadvantage and discriminate against foreign investors. This may give rise to claims of discriminatory treatment by foreign investors.
Third, foreign investors are protected against unfair and inequitable treatment and are entitled to the full protection and security of the law. These provisions require a host state to ensure a certain level of transparency and stability within the law and may hold a state responsible where its actions undermine a foreign investor's reasonable expectations regarding the investment climate in which it is operating. The LIE Amendment likely will materially affect foreign investors' expectations regarding the operating environment for power generation facilities, including, for example, the criteria in Mexico for access to clean energy certificates, expectations with respect to equal access to dispatch priority on Mexico's power grid and the validity of existing power purchase agreements for legacy projects. Similarly, the LH Amendments will likely create substantial uncertainty in the oil and gas sector, such as through the new "deemed rejection" standard for permit holder requests for consent to assign oil and gas marketing permits if the government has not responded to such requests within the statutory period. That said, the availability of such a claim will depend upon the specific wording of a given treaty. For example, the scope of the "fair and equitable treatment" right in the USMCA is significantly more limited compared to several of Mexico's bilateral treaties.[17]
Investors wishing to bring investment treaty claims against the Mexican government in connection with the LIE Amendment or LH Amendments would need to do so in accordance with the procedures set out in the various treaties. Perhaps most importantly, investors will need to consider how a particular investment treaty affects their right to bring claims in the Mexican courts and, similarly, how challenging Mexico's actions in the local courts could affect their ability to bring claims in arbitration. In this regard, treaties to which Mexico is a party typically fall within one of the following categories:
Treaties in which investors are required to decide between pursuing their claims in the Mexican Courts or in arbitration (i.e. treaties with "fork in the road" provisions). This rule can be found in Mexico's bilateral investment treaties with, for example, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal.
Treaties that give foreign investors the right to pursue claims in local courts first, while preserving the right to subsequently file for arbitration at any time. Under these treaties, a party that wishes to pursue a claim in arbitration must first discontinue any domestic proceedings it had initiated and waive its right to bring any subsequent claims in the courts of the host country. This rule can be found in, for example, the Mexico-U.K. and Mexico-UAE bilateral investment treaties.
Treaties which require investors to exhaust their remedies in the Mexican courts or administrative tribunals before commencing arbitration. An example of such a treaty is Annex 1 of the USMCA under which U.S. investors in Mexico would be required to exhaust local remedies before commencing arbitration against the Mexican government in connection with an alleged breach of the USMCA.
Most treaties to which Mexico is a party also require significant notice to the Mexican government before a claim can be submitted to arbitration, and include prescription periods which bar claims from being brought after a specific period of time (typically three or four years).[18] For example, under several of Mexico's bilateral treaties, an investor is required to provide at least six months' notice to the Mexican government from the date of the event(s) giving rise to the claims before those claims can be submitted to arbitration.[19] Investors are also typically obliged to engage in negotiations with the government before bringing claims in arbitration.
Accordingly, in addition to analyzing their substantive rights under the applicable treaties, investors seeking to bring claims in connection with the LIE Amendment or LH Amendments by way of arbitration under an investment treaty will need to carefully navigate these and other procedural requirements before bringing any such claims.
Special thanks to visiting attorney Pedro Lladó for his valuable assistance with this note.
[1] See "Amendments to Mexican Oil & Gas Midstream and Downstream Regulations," SHEARMAN & STERLING, May 18, 2021.
[2] In the original Spanish, the "DECRETO por el que se reforman y adicionan diversas disposiciones de la Ley de la Industria Eléctrica," Official Gazette website, March 9, 2021.
[3] supra note 1.
[4] Cristobal Riego, "Mexico's electric power reform bill: Who will be most affected," BNAMERICAS, Feb 26. 2021.
[5] Kirk Semple et al, "Mexico Set to Reshape Power Sector to Favor the State,"THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 7, 2021.
[6] Article 121 et. Seq. of the LIE and Article 7 et. seq. of the Ley de Translación Energética.
[7] Cristobal Riego, "Mexico power sector law will dampen investor appetite – experts," BNAMERICAS, March 11, 2021.
[8] Ignacio Fariza, "México generará la electricidad más barata del mundo," EL PAIS, Dec 8, 2017.
[9] In the original Spanish, the "Iniciativa con Proyecto de Decreto por el que se reforman y adicionan diversas disposiciones de la Ley de la Industria Eléctrica," CAMARA DE DIPUTADOS, Feb 1, 2021.
[11] Article 12, 17 and 129 of the LIE.
[12] Article 33 et. Seq. of the LIE.
[13] Article 36 et Seq. of the Ley del Servicio Público de Energía Eléctrica (now derogated by the LIE).
[14] Andrew Baker, "Mexico's CFE To Seek Renegotiation Of Natural Gas Supply Contracts," Feb 11, 2019.
[15] David Saul, "Juez otorga suspensión definitiva a reforma eléctrica de AMLO," March 19, 2021.
[16] Karol Garcia, "AMLO propondrá reforma constitucional si la justicia frena la reforma eléctrica," March 17, 2021.
[17] See Article 14.6 of the USMCA which provides that "the mere fact that a Party takes or fails to take an action that may be inconsistent with an investor's expectations does not constitute a breach of [the right to fair and equitable treatment] even if there is loss or damage to the covered investment as a result." By comparison, Article 2(3) of the Mexico-Germany bilateral investment treaty provides that "[e]ach Contracting State shall in any case accord investments of the other Contracting State fair and equitable treatment" and that "[n]either Contracting State shall in any way impair by arbitrary or discriminatory measures the operation, management, maintenance, use, enjoyment or disposal of such investments."
[18] See e.g. Article 9(3) of the Mexico-France bilateral investment treaty; Article 14.D.5 of the USMCA; Article 2(3) of the Schedule to the Mexico-Netherlands bilateral investment treaty.
[19] See e.g. Article 12 of the Mexico-China bilateral investment treaty; Article 10 of the Mexico-UAE bilateral investment treaty; Annex 1, Section 2 of the Mexico-Italy bilateral investment treaty.
Christopher M. Ryan
Gabriel Salinas
Robert O'Leary
Jesse Sherrett
Regionale Erfahrung | {
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Nick Candy eyes £50m windfall as tech giants mull bids for Audioboom
Nick Candy eyes £50m windfall as Amazon and Spotify mull bids for podcast maker Audioboom
By Daily Mail City & Finance Reporter
Published: 22:04 GMT, 14 February 2022 | Updated: 22:17 GMT, 14 February 2022
Nick Candy is eyeing a £50million payday as Amazon and Spotify consider takeover offers for Audioboom.
The property tycoon, who is married to Australian singer and actress Holly Valance, has a 14.8 per cent stake in the podcast maker.
His holding was valued at £45million last night after shares rose 10.8 per cent, or 190p, to 1950p. The shares are up tenfold since the start of 2020 when they were trading at 195p.
Tuned in: Property tycoon Nick Candy, who is married to Australian singer and actress Holly Valance (pictured), has a 14.8 per cent stake in the podcast maker Audioboom
Sky News reported that Amazon and Spotify have been considering bids and could swoop this month.
Amazon is said to be working with bankers at JP Morgan on an offer. City sources said a bid would have to top 2250p a share, or £355million. That would value Candy's stake at £52million.
Audioboom was founded in 2009 and hosts podcasts for the Spectator magazine and former Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins.
It helps creators find advertisers for shows, and produces its own podcasts in London and the US, including F1: Beyond the Grid and What Makes a Killer.
It is one of the world's biggest podcasters and its shows are downloaded 116m times every month by 32m people. A boom in listeners in the pandemic helped it to its first annual profit, earning £1million in 2021.
Audioboom put itself up for sale in 2020 but failed to find a buyer, and rejected an approach last year that would have valued it at £188million.
Spotify and Amazon add to a host of companies thought to have been circling, including Swedish podcast host Acast, believed to be the front-runner.
Others said to be interested include Sony Music, Google and US media company Liberty.
Amazon and Spotify did not comment on reports. | {
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Greetings from CFGA Chairperson, Ray Robertson
As we near the end of the 2018 growing season and begin preparing our fields for winter, I encourage everyone to make time to attend the 9th Annual CFGA Conference in Calgary Nov. 14 to 15. As our national forage association's conference, it is the must-attend event for anyone involved in forage production.
Here are my top four reasons why you need to register today:
To learn: This year's CFGA Conference theme is Foundation Forage: Built from the Ground Up and includes an amazing line-up of speakers who will talk, teach and share their expertise on a wide range of topics that will set the stage for producers to plan, seed, feed, graze, harvest and evaluate their valuable forage and grassland.
To network: The CFGA Conference brings together forage producers as well as leading forage and grassland experts from across Canada and North America to discuss key issues facing the industry.
To celebrate: The Canadian forage sector is the largest land-use type in agriculture and covers 72 million acres coast to coast to coast. The forage sector generates an annual value of $5.09-billion, is the back bone of the ruminant livestock sector and serves an increasingly important role in feeding livestock around the world.
To connect and share: It is an excellent opportunity to meet other producers and share the positive actions that work on their farms, build sustainable operations and contribute to healthy and environmentally friendly communities.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn about new forage practices, network with colleagues and discover new research on forage and grasslands and how to improve environmental practices.
You can learn more about this year's conference in this newsletter as well as by visiting the conference website.
Update: CFGA's 9th Annual Conference
The Canadian Forage and Grassland Association (CFGA), in conjunction with the Alberta Forage Industry Network (AFIN), is pleased to host its 9th annual conference in Calgary, Alta., Nov. 14 to 15, 2018.
Registration is open for this exciting annual event which will highlight how the Canadian forage and grassland sector is a critical foundation for sustainable growth and development throughout the Canadian agricultural industry.
This year's theme is Foundation Forage: Built from the Ground Up, recognizing the importance of a complete forage cropping system, from soil health through to export opportunities. This newsletter includes details about the pre-conference tour as well as some of the exciting speakers. Additional details, and a complete program, can be found on the CFGA conference website .
Conference spotlight
Get into the field on the pre-conference tour
The CFGA pre-conference bus tour on Tuesday, Nov. 13, is the perfect opportunity for hands-on learning to see how industry leaders in Alberta are making the most of their forage and grasslands, and how they've faced growing - and harvest - conditions this year. Stops include:
Namaka Farms - a 24,000-head family-owned feedlot located near Strathmore. Namaka Farms also operates grain farms in both Alberta and near Outlook, Sask., and runs cow-calf operations. Owned by Bryan Theisen, Namaka Farms was recently selected to be mentored as part of the 2018-2019 Beef Researcher Mentorship program. The program pairs researchers with beef industry leaders in order for researchers to better understand the impacts, practicalities and economics of adopting research results.
Arrowwood Hutterite Colony - is located near Blackie, approximately 100 kilometres southeast of Calgary. They operate AW Quality Meat Processing, and produce grain, run a cow-calf operation and feedlot, raise hogs and operate a provincially inspected slaughter plant. AW Quality Meat Processing describes itself as a small, family-run butcher shop featuring hormone-free, chemical-free, quality meats and free-range chickens, triple A Angus beef and pork.
Waldron Grazing Co-op - is the largest deeded block of land on the eastern slopes of Alberta. South of the picturesque community of Longview between the Whaleback and the Porcupine Hills, the Waldron Grazing Co-op continues to enjoy an interesting, evolving history. One of the largest co-operative land purchase deals in Alberta's history, the co-op was established in 1962 when 116 southern Alberta ranchers signed over $1 million for 44,000 acres of foothills grazing land. The premise behind the original deal, still valid today, saw ranchers purchase shares in the co-op which gave them the right to bring their cattle to the Waldron Ranch area to graze. Waldron Ranch land is comprised primarily of native grass, which holds food value through the winter. Less than one per cent of Alberta's land remains as native grassland.
Registration for the day-long tour is $100 and includes lunch. Click here for a complete schedule and to register for this unique and exciting tour of Alberta's grasslands.
Conference speaker spotlight
Conference presenter, Karen Haugen-Kozyra, to speak on making carbon work for grassland producers
by Trudy Kelly-Forsythe
Karen Haugen-Kozyra , president of the environmental consulting firm Viresco Solutions Inc. in Alberta, is one of the speakers scheduled to speak at the CFGA's 9th annual conference in Calgary, Alta. Nov. 14 to 15. During her presentation, the Current State of Protocol Development in Canada, Haugen-Kozyra will help producers understand the opportunity of avoided grassland conversion.
"Quantifying the carbon stored in Canada's grassland systems is within the realm of the National Emissions Inventory," says Haugen-Kozyra, explaining an Avoided Conversion of Grassland protocol was being adapted into the Ontario-Quebec Western Climate Initiative cap-and-trade system and is 80 per cent developed for a pan-Canadian protocol, based on the Climate Action Reserve's protocol. "We have the science."
The CFGA and Viresco Solutions have picked up the charge and are continuing to develop this protocol for use across Canada with funding from the Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Program and Viresco.
"With proper investment offered by a carbon price signal, it's estimated that nearly 16 Mt CO2e could be retained in the soil, and thereby avoiding release, by 2030 across Canada," says Haugen-Kozyra. "The opportunity we are speaking of - avoided grassland conversion - acknowledges the carbon stored to date."
However, to qualify, a ranch needs to meet the following eligibility criteria:
Are the lands on the ranch classified as CLI 1 to 4 (Land Suitability Rating of 1-5)
Are the lands under financial pressure to convert (based on a real estate appraisal of the land being used for pasture versus the land being used for cropping)
"If these two criteria are met, then the ranch is eligible to participate," she says, stressing this may not work for everyone depending on the type of lands being managed. "Then, in order to provide assurance to the buyers of carbon that the land will remain in grassland or pasture, some kind of agreement will need to be in place."
She also stresses that this will take time. "We are testing the market for the appetite to voluntarily participate in the demand side (i.e. buyers of carbon) but it may be the buyers would prefer to have the protocol approved by the Government of Alberta for the regulated marketplace."
Other conference presenters
- Dr. Henry Janzen, soil biochemist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Dr. Janzen focuses his research on the cycles of carbon and nitrogen in agricultural ecosystems, with emphasis on conferring resilience, maintaining productivity and reducing nutrient losses to adjacent environments. Much of his research considers influences of land management on gradual changes in soil organic matter, as measured in long-term experiments established decades ago.
- Dr. Earl Creech, associate professor and extension agronomist, Utah State University, is an expert in critical agronomic issues facing farmers and ranchers in Utah and throughout the western U.S.. He'll bring this knowledge to the CFGA conference and present ideas and lessons-learned applicable to Canadian producers.
- Dr. Cameron Carlyle, assistant professor, Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, is focused on ecosystem goods and services in rangelands, including the effects of agricultural land-use and cattle grazing on carbon storage and sequestration, forage production and biodiversity.
- Paul Pryce, political and economic adviser to the Consul General of Japan, Calgary. In his role as political and economic adviser to the Consul General of Japan, Mr. Pryce drives Japanese trade and investment activity throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. At the 9th Annual CFGA Conference in Calgary, he'll discuss forage trade opportunities with Japan.
- Kimberly Cornish, director, Food Water Wellness Foundation/Rootstock. Ms.
Cornish leads the Food Water Wellness Foundation to advance agricultural practices that are environmentally regenerative. She'll discuss the focus of her work, which is to find a cost-effective way to measure and monitor soil carbon sequestration.
Click here to view biographies of all speakers at this year's CFGA conference.
Provincial organization update
Ontario Soil & Crop Improvement Assoc.
Measure your forage production practices
by Andrew Graham, OSCIA executive director
The Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA) invites forage growers who are seeking information on how to refine production practices, optimize profits and safeguard the environment to take a serious look at the Forage Masters Self-Assessment.
"Improving soil health is a major focus of this organization and there is no better way to build soil organic carbon than a well-managed perennial crop," says Mack Emiry, dairy farmer and past president of OSCIA.
OSCIA led the development of the self-assessment a couple of years ago and hired popular farm journalist Ray Ford, a forage producer himself, to author it. Technical scrutiny was generously provided by government extension and industry experts to ensure accuracy.
"We took a page from the highly successful Environmental Farm Plan when deciding on a format for the document," says Don Oliver, OSCIA director and a member of the project team. "The Forage Master Self-Assessment allows growers to choose the statement for each question that best reflects current management and offers best practices to encourage where they should be headed to boost productivity and forage quality."
Choices range from Best, to Good, to Needs Improvement. There are 45 questions in all covering the agronomics of growing, harvesting, storage, feeding and ensiling. Participants only answer questions that apply to their operation. All types of forage growers stand to benefit.
Harold Zettler, a beef feedlot and sheep producer in the Georgian Central Region, described the self-assessment as "a superior full-picture product." He called the approach "an excellent resource for the farm, allowing users to measure against a standard."
Doug Johnston, a Perth County dairy producer with winning production formulas for superior growing, harvest and storage of forages says, "It is a tool that challenges us and helps the next generation understand why we follow certain practices."
The self-assessment can be downloaded from the OSCIA website.
Get ahead of the crowd with a forage production strategy
by Trudy Kelly Forsythe
New Brunswick has dealt with drought in some areas of the province for the last five years. That's a challenge for cattle producers since dry conditions often lead to feed shortages. To help mitigate the challenges, it's important to have a forage production strategy following a drought year, or years.
"We have seen that the most proactive farmers are the ones that will get through this crisis in a better position because they are in front of the crowd," says Robert Berthiaume, the forages and dairy production expert with Valacta in Quebec.
This means being the first to locate and buy hay if necessary and having an accurate assessment of the feeding quality of their forage inventory so they can make informed decisions as to what type of emergency feed to buy.
It also means starting an action plan during the dry spell. For example, says Berthiaume, they will seed winter cereals, such as wheat, triticale or rye, in the fall. This will provide a much needed supply of high quality forages early in the following spring.
"In summary, a plan based on an accurate assessment of the situation is essential," he says.
Top three tips
Berthiaume offers the following top three tips to cattle producers for developing a forage production strategy following a drought year:
Based on herd size and structure, determine your forage requirements in terms of quantity and quality.
Assess your inventory and take samples to determine quality. Check you crop rotation and make necessary changes.
Allocate forages to match animal requirements; if it does not match, be proactive. Either buy forages or by products or whatever is suitable for your situation.
Berthiaume says while there is a lot of information online by simply searching "drought," the best information will come from an accurate forage inventory.
"This will require weighing some bales, for example, and taking samples," says Berthiaume. "Do this early to be ahead of the crowd!"
This article first appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of the New Brunswick Cattle Producers newsletter. Reprinted with permission.
Mapleseed Pasture Award deadline Nov. 30
The Beef Farmers of Ontario, the Ontario Sheep Farmers, Mapleseed and the Ontario Forage Council are accepting nominations for a deserving producer for the Mapleseed Pasture Award.
The Mapleseed Pasture Award is an excellent opportunity to recognize individual producers who are doing an outstanding job of pasture management. It is also a way to encourage producers to implement pasture management strategies that maximize production per acre.
For each category, Mapleseed contributes a cash award of $500 to the winner and $250 to cover their accommodation to attend the Beef Farmers of Ontario/Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency AGM. The winner of each category will also be invited to share a presentation about their operation at their respective commodity AGM.
In addition to these prizes and recognition, each winner will receive a 25 kilogram bag of their choice of a Mapleseed Forage Mix.
The deadline to submit applications for the beef pasture award is Nov. 30, 2018. More info, and registration forms, on the OFC website.
Milk Maker Forage Competition deadline Jan. 25
The Ontario Forage Council partners with the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, Dairy Farmers of Canada and the Canadian Dairy XPO to hold the Milk Maker Forage Competition each year. The competition is open to dairy farmers across Canada and includes classes in hay, haylage, baleage and corn silage. Producers must submit forage samples to a lab for visual analysis to compete.
There are six $500 first place prizes and prizes of $300 and $200 for second and third place winners.
Call 1-877-892-8663, or e-mail, for questions. The entry form and rules and regulations are available on the OFC website.
The 2019 submission deadline is Jan. 25, 2019.
Nov. 14: MFGA's Intercropping Workshop; Brandon, Man.
Nov 26, 2018: MFGA AGM; held in conjunction with the Regenerative Agriculture Conference; Brandon, Man.
Nov 27, 28: MFGA's Regenerative Agriculture Conference; Brandon, Man.
Dec. 5: Saskatchewan Forage Council ADOPT Field Day; Clavet, SK
Dec. 6: Forage Focus 2018; Stratford, Ont.
Jan 14 to 18, 2019: Beef & Forage Week; in communities across Manitoba
Jan 22 to 24, 2019: Manitoba Ag Days; Brandon, Man.
Feb. 5 to 6, 2019: Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA) Annual Conference; Kingston, Ont.
Feb. 19 to 21, 2019: Prairie Conservation & Endangered Species Conference; Winnipeg, Man.
Feb. 24 to March 16, 2019: Agriculture Tour: New Zealand
March 5 to 19, 2019: Agriculture Tour: Argentina
More event listings:
Saskatchewan Forage Council
Beef Cattle Research Council
Get your event added to the CFGA Calendar
the CFGA
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Canadian Forage and Grassland Association | {
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TV ReviewsThe Adventures Of Pete And PeteSeason 3
The Adventures Of Pete And Pete: "The Trouble With Teddy"
Marah Eakin
The Adventures Of Pete And Pete
The Adventures Of Pete And PeteSeason 3
"The Trouble With Teddy"
"The Trouble With Teddy" (season 3, episode 2; originally aired 10/08/1995)
I know that last week I said season three of The Adventures Of Pete And Pete is, well, a little lacking, but I take back everything I said—at least in relation to this week's episode. "The Trouble With Teddy" is sharp, cute, and laugh out loud funny within the first minute. Yes, it does feature an extraneous and never-to-be-seen crush object for Pete, but whatever. It also features a whole lot of David Martel as Big Pete's friend Teddy, and that's "excellente."
Martel's not the only reason this episode hits home, though. The show's main storyline—that you can grow to really hate a friend by spending too much time with them—rings true. Anyone who's lived with a friend or shared an office with a buddy knows that it can be kind of tenuous. You can love someone so much you want to marry them, but that still doesn't mean you should spend eight stressful hours together a day. Just because someone's your best friend doesn't mean you'll be able to agree about whose dirty dishes are in the sink, either.
Big Pete, being presumably in high school, doesn't have to deal with all those issues, but he does have to deal with someone being in his space and face all the damn time. The Wrigleys have apparently learned to give each other room, but Teddy, being an only child and kind of a needy person, is like a new puppy, angry when you're not petting him and always wanting to show you something new and cool—or at least new and cool to him.
For Pete, this means Teddy ruins his date with Diane, a girl he likes because of the way she twirls her hair. Theodore L. Forzman also thwarts Little Pete's squirrel-hunting outing, Don's attempt at auto repair, and mom's general safety after he accidentally magnetizes the metal plate in her head. It's not really his fault, though. Teddy means well. He just doesn't know when to lay off.
At least, that's how it appears until he takes off in the middle of the night, leaving just a note and triggering the Wrigley clan's guilt complexes during their family night Mexican fiesta. After a well-timed KrebEx delivery of personalized sombreros from the Ted-ster, Big Pete goes searching for him, finding him at the pizza place where, after some vague allusions to Pete's "problems," Teddy admits that he left because he was afraid of Mexican night's promised beans, that they give him gas, and that he figured he might as well leave before the whole visit could go awry.
Teddy's apparent inability to read social queues is baffling, of course, but it's endearing all the same. It suggests a backstory for the character that makes him infinitely more interesting. Combined with two facts at the beginning of the episode—that his favorite hobby is making sun tea and that his favorite sport is speedwalking, which Martel executes hilariously—Teddy becomes a whole character, not just some friendly stooge on the side about whom the audience doesn't care.
It's not something that's really hit me until now, but this kind of B-character background is something that Pete And Pete does really well. Viewers might only know a few things about a bully—that he likes open-face sandwiches and wears a winter hat, let's say—but those facts are so specific that we can feel like we know exactly who that kid is. If we knew, for instance, that Wayne "The Pain" Pardue or Clem liked soccer and math, then those characters would just be some dudes. Because we know Wayne always wears a Giants jersey or that Clem has inexplicable mutton chops and knows how to play the drums, that makes them almost whole—or if not whole, then at least dimensional enough that we, as viewers, would absolutely take a chance on getting to know them. It's what makes Wellsville a place we want to come back to time and time again, and—at least in this episode—what makes Teddy Forzman such a lovable galoot.
Stray observations
Every time Teddy says "Excellente" or executes the "soul shake" it makes me laugh out loud, even now.
The Petes might dread Wrigley family nights, but they kind of look like a blast. Who could pass up American Dairy Night?
Teddy "personalizes" Big Pete's underpants by sewing his name in them, claiming it's a "crucial move when you wear the same brand." What, you didn't know that?
I like that when Pete goes on a date, he wears khakis and a polo shirt tucked in, like some normal person. Please, Pete. Let that freak flag fly. At least he showed up covered in mud.
I really hope there isn't "as much saturated fat in one slice of pepperoni as there is in a two-pound cheese log."
There's no good Little Pete insult for the week, so instead let's go with Don Wrigley's sweet name for Joyce of the week: "Fruit cup."
Recent from Marah Eakin
Let's go to the mall: The Stranger Things cast shares their favorite suburban memories
Alan Tudyk on Firefly, K-2SO, and the comic book insanity of Doom Patrol
Inside Love Island's competitive paradise | {
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Life post-college is scary. Finding a direction, building skills, and getting on track for a career is all an overwhelming and extremely important process. One option that can add a little breathing room to the process is to create a side business as a freelancer. I've done that since graduating, but wish I had started sooner. If you have a marketable skill, try building something out of it. You might just create a career for yourself.
Hosting a conference is a great way to reach a huge number of people and share your energy as a student leader. This guest post by Michael Kenny shares his advice for building a team and tackling the logistics of holding a successful conference.
Korrin Bishop has leveraged her research interests and volunteering experiences in ways that have enriched her life and led to incredible opportunities. Volunteering is a way to connect with the community, and to get experience in the 'real world' that can guide academic interests and lead to career insights and advancement.
I this guest post, Korrin shares a bit of her journey from Eugene to Washington, DC, as well as providing valuable insights about how volunteering--both in school and in the workforce--can make a huge difference in your journey.
Today's Sunday Dinner comes from Cath, who is currently at culinary school to become a Natural Foods Chef. She shares secrets to an excellent bowl of porridge, as well as tips and tricks and a thorough explanation for why oatmeal might not be the best go-to college breakfast.
Check this out for easy, healthy meals that will stick with you all day! | {
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How Did This Get Made? Podcast
Have you ever seen a movie so bad that it's amazing? Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas want to hear about it! We'll watch it with our funniest friends, and report back to you with the results.
209. The Snowman: LIVE! (w/ Erin Gibson, Bryan Safi)
Erin Gibson and Bryan Safi of Throwing Shade join Paul and Jason to discuss the 2017 psychological crime horror thriller The Snowman. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about detective Harry Hole never bringing up the snowman, ADR Val Kilmer, coffee bean torture scene, and more. Plus, we hear some exclusive behind the scenes info from someone very close to the film.This episode is brought to you by Mercari (www.mercari.com), What We Do in the Shadows on FX, Black Tux (www.blac...
Prequel to Episode 209
Nordic dogs, abolitionists, and more on this week's mini-sode! Paul opens up the Explanation Hope Line, goes through Corrections and Omissions for Harry & Meghan, and opens up the Mail Bag. Plus, find out which movie we will be watching next week!This episode is brought to you by Mercari.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepubli…wdidthisgetmad...
208. Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance LIVE! (w/ Casey Wilson)
Casey Wilson (Black Monday, Bitch Sesh) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 2018 Lifetime original movie Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about the lion, Africa, the Queen watching Netflix, and the moments that made everyone cry.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Mercari (www.mercari.com), Simplisafe (www.simplisafe.com/bonkers), and Black Tux (www.blacktux.com code: BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspo...
Bubbles is alive, Detective Spicy Hands, and more on this week's mini-sode! Paul opens up the Explanation Hope Line, goes through Corrections and Omissions for Dragon Blade, and shares something amazing during Paul's Pick of the Week. Plus, find out which movie we will be watching next week!This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo....
207. Dragon Blade (w/ Daniel Radcliffe, Erin Darke)
Daniel Radcliffe (Miracle Workers, Harry Potter) and Erin Darke (Dietland, Summer '03) join Paul and Jason to discuss the 2015 action film Dragon Blade starring Jackie Chan, Adrian Brody, and John Cusack. They talk about there being no dragon blade in the movie, arrows doing amazing things, Cusack's accent, and much more.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Simplisafe (www.simplisafe.com/BONKERS), and Black Tux (www.blacktux.com code: BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspooled w...
The Hobbs & Shaw trailer dropped so it's important that Paul and Jason break it down on this week's minisode! Paul also opens up the Explanation Hope Line, goes through Corrections and Omissions for Little Italy, and opens up the Mail Bag. Plus, find out what movie is covered next week!Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepubli…wdidthisgetmadeW...
206. Little Italy
Paul, June, and Jason are in-studio to discuss the 2018 romantic comedy Little Italy starring Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen. They talk about the stereotypical Italian accents, the hair dye, the rain soccer game, the Luigi character, and everything else in this bonkers movie.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS) and Black Tux (www.blacktux.com code: BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check ...
Is Cellular part of the Final Destination extended universe? The answer to this and more on this week's minisode! Paul opens up the Explanation Hope Line, goes through Corrections and Omissions for Cellular, and share's his Pick of the Week. Plus, find out next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn (www.linked.com/BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new H...
205. Cellular (w/ Ike Barinholtz, Erin Gibson)
Ike Barinholtz (The Oath) and Erin Gibson (Throwing Shade) join Paul and Jason to discuss the 2004 thriller Cellular starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, and Jason Statham. They talk about William H. Macy's amazing performance, Kim Basinger's character naming her son Ricky Martin, and the makers of the movie not knowing how cellphones work. Plus, everyone has some fun with their new favorite character "Jason Statham Angeleno."This episode is brought to you by Skittles, Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKER...
Where does Holiday in Handcuffs take place? What is Paul's best movie of 2018? All this and more is covered on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Holiday in Handcuffs, opens up the Mail Bag, and reveals which movie will be covered next week! Plus, the Movie Bitches review Princess Switch.This episode is brought to you by Skittles and I'm Sorry on truTV.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new we...
Jack Frost (Re-Release)
Paul, June, and Jason share what they remember about Jack Frost and their New Year Resolutions as they present this classic episode of How Did This Get Made? Dan Harmon joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the Michael Keaton classic Jack Frost in another LIVE episode recorded at Largo in Los Angeles! They talk about George Clooney's connection to the movie, the snowman's journey from bad dad to bad husband, the premise being identical to that of a horror movie, and the emotional roller coaster June was on...
Jingle All The Way (Re-Release)
Paul, June, and Jason share what they remember about Jingle All The Way as they present this classic episode of How Did This Get Made? You'd think that the comedic prowess of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the acting talents of Sinbad, and the star power of a Jim Belushi cameo would make for the ultimate Christmas movie! Instead we have an illogical and unbelievable commercial masked as a movie. Join the How Did This Get Made? crew and Joe Mande for this bonus holiday episode. Happy Holidays!...
204. Holiday in Handcuffs (w/ Jessica St. Clair)
Jessica St. Clair (WOMP IT UP!) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 2007 ABC family holiday film Holiday in Handcuffs starring Melissa Joan Hart and Mario Lopez. They talk about the rough lighting, party perms, Jessica's Mario Lopez story, and Paul's personal relationship with three of the cast members of the movie. Plus, everyone is determined to find out the truth behind Mario Lopez's chest hair.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/bonkers code: BONKERS), National Highway Tra...
Can you commit a crime at Christmas and not be charged? The answer to this and more on this week's mini-sode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Perfect Stranger, shares his Pick of the Week, and reveals which holiday movie will be covered next week!This episode is brought to you by Espresso Monster.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://ww...
203. Perfect Stranger: LIVE!
LIVE from Washington D.C., Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 2007 thriller Perfect Stranger starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. They talk about what the title of the movie is referring to, the Victoria's Secret product placement, and Bruce Willis' singing career, Giovanni Ribisi recapping the entire movie. Plus, Jason's baby dream comes true!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Fossil (www.fossil.com/bonkers), SImplisafe (www.simplisafe.com/bonkers), and Sonos (www...
What's the best Rocky movie? Listen and find out on this week's minisode! Paul goest through Corrections and Omissions for Look Who's Talking Now, opens up the Mail Bag, and ranks all the Rocky movies. Plus, find out which movie will be covered next week!This episode is brought to you by Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com) and Fossil (www.fossil.com/BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Che...
202. Look Who's Talking Now (w/ Conan O'Brien)
Conan O'Brien (Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1993 romantic comedy and the final installment in the series, Look Who's Talking Now starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. They talk about the sentient Danny DeVito sperm, the talking dogs not moving the movie's plot, the daughter's home made Charles Barkley doll, and wolves.This episode is brought to you by The Bechdel Cast, Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com), Espresso Monster, Sonos (www.sonos.com), and Fossil (www.foss...
The problem with funny people at work, a letter from a real marine, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Skyscraper, shares his special Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review A Star Is Born. Plus, an exciting update on next week's episode!This episode is sponsored by Mailchimp and Espresso Monster. Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check...
201. Skyscraper (w/ Paul F. Tompkins, Rhea Butcher)
Paul F. Tompkins (Spontaneanation, BoJack Horseman) and Rhea Butcher (Three Swings, Put Your Hands Together) join Paul and Jason in-studio to discuss Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the 2018 action film Skyscraper. They talk about why it would be impossible for The Rock to make the jump from the crane to the burning building, the hall of digital mirrors room, and the duct tape budget. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS code: BONKERS), Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com), Caspe...
200th Mini Retrospective Clip Show Spectacular!
Join us as we celebrate 200th episodes of How Did This Get Made! We'll hear from listener's favorite moments of the show, Jason joins Paul to share his own favorite memories of the show, the favorite 5 episodes, most hated movie, and favorite catchphrase. Plus, all the usual mini-sode goodness!This episode is sponsored by Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com) and Espresso Monster. Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at ...
200. Action Jackson: LIVE! (w/ Seth Rogen)
Seth Rogen joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1988 action film Action Jackson starring Carl Weathers on the 200th episode of How Did This Get Made! Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about Craig T. Nelson doing karate, Action Jackson driving a car inside a house, Dee at the barbershop, Vanity doing a solo performance for Craig T. Nelson, and much more. Plus, Paul breaks down the film term "Man and Woman Scene."This episode is brought to you by Google GSuite (www.GSuite...
Strip club etiquette, Bryan Adams' second thoughts, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for A Night In Heaven, shares a must-listen during Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Little Italy. Plus, an exciting update on next week's episode!This episode is sponsored by G Suite (www.GSuite.com) and Espresso Monster.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www....
199. A Night In Heaven: LIVE! (w/ Tawny Newsome, Jen D'Angelo)
Tawny Newsome (Yo, Is This Racist?, Bajillion Dollar Propertie$) and Jen D'Angelo (Loosely Exactly Nicole) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 1983 romance film A Night in Heaven. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they cover not knowing who is the main character, seeing a dude's dick during one of the sex scenes, and kid businessman.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Dream Corp LLC on Adult Swim, Simplisafe (www.simplisafe.com/bonkers), and Son...
Baby names, Nicolas Cage's inspiration, and much more are covered on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Look Who's Talking Too, Paul recommends something you should definitely check out, and the Movie Bitches review A Simple Favor.This episode is brought to you by G Suite by Google Cloud (www.GSuite.com) and Espresso Monster.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo....
HDTGM presents: Unspooled: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Paul introduces a special episode of Unspooled, the show where Paul & Amy Nicholson explore the AFI's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. This episode covers Steven Spielberg's alien classic E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. For more Unspooled, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts!...
198. Look Who's Talking Too: LIVE!
It's John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and a bunch of telepathic babies. Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 1990 romantic comedy Look Who's Talking Too. Live from Denver, they talk about the production design of the apartment, the babies finding a crack pipe, and the product placement of babies watching real commercials.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), The Good Place, Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/how), and MasterClass (www.masterclass.com/BONKERS).Subscribe to Unsp...
The best Chicago coffee, if you can take a bus to Machu Picchu, and much more on a new mini-sode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Beastly, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review The Meg. Plus, the next movie to get the HDTGM treatment!This episode is brought to you Heineken and Espresso Monster.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at...
197. Beastly: LIVE!
Live from New York! It's Paul, June, and Jason discussing the 2011 romantic fantasy drama Beastly. They dive deep into June's sincere love for the movie, the main crux of the movie being kidnapping, the Beast stalking Vanessa Hudgens, the alternate ending, and Jason's idea for what a real Beast would look like. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/bonkers), Heineken, and Simplisafe (www.simplisafe.com/bonkers).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http...
Weird Tinder dates, a correspondent from China, and much more on a new mini-sode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for The Meg, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review Crazy Rich Asians. Plus, the next movie to get the HDTGM treatment!This episode is brought to you Heineken and Espresso Monster.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https...
196. 196 The Meg: LIVE! (w/ Nicole Byer, Adam Scott)
HDTGM All-stars Nicole Byer (Nailed It!, Why Won't You Date Me?) and Adam Scott (Big Little Lies, R U Talkin' R.E.M. RE: ME?) join Paul and Jason to talk about the 2018 science fiction thriller The Meg starring Jason Statham. Recorded live at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about Statham's incredible diving, the secondary characters being stereotypes, and the Meg eye stab.This episode is brought to you by Fossil (www.fossil.com/bonkers) and the Move the Sticks podcast from NFL.com.Subscribe t...
The perfect spot for nature and good wine, the Spider-Man connection to Never Too Young To Die, and much more on a new mini-sode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Never Too Young to Die, gives a special recommendation during Paul's Picks, and the Movie Bitches review Skyscraper. Plus, the next movie to get the HDTGM treatment!Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new H...
195. Never Too Young to Die: LIVE! (w/ Matt McConkey)
Matt McConkey (Homophilia) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1986 action adventure comedy Never Too Young to Die starring John Stamos. Recorded live at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about Gene Simmons' tongue being the most violent thing June has seen onscreen, skilled gymnast Stamos, the Stargrove song, and The Room level sex scene. Plus, stick around at the end of the episode for 2nd Opinions songs!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS code: B...
Bad luck nuns, the fisherman faker, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Yes, Giorgio, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Plus, the next movie selection to get the HDTGM treatment!Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepubli…wdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find ...
194. Yes, Giorgio: LIVE!
Live from New York, Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 1982 musical/comedy Yes, Giorgio starring Luciano Pavarotti. They talk about Pavarotti's impressive breath control, the food fight scene, and whether or not opera is hard. Plus, stick around at the end for some incredible opera inspired 2nd Opinions songs!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS) and Sennheiser (www.sennheiser.com code: BONKERS).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http:/...
Is Jake Blues a snitch? Questions like these are answered and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Blues Brothers 2000, opens up the Mail Bag, shares his Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Ocean's 8. Plus, the next movie selection to get the HDTGM treatment!Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.t...
193. Blues Brothers 2000: LIVE!
Live from Onion Fest in Chicago, Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000. They cover everything including child abduction, the "stripster" club, the return of the car pile up, and more. Plus, stay tuned at the end for all the extra amazing 2nd Opinions theme songs!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Sennheiser (www.sennheiser.com code: BONKERS), and Ben & Jerry's (www.store.benjerry.com).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholso...
Killer breast implants, a secret about Meryl Streep, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Striptease, Paul recommends an important doc, and the Movie Bitches review Book Club. Plus, the next movie selection to get the HDTGM treatment!This episode is brought to you by Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/HOW) and Ben & Jerry'sSubscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdt...
192. Striptease: LIVE!
Live from Onion Fest in Chicago, Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 1996 Demi Moore film Striptease. They cover everything including vaseline on Burt Reynold's body, Ving Rhame's yogurt scheme, the thought process behind the name "Flesh Farm," and more. Plus, stay tuned at the end for all the extra amazing 2nd Opinions theme songs!This episode is brought to you by Sorry To Bother You, Rocket League, SimpliSafe (www.simplisafe.com/bonkers), and Ben & Jerry's.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nic...
Rad shoes, incredible screaming Geostorm shout outs, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Rad, Blake J. Harris interviews Rad's bike guru/mechanic Mark Kaustinen (full interview on www.slashfilm.com), Paul recommends a special you should check out, and the Movie Bitches review Tyler Perry's Acrimony. Plus, the next movie selection to get the HDTGM treatment!This episode is brought to you by Ben & Jerry's.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson h...
191. Rad: LIVE!
Live from Onion Fest in Chicago, Paul, June, and Jason go balls out as they discuss the 1986 BMX racing movie Rad. They cover everything including ass sliding, bike dancing, the fashion of the twins, and much more. Plus, stay tuned at the end for all the extra amazing 2nd Opinions theme songs!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Hearts Beat Loud in select theaters, LightStream (www.lightstream.com/BONKERS), and Ben & Jerry's.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and...
Hurricane dads, family issues, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Hurricane Heist, Blake J. Harris interviews Hurricane Heist screenwriter Scott Windhauser, Paul opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review Avengers: Infinity War. Plus, you'll find out our next movie selection!Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hdtgminfo.com!Check out new HDTGM merch ...
190. Hurricane Heist: LIVE!
Live from Onion Fest in Chicago, Paul, June, and Jason wrap their heads around the 2018 heist action film The Hurricane Heist. They cover everything including the face in the hurricane, football plans for the hurricane, and crazy bagels. Plus, we got some math nerds in the audience to break down some numbers.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), SimpliSafe (www.simplisafe.com/bonkers), and Ben & Jerry's (store.benjerry.com).Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and A...
When is it the right time to date after a 3 year break up? Would a female Sky Captain be better? These questions and more are answered on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Blake J. Harris interviews Sky Captain's Visual Effects Supervisor Greg Anderson, Paul opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review Every Day. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/how)....
189. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: LIVE! (w/ Joe Mande, Tawny Newsome)
Comedians Joe Mande (The Good Place) and Tawny Newsome (Yo, Is This Racist, Bajillion Dollar Propertie$) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 2004 science fiction action adventure film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Recored live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about the awful blue screen effects, Gwyneth Paltrow getting punched, bird planes, and much more.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, Rick & Morty, and Away.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson...
Want to know how to get back at Lorenzo Lamas? Well listen to this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Body Rock, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review The Hurricane Heist. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS) and Arrested Development on Netflix.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/Check out our new website over at www.hd...
Introducing Unspooled
Paul's new podcast launches today! Here's a preview of Unspooled, the show where Paul teams up with Amy Nicholson to watch the greatest movies of all time. Episode 1: Citizen Kane is out right now.Check out Unspooled in Apple Podcasts: www.applepodcasts.com/unspooled...
188. Body Rock: LIVE! (w/ Alison Brie)
Alison Brie (Glow) joins Paul, June and Jason to discuss the 1984 film Body Rock starring Lorenzo Lamas. Recored live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about Chilly's hairy chest, breakdancing, post shower roast beef, and breaking the fourth wall. Plus, June believes she can breakdance with no practice.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/BONKERS), Ben & Jerry's (www.benjerry.com), and Arrested Development on Netflix.Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and...
Proposals, drive-in theaters, wearing a podcast shirt to a podcast taping and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Beautiful Creatures, Blake J. Harris interviews director Richard LaGravenese, and the Movie Bitches review Red Sparrow. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by The Wine Down Podcast, New Belgium Brewery, Casting Call Show from Squarespace/Gimlet Media (www.castingcallshow.com).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://...
187. Beautiful Creatures (w/ Erin Whitehead, Kate Hagen)
Erin Whitehead (Wild Horses) and Kate Hagen (The Black List) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 2013 romantic gothic fantasy film Beautiful Creatures. Join them in the studio as they talk about all the southern fried accents, casters, the Beetlejuice house, and much more. Plus, everyone shares their love of Harry Potter!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, The Wine Down Podcast and Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas on HBO.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmad...
Dealing with pesky mother in laws, examining Dd Harris' evil plan, and we talk to someone who worked on the re-shoots of Geostorm on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Geostorm, shares a must watch during Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Fifty Shades Freed. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by The Wine Down Podcast and Barry on HBO.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeW...
Origin Stories Bonus: Jon Cryer
Actor Jon Cryer chats with Blake Harris about first commercial acting job at 4 years old, replacing Matthew Broderick in the Broadway plays Torch Song Trilogy & in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, what lead him to play Lenny in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and the many other films he was in that he says could be discussed on HDTGM.This episode is brought to you by A Higher Loyalty by James Comey (www.audible.com/BONKERS)....
186. Geostorm: LIVE! (w/ Colton Dunn, Jessica St. Clair)
GEOSTORM! Colton Dunn (Superstore, Blockers) joins Paul, Jason, and guest co-host Jessica St. Clair to discuss the 2017 disaster film Geostorm starring Gerard Butler. Recorded live from Los Angeles at Largo at the Coronet, they talk about Gerard's accent, Andy Garcia's pen acting, the real life car Geo Storm, and Mr. Bean in space.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason, June, and Paul in The Disaster Artist.Paul's ...
Bad roommates, dry cigarettes, a lesson in Latin, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Adore, shares a must watch during Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Black Panther. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by New Belgium Brewery (www.newbelgium.com) and Namely (www.namely.com/BONKERS).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can s...
185. Adore (w/ Charles Rogers, Jordan Firstman, Kulap Vilaysack)
Charles Rogers and Jordan Firstman (Search Party) along with HDTGM All-star Kulap Vilaysack join Paul and Jason to discuss the 2013 drama Adore starring Naomi Watts and Robin Wright. They talk about the yacht-building business, aggrosurfing, flirting with moms, and much more. Plus, they unpack five star reviews of the movie on Amazon.This episode is sponsored by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), Spotify, Audible (audible.com/BONKERS) and New Belgium Brewery (www.newbelgium.com).Check out new ...
Water on the face, Russell Crowe's suit from Virtuosity, and more are on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Johnny Mnemonic, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by Namely (www.namely.com/BONKERS) and Spotify.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason, Jun...
184. Johnny Mnemonic: LIVE! (w/ Jessica St. Clair)
Jessica St. Clair (Womp It Up!, Playing House) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 1995 cyberpunk action thriller Johnny Mnemonic starring Keanu Reeves. Recorded live in Boston, they talk about the sentient dolphin, ghost in the machines, robotic street preachers, and much more. Plus, June gives us her best guess of what the movie is about without watching it.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), New Belgium Brewery (www.newbelgium.com, Spotify, and Namely (www.n...
We will heal a broken heart, talk about arm acting, and of course a review Captain America II on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Ladybugs, gives an amazing rec during Paul's Pick of the Week, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review I, Tonya. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by Namely (www.namely.com/BONKERS) and Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/how code: HOW).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com...
183. Ladybugs: LIVE! (w/ Patton Oswalt)
Comedian Patton Oswalt (A.P. Bio) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1992 sports-comedy Ladybugs starring Rodney Dangerfield. They'll talk about the lady who faints in the dressing room scene, Jackee's sub eating technique, and Rodney breaking into song for no reason. Plus, a very special guest from the movie gives us some insight from being on set during audience Q&A!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS).Where to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason,...
Babies listening to podcasts, a vasectomy update, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Rock Star, recommends some great stuff for you to check out in Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review The Greatest Showman. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by AP Bio on NBC.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason, June, and Paul in...
182 Rock Star: LIVE! (w/ Jake Weisman)
Comedian Jake Weisman (Corporate) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 2001 musical comedy-drama Rock Star starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they cover the use of wigs, the orgy scene, and nipple piercing. Plus, the audience tries to make us believe they are British during Q&A.This episode is brought to you by A.P. Bio, Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), SeatGeek (download SeatGeek app and enter code: BONKERS).Where to Fi...
Suicide booths, what do you get a dude for Valentine's Day, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Freejack, opens up the Mail Bag, and the Movie Bitches review Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Plus, important info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by SKYN condoms.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason, June, and Paul in The Disaster Artist in theaters now.Paul'...
181 Freejack: LIVE! (w/ Phoebe Robinson, Jessica St. Clair)
Comedian/writer/actress Phoebe Robinson (2 Dope Queens) joins Paul, Jason, and guest co-host Jessica St. Clair to discuss the 1992 science fiction action film Freejack. Recorded live in New York, they talk about the spiritual switch board, faberge eggs, and the true meaning of "Freejack." Plus, we get a special 3rd Opinion from June from Montreal!This episode is brought to you by Laff Mobb's Laff Tracks on TruTV and SeatGeek (Download SeatGeek app promo code: BONKERS)Check out new HDTGM merch over at https:...
The Holy Grail, vasectomies, Jason's old band, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, gives a special rec in Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Justice League. Plus, keep an eye out on our Twitter and Facebook pages for more info on next week's movie!This episode is brought to you by Burrow (www.burrow.com code: BONKERS).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere ...
180 Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf: LIVE! (w/ Tig Notaro, Stephanie Allynne)
Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne (One Mississippi) join Paul and Jason to discuss the 1985 horror film Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. Recorded live from The 9th Annual Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival in Washington D.C., they talk about Christopher Lee in space, monkey costumes in place of werewolf costumes, awful werewolf orgies, and much more insanity.This episode is brought to you by Baskets on FX and Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepub...
Soprano sightings, should Stuart Pankin exist, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Second Sight, gives a great rec in Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Coco. Plus, you'll find out which movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma and HBO's Crashing.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason, June, and Paul in The Disaste...
179 Second Sight: LIVE! (w/ Jessica St. Clair)
Jessica St. Clair (Womp It Up!, Playing House) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 1989 comedy Second Sight starring John Larroquette and Bronson Pinchot. Recorded live in Boston, they talk about the cold open, Pinchot kissing everyone, and Larroquette looking miserable. Plus, Jessica reminds everyone of the Bronson Pinchot episode of Law & Order where he puts cocaine up his butt.This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma, Crunchyroll (www.vrv.co/gopremium), RXBAR (www.rxbar.com/bonkers), and Casper Mat...
Different types of Kryptonite, a man in spandex, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, gives a great rec in Paul's Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review A Christmas Prince. Plus, you'll find out which movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by Spotify and Sonos.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:You can see Jason, June, a...
178 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace: LIVE! (w/ Natasha Lyonne, Jessica St. Clair)
Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is The New Black) joins Paul, Jason, and guest co-host Jessica St. Clair to discuss the 1987 superhero film Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Recorded live in New York, they talk about Nuclear Man's nails, amnesia kisses, and what's up with Margot Kidder. Plus, we figure out what exactly is kryptonite.This episode is brought to you by Spotify, Squarespace, Sonos, and Mozilla Firefox.Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, ...
Advice on what to do with a lot of free time, Franco's crotch sock in The Disaster Artist, board game recs, and more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for The Disaster Artist/The Room and the Movie Bitches review Thor: Ragnarok. Plus, you'll find out which superhero movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by SKYN condoms and Zelle (www.zellepay.com).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, ...
177 The Disaster Artist (w/ James Franco, Seth Rogen, Tommy Wiseau)
On a very special episode of How Did This Get Made?, Paul speaks with the stars and writers of The Disaster Artist which includes James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Ari Graynor, Michael H. Webber, Scott Neustadter, Greg Sestero, and Tommy Wiseau. Plus, we present the classic HDTGM episode on The Room with Steve Heisler from The AV Club and Greg Sestero!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), Spotify, Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/HOW), and Hello Fresh (www....
From the first actor ever CGI'd to whether The Jazz Singer actually being good is covered on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for The Jazz Singer, Blake J. Harris chats with The Jazz Singer producer Jerry Leider about the movie, and the Movie Bitches review Mother. Plus, you'll find out which movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by Sonos (www.sonos.com code: MADE10).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhe...
176 Jazz Singer: LIVE! (w/ Chris Gethard)
Chris Gethard (Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People and The Chris Gethard Show) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer starring Neil Diamond. Recorded live from the Now Hear This Festival in New York City, they talk about Laurence Olivier's questionable acting choices, Neil Diamond in blackface and a wig, the my body or pizza scene, and much more.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), SKYN condoms, Crunchyroll (www.vrv.com/gop...
From coffee to a special phone call from someone on their wedding night on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Ultraviolet, gives us his Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Kidnap. Plus, you'll find out which movie we will be covering next!Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:Paul's new comedy Drive Share is available on Go90. Paul can be seen on Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later...
175 Ultraviolet: LIVE! (w/ Nick Wiger, Mike Mitchell)
The Doughboys Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell join Paul and Jason to discuss the 2006 science fiction action thriller Ultraviolet. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about vampire diseases, dreads in a fight, changing hair and outfit color at will, and much more.This episode is brought to you Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, War Dragons (www.wardragons.com/BONKERS), Delta Airlines, Sonos (www.sonos.com code: MADE10), and Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/HOW).Check out new HDTGM ...
A missing movie, how to tell your co-worker to stop whistling, and much more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Jason X, opens up the Mail Bag, gives us his Pick of the Week, and the Movie Bitches review Girls Trip. Plus, you'll find out which movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:Pa...
174 Jason X: LIVE! (w/ Rob Huebel, Jenny Slate)
HDTGM All-stars Rob Huebel and Jenny Slate join Paul and Jason to discuss the 2001 science fiction slasher film Jason X. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about the nipple clamps, abusive VR, and "what is Jason?". Plus, Rob is reminded of a horror prank gone wrong from his past.This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS) and Hello Fresh (www.hellofresh.com code: BONKERS30).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/h...
How to take care of your stressed out wife, notes on a movie from someone who works at an actual prison, and much more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for Virtuosity, Blake J. Harris interviews director Brett Leonard about Virtuosity, and the Movie Bitches review The Emoji Movie. Plus, you'll find out which horror movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by Patton Oswalt: Annihilation on Netflix and Sonos (www.sonos.com code: MADE10).Check out new HD...
173 Virtuosity: LIVE! (w/ Sarah Silverman, Taran Killam)
Sarah Silverman (I Love You, America) and Taran Killam (Killing Gunter, SNL) joins Paul and Jason to discuss the 1995 science fiction film Virtuosity starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Recorded live from Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they talk about cocoons, sexy chess, Little Kaley Cuoco, and the inappropriate end credits.This episode is brought to you by Sonos, Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/HOW), and Delta Airlines.Check out new HDTGM ...
Rap song correlations, a mountain made of mashed potatoes, and much more on this week's minisode! Paul goes through Corrections and Omissions for The Last Dragon, Blake J. Harris interviews director Michael Schultz about The Last Dragon, and the Movie Bitches review Home Again. Plus, you'll find out which movie we will be covering next!This episode is brought to you by SKYN condoms and Bombfell (www.bombfell.com/BONKERS).Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmadeWhere...
Paywall Special Announcement
Paul shares a special announcement regarding the Paywall....
152. The 2nd Annual Howdies Pt. 2
The 2nd ANNUAL HOWDIES with Paul, June, and Jason continue with awards given to Best Guest One Liner, Best Explanation Hope, Best 2nd Opinion, and much more. Tune in to find who will take home the gold!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (www.squarespace.com code: BONKERS), Quiznos (download app Toasty Points and use code: BONKERS), Sonos, and Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/how)....
Walk the red carpet along with Paul, June, and Jason for the 2nd ANNUAL HOWDIES!!! They'll be giving recognition for Best Paul Intro Line to Best June Theory and everything in between from Gooby to The Boy Next Door. Tune in to find out who will win and stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon!This episode is brought to you by Squarespace ( www.squarespace.com promo code: BONKERS)....
135. Solarbabies: LIVE! (w/ John Mulaney)
John Mulaney (Oh, Hello) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the insane 1986 science fiction film Solarbabies. Recorded LIVE from the world famous Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, they'll cover everything important including rollerskating in the future, Jami Gertz' bangs, and robots programmed to enjoy. Plus, we witness the first ever video 2nd Opinion. Don't forget to check out Blake Harris' Oral History of Solarbabies over at www.slashfilm.com ! Get yourself a BB-8 "What Is Its Mission?" T-shirt o...
121. Perfect: LIVE! (w/ Seth Morris)
LIVE from Largo in Los Angeles, Seth Morris returns to join Paul, Jason, and June to discuss John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis in 1985's Perfect. They'll talk about Travolta starting as an obituary writer, seeing a complete aerobics class, and Jamie Lee Curtis having a tender moment with a pool. Plus, everyone discusses the use of the phrase "sphincter muscle" and Jamie Lee's first interaction with a computer during Audience Q&A!Check out Blake Harris' Oral History of Perfect over at www.slashfilm.com !Pe...
120. Masters of the Universe (w/ Tatiana Maslany)
Finally, the He-Man movie starring Dolph Lundgren on Earth with a bunch of teens. Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1987 film Masters of the Universe. They'll cover He-Man not being spectacular at anything, the big battle being mostly shot in the dark, Courteney Cox's emotional journey, and everyone's favorite character Karg. Plus, June explains how the movie made her realize she is afraid of mirages.Check out Blake Harris' Oral History of Masters of the Universe over...
119. Maximum Overdrive: LIVE! (w/ Andy Daly)
LIVE from Largo in Los Angeles, TV's Andy Daly of Review joins Paul, Jason, and June to discuss Stephen King's only directorial effort: Maximum Overdrive. They'll talk about the AC/DC soundtrack, what kind of machines can become sentient, the newlywed couple, Emilio Estevez licking a forehead, what exactly a "road twitch" could be, and cocaine. Plus, everyone discusses one of the most disgusting scenes in film history after some ridiculous 2nd Opinions!Check out Blake Harris' Oral History of Maximum Overdri...
116. Top Dog: LIVE!
In the first ever bootleg edition of How Did This Get Made, Paul, June, and Jason discuss the most shocking and disturbing look at the white supremacy movement ever made: Chuck Norris' Top Dog. Recorded LIVE from The House of Blues in San Diego, they'll cover how it is on record a movie made for children, Jason's thoughts on the clown attack on Chuck Norris, every hit, kick, punch, and crash having the same sound effect, and June's claim that Chuck Norris' dad is identical to her grandfather....
114. Runaway (w/ Rhea Butcher)
The hilarious Rhea Butcher of Put Your Hands Together and Wham Bam Pow joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss Runaway, a movie that is 1984 to the max! They'll cover everything from the box robots with guns, Gene Simmons' intense stare, and Tom Selleck's kissing endurance. Plus, June shares how she had a real existential crisis possibly caused by robots....
113. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze: LIVE! (w/ Adam Pally)
Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go!!! Paul, Jason AND June (not to mention special return guest Adam Pally of Happy Endings and The Mindy Project) are all here in a very special How Did This Get Made LIVE from Irving Plaza in New York City! They're talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze. They'll cover everything from the horrific amount of pizza to why these are the most charmless turtles imaginable to April O'Neil's strange relationship with the turtles. Plus, we hear from Vanilla Ice hi...
112. Jupiter Ascending (w/ Franklin Leonard, Razzle Dangerously, Josh Richmond)
This week Paul & Jason are joined by two special guests, from "Blacklist Table Reads", Franklin Leonard, and from the equally popular "Picking Favorites, Razzle Dangerously. They try, and almost succeed, to understand the plot of the Wachowskis' 'Jupiter Ascending'. All the hard hitting questions are asked, including; why do no two aliens look the same? At what point did Channing Tatum realize what he was in for? Does being part dog help you in space? And why is our theme song so loud?...
110. The Island of Dr. Moreau (w/ Alex Fernie)
Actor, director, writer Alex Fernie joins Paul & June in studio to talk about Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer not caring at all in 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau. They'll discuss why Brando insisted to be in white face, Val Kilmer's mocking performance of Brando later in the movie, Brando playing piano with the world's smallest man, and more. Plus, we hear what Brando believed to be a much better ending to the movie....
108. Con Air LIVE! (w/ Seth Grahame-Smith)
Recorded LIVE from Largo in Los Angeles, filmmaker and author Seth Grahame-Smith joins Paul, Jason, and June to discuss Con Air, one of the most requested movies in a night of Nicolas Cage films. They cover everything from Nic Cage's southern accent, Jason's unconditional love for the movie, June's love of plane movies, and much more. Plus, everyone talks about John Malkovich having the greatest villain death of all time during audience Q&As!...
107. Lake Placid: LIVE! (w/ Paul F. Tompkins, Nate Corddry)
Reading Aloud's Nate Corddry and HDTGM All-Star Paul F. Tompkins join Paul & Jason at Largo in Los Angeles to talk all about how Lake Placid shows that nature and man cannot co-exist. They'll cover everything from the movie not reaching 90 minutes yet feeling long, the amazing performances by the cows, Brendan Gleeson reading the stage directions, underwater bears, and more. Plus, we finally get down to the bottom of what the proper way to say Reese's Pieces is before getting into audience Q&As!...
105. Safe Haven (w/ Eliza Skinner, Jordan Rubin)
The very funny Eliza Skinner and Zombeavers director Jordan Rubin join Paul & Jason to talk about the most seemingly normal but insane film Safe Haven. They'll discuss how the movie feels like it's made up of scenes that you would want cut out, the heavy paint can scene, the multiple shocking reveals, and what made everyone except Jordan burst into tears. Plus, we hear some glorious Amazon 5 star review one liners in another edition of 2nd Opinions. FYI: The movies for the LIVE at Largo shows on Saturday, M...
99. A View To a Kill: LIVE (w/ Matt Gourley, Matt Mira)
In a very special podcast cross-over event, Bond experts Matt Gourley and Matt Mira of James Bonding join Paul, June, and Jason to figure out if A View To a Kill is the worst Bond movie of all time. Recorded LIVE at Largo in Los Angeles, they cover how Bond invents snowboarding, the most French man in the world, Tanya Roberts' stunt double being a grizzly old man, the multiple blimps, race horses, the robot dog, and of course, the butterflies. Plus, Gourley & June's wigdar shines during audience Q&A and we ...
98. LOL: LIVE! (w/ Rob Huebel, Chelsea Peretti, John Flynn)
It's another special HDTGM All-Stars episode with guest co-hosts Rob Huebel & Chelsea Peretti as well as special guest John Flynn and they're talking all about Miley Cyrus & Demi Moore in LOL. Recorded LIVE at Largo in Los Angeles, they get into the family bathtub scene, how Demi Moore got involved in the movie, the original French version of the movie, and the web-camera that goes inside a raw chicken. Plus, we hear from the camera assistant who put the camera inside the chicken and what was cut from the e...
92. The 1st Annual Howdies Pt. 2
Welcome back to the finale of the 1st ANNUAL HOWDIES!!! Paul, June, and Jason saved some of the best categories for last as they unveil the Most Awkward Paul/June Introduction, Jason's single proper usage of "LITERALLY!", Best Impression By A Host, June's Most Upsetting, and much more, including new supercuts!Los Angeles: Get your tickets now for a LIVE HDTGM at Largo on Saturday, September 20th at 10pm over at www.largo-la.com ! Make sure to check out The Hotwives of Orlando now over at www.hulu.com !Als...
Welcome to the 1st ANNUAL HOWDIES!!! Break out the tuxedo and join Paul, June, and Jason as they look back at the Best Intro Lines, Worst Character Names, the Weirdest Thing Jason Has Been Turned On By, the Best Guest impression, the Most Next Level Bonkers June Theory, and much more. Tune in to find out who will win and stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon! Los Angeles: Get your tickets now for a LIVE HDTGM at Largo on Saturday, September 20th at 8pm over at www.largo-la.com! Make sure to check out The Ho...
90. Sharknado 2: The Second One (w/ Scott Aukerman)
Last year the Syfy channel brought us Sharknado and this year it happened again. Special guest Scott Aukerman returns for a very special episode of How Did This Get Made? about Sharknado 2: The Second One. From the "homages" to other various movies, to whether a shark bit off Tara's whole arm or just her hand, to Al Roker & Matt Lauer having huge roles in the movie, to the Statue of Liberty's head becoming the boulder from Indiana Jones, to all the cameos which include Jared the Subway guy & Biz Markie, to ...
87. Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back (w/ Nick Thune)
You know a sequel is good when none of the original actors from the first film are involved and the lead in the movie is not an actor but instead a lawyer. The hilarious Nick Thune joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back. They'll cover everything from the real time driving scenes to all the confusing flashbacks to the terrible sound design....
Prequel to Episode 84
Prequel to Episode 84 by How Did This Get Made?...
82. Double Team (w/ Owen Burke)
Owen Burke of Owen & TJ Read the News joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss Van Damme & Rodman in 1997's Double Team. They cover everything from the tiger tipping off Mickey Rourke at the amusement park, to Rodman's basketball zingers, to the cyber monks, to being saved from a colosseum explosion with the help of a Coke machine. People of Los Angeles, make sure to get tickets for the added 10pm LIVE How Did This Get Made? on Friday, March 14th at Largo! Get tickets at www.largo-la.com Also, grab yourself a...
81. Mortal Kombat (w/ Cameron Esposito)
If you loved the game, you might hate this movie. Put Your Hands Together/Wham Bam Pow host Cameron Esposito joins Paul, June, and Jason to talk all about MORTAL KOMBAT. They discuss the mortals being unfazed by the supernatural, Christopher Lambert's wig, and the anticlimactic fight with Goro aka four arms. Plus, we learn about June's relationship with video games, find out Jason's thoughts on the movie's soundtrack, and hear one of the most amazing reviews during Second Opinions....
80 Jack Frost: LIVE! (w/ Dan Harmon)
Dan Harmon joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the Michael Keaton classic Jack Frost in another LIVE episode recorded at Largo in Los Angeles! They talk about George Clooney's connection to the movie, the snowman's journey from bad dad to bad husband, the premise being identical to that of a horror movie, and the emotional roller coaster June was on while watching the movie. May you all have snow dads!...
79. Deck the Halls: LIVE! (w/ Andrea Savage)
Finally, a movie where you don't know who to root for. Recorded LIVE at Largo in Los Angeles, Andrea Savage joins Paul, June, & Jason to discuss Matthew Broderick & Danny DeVito in Deck the Halls! They'll get into whether Danny DeVito plays a con man, the character journey of Kristin Davis & her cook book, the cross dressing sheriff, and the super sexual dance number during the town's Christmas show. Plus, Andrea has some inside information from the set of the movie that explains so much. Happy New Year!...
78. Crossroads (w/ Jeff Rubin)
It's not a music video and not yet a movie. Jeff Rubin of The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss Britney Spears in 2002's Crossroads. They talk about why you shouldn't judge the movie from the poster, the many similarities to Adventures in Babysitting, the heavy secrets montage, and the very dark ending. Plus, Paul gives everyone a Pop Quiz that features some insane trivia!...
77. Hudson Hawk (w/ Emily Gordon)
Emily Gordon of The Indoor Kids joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss Bruce Willis' cappuccino obsession, Nintendo references, and burglary duets in Hudson Hawk. They cover everything from the candy bar named bad guys to Andie MacDowell being Nundercover....
76. Fair Game (w/ Danny Zuker)
Modern Family's Danny Zuker joins Paul, June, and Jason to figure out how Cindy Crawford was given a starring role in 1995's Fair Game. They'll discuss the absurdity of someone having a pizza account, Cindy Crawford being awful at seducing a super nerd, and what exactly the film's title refers to. Be sure to get tickets for Paul's Christmas Spectacular and a LIVE Holiday edition of How Did This Get Made? (2nd LATE show added) at Largo in Los Angeles on December 12th & 13th!...
75. Daredevil (w/ Ed Brubaker)
Writer and Daredevil expert Ed Brubaker join Paul, June, and Jason to break down Ben Affleck's blind performance in both the theatrical version and director's cut of Daredevil. They'll cover everything from the sitcom looking streets, Bullseye treating his forehead like a nipple, the playground fight/dance scene, and the huge subplot involving a drug addict played by Coolio which was cut from the theatrical version. Spoiler: June loved it!...
74. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
It's a HDTGM first as Paul, June, and Jason go guestless this week to tackle the terrifyingly terrible Halloween III: Season of the Witch. They'll discuss Dr. Sexy Detective sleeping with everyone, the robots full of goo, the evil Irish novelty toy manufacturer's reason for his big Halloween plan, Marge Guttman's bedwear, and Stonehenge lasers. The gang also explains how they would turn humans into robots if they were evil masterminds right before getting into another edition of Second Opinions. 8 more days...
72. Toys (w/ Drew McWeeny)
HitFix's Drew McWeeny joins Paul & Jason to discuss the less charming and more preachy Willy Wonka aka Robin Williams in Toys. It takes a special kind of movie with a strange choice of casting, tone, and plot for us to truly ask "how did this get made?" And this movie delivers. We get into everything from LL Cool J's interrogation scene to the big reveal of Joan Cusack's character. Oh yeah, we didn't forget about the sea monster....
71. The Glimmer Man (w/ Jon Lajoie)
Get your deer penis out right now because The League's Jon Lajoie joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss Steven Seagal's The Glimmer Man. Is this a buddy cop film? How is it that Seagal's character is a man of peace yet he violently murders a ton of Russian terrorists with a credit card? Is there a separate storyline that involved Keenen Ivory Wayans' character getting in touch with his emotions? They'll get into all of this and more!...
70. Gymkata: LIVE! (w/ Michael Showalter)
Recorded live at Largo in Los Angeles, Michael Showalter joins Paul, June, & Jason to discuss the next level bonkers movie that combines gymnastics & karate, Gymkata! They'll get into the Kurt Thomas flipping as he talks to himself scene, the questionable effectiveness of arrows in the film, flag ninjas, the village of the crazies, and the infamous pommel horse scene. Plus, audience questions make us wonder how the director of Enter The Dragon went from working with Bruce Lee to Kurt Thomas. Make sure to go...
69. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (w/ Eddie Pepitone, Matthew Berry)
That's not a podcast, THIS is a podcast! The Bitter Buddha himself, Eddie Pepitone joins us this week to talk about Crocodile Dundee's misadventures in Los Angeles! We discuss the confusion over the spider in the hat scene, the Beverly Hills Cop-esque plot that appears later in the movie, and the insanity of the skunk in the freeway. Then, ESPN fantasy sports analyst Matthew Berry explains how he become involved in writing the movie, how he & his writing partner got into a public dispute with Paul Hogan ove...
66. Demolition Man: LIVE! (w/ Wyatt Cenac)
Recorded LIVE at SubCulture in New York, Wyatt Cenac joins us as we dive into the futuristic world of Demolition Man! We discuss the frozen Sylvester Stallone cube, the slang of the future, the possibility that Wesley Snipes improvised every one of his lines, Denis Leary's rant, and seashell wiping. Get ready for some spot on Stallone/Snipes impressions!...
67. Sharknado (w/ Scott Aukerman)
ATTENTION: There was a film that came on Syfy channel that was so important that we had to disrupt our regularly scheduled programming in order to present to you a very special episode of How Did This Get Made? about Sharknado. Most Valuable Podcaster, Scott Aukerman returns to help us figure out the importance of the ship captain opening scene, if a sharknado is scientifically possible, how Tara Reid become a part of this, and where the government was throughout the movie. Plus, June delivers an amazing pe...
65. Howard the Duck: LIVE! (w/ Kristen Schaal)
Recorded live at Largo in Los Angeles, Kristen Schaal joins Paul, June, & Jason to ask burning questions regarding duck boobies, how a duck's penis works, and duck evolution in the world of Howard the Duck. Everything from Lea Thompson's strange sexual relationship with Howard the Duck to the disturbing Jeffrey Jones electricity scene will be discussed. Oh yeah, there will be duck puns! Be sure to check out the screen grabs that were discussed in this episode on the Earwolf page!...
64. After Earth (w/ Paul F. Tompkins)
Giant birds, weird wheelchairs, and ghosting are just some of the unbelievable things that are found in the Will & Jaden Smith vehicle After Earth. Paul, June, Jason, and Paul F. Tompkins discuss future British accents, an emotionless Will Smith, and animals that do nothing but kill. They also talk about the possible references to Scientology, a future with no doors & only a sword as a weapon, and June's interpretation of what really happened in the birthday candles flashback scene....
63. Fast & Furious 6 (w/ Adam Scott)
Standing ovations were made and tears were shed as Paul, June, Jason, and Adam Scott strapped themselves in for another Fast & Furious adventure complete with fast cars, amnesia, and family. They discuss why the incredible feats these drag racers accomplish must make them superheroes, Tyrese & Ludacris absolutely killing it as the comic-relief, Han's long emotional journey, the larger than life body of The Rock, and the jaw-dropping post-credits scene that made Adam Scott declare that director Justin Lin mu...
62. Joyful Noise
(w/ Fred Stoller)
Queen Latifah & Dolly Parton were in a gospel filled musical with so many plots that it will make your head spin! Fred Stoller joins us to talk about the strange heart attacks that kill of two characters in the movie, the bum wiping vs turd in tissue issue that Queen's son with Asperger's syndrome faces with, and who is shooting the footage of Queen & her husband hugging at a park. We also cover the diner food fight scene, Dolly's partial duet with her dead husband/ghost self, and the big medley at the end ...
61. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (w/ Kate Spencer)
The wonderful Kate Spencer joins us this week to discuss the Sylvester Stallone & Estelle Getty classic Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. We discuss everything from infant fetishizing, diaper nightmares, and the possibility that all the characters in the film have borderline personality disorder. Tune in to hear us try to make sense of a movie that Sylvester himself is ashamed of. Enjoy!...
60. Street Fighter (w/ John Gemberling)
Finally a movie stayed true to its video game adaptation by having no plot. John Gemberling joins Paul, June, and Jason to figure out who is a native of Shadaloo, why Jean-Claude Van Damme pretends to be dead for a really long time, and what the hell was the reason for Van Damme to play a home video tape while driving a boat. They'll also share their favorite lines, explore all the shoehorned elements of the video game, and explain to June what "street fighting" really means....
59. Spice World (w/ Retta)
Can anyone explain the plot of Spice World? Parks and Rec's Retta joins us to try to make sense of the movie's nonsense such as; the gigantic interior of the bus, the pregnant Asian friend, and why Ginger Spice kisses an alien on the mouth. We'll also get into the Italian men asses scene, why Retta had a dream about George Wendt, and the possibility of a character contemplating suicide. That's not all, tune in to find who Paul, June, Jason, and Retta would be if they were Spice Girls. Girl Power, bro!...
58. In The Name of The King (w/ Seth Morris)
Seth Morris aka Bob Ducca joins us as we try to figure out what the hell happened in Uwe Boll's In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. We talk about how Jason Statham's character could care less about the death of his son, Matthew Lillard's use of his ren fair experience, and plastic Burt Reynolds. Jason & June recreate one of the romantic scenes, Seth explains how Ray Liotta has cocaine eyes, and Paul had a tough time finding 5 star Amazon reviews. Jump out of that tree and take a listen!...
57. From Justin To Kelly: LIVE!
Recorded live at Largo in Los Angeles, Nick Kroll returns as we figure out what is going on in the American Idol musical that is From Justin To Kelly! We discuss Kelly Clarkson's outfit choices, if anyone could hear each other singing, and who's which Grease character. We also talk about Justin & Kelly's disgusting first meeting, the evil Paris Hilton stunt double, and the awful Pennsylvania Posse beat box on the beach. Who does Jason believe is behind the making of this movie? Tune in to find out!...
56. Nothing But Trouble
The League's Steve Rannazzisi joined us on a journey into the weird mind of Dan Aykroyd as we watched the truly upsetting Nothing But Trouble. We discuss the baffling set up to the drastically different second half of the movie, if the 2 large greasy men in diapers are indeed humans, and why Digital Underground would choose to take the detour into the run-down village of Valkenvania. We also talk about how John Candy looked depressed to be in this movie, Dan Aykroyd's obsession with gadgets, and the fact th...
54. The Odd Life of Timothy Green (w/ Tim Heidecker)
Tim Heidecker joins us for what turns out to be a serious discussion about The Odd Life of Timothy Green. We talk about Timothy's relationship with Baby Mila Kunis, the Titanic portrait drawing scene, and Common sizing up kids to be on a soccer team. Jason teared up once again, Tim genuinely likes the movie for what it is, and Paul & June didn't enjoy it....
53. Anaconda: LIVE! (w/ Michael Ian Black)
Recorded live at the Bell House with Michael Ian Black join us as we unfurl the catastrophe that is Anaconda! We discuss the cast including Jon Voight who plays his character as a French Robert De Niro from South America, Jennifer Lopez as a documentarian, and a guy named Mateo. We also talk about whether they should have let the snake talk, translation mistakes, and Jon Voight's surprising athleticism. You mean there are snakes out there this big? Listen to find out....
52. Reindeer Games
Join us this Christmas as we discuss one of the worst holiday-themed movies to come out two months after December, Reindeer Games. We talk about terrible open-mouthed kissing, how much Ben Affleck likes pecan pie, and a strange cameo by Ashton Kutcher. Also, we learn all about Paul's intimate relationship history with his mom. Joining us this week is Who Charted's Howard Kremer who helps us learn about symbolism and what the holidays really mean. There are no reindeer games here! Happy holidays from How Did...
51. Liz and Dick (w/ Drew Droege)
Join us as we discuss the crazy time jumps and smashed bottles that make up Lifetimes Liz & Dick. We discuss everything from the career of Lindsay Lohan to the inexpiable togas seen throughout the film. Don't forget to grab your Vodka Vodka and "Norbit it up" for this spectacularly bad made-for-TV movie that we saw with the incomparable Groundling, Drew Droege....
49. Cobra: LIVE (w/ Brian Posehn, Rhett Miller)
Imagine Dirty Harry but more violent and with robots. Our two special guests Brian Posehn and Rhett Miller joined us to talk about Cobra on this week's How Did This Get Made? LIVE at Bumbershoot! We discuss everything from Stallone's obsession with food, the modeling shoot music video, and the New Order's decision to attack in bright daylight. That's not all, we also open it up to questions and hear about Jason's childhood fear of killer clowns. Feel the heat!...
46. Barb Wire (w/ Jesse Thorn)
Fans of gratuitous side boob are in luck as we discuss Barb Wire on today's How Did This Get Made! America's Radio Sweetheart Jesse Thorn joins us to talk about Barb's wardrobe being full of black leather bustiers, Big Fatso's amazing performance, and how this movie is a rip-off of Casablanca. Plus, we cover the crotch biting dog, prostitute medical cards, and steel bikini torture....
44. Jaws 4: The Revenge (w/ Jake Fogelnest)
Bipolar moms. shark senses, and bad Jamaican accents are all covered in this week's How Did This Get Made? We welcome Jake Fogelnest to chat about a movie sequel that promises to be personal, Jaws 4: The Revenge! So be sure to join us for an important discussion on Mario Van Peebles's fully improvised role, the lost cocaine/voodoo subplot, and an ending that did not benefit from being re-shot....
43. Wild Wild West (w/ Kevin Smith)
Kevin Smith comes prepared with his Kenneth Branagh & Salma Hayek impressions on this week's How Did This Get Made? Kevin joins Paul, Jason, and June to share his early involvement with a Superman movie that reveals the origin of the giant spider. We also get into Dr. Loveless's spider fetish, the huge robot dildo, how racist the old west was, and Bai Ling....
42. Batman & Robin (w/ Matt Mira, Jesse Falcon)
Superhero butt shots, bat nipples, and freeze puns are all up for discussion on this week's How Did This Get Made? The Nerdist podcast's Matt Mira and Marvel's Jesse Falcon join us to chat about a movie that easily can be seen as a really long action figure commercial, Batman & Robin! So Stay cool and be sure to winterize your podcast ears!...
40. Judge Dredd (w/ Erica Oyama)
Pick up a plate of recycled spaghetti and join Erica Oyama and the How Did This Get Made? crew for a look at Judge Dredd. Block wars. That about covers it. Join us on this trip to Aspen with Rob Schneider and enjoy the horrible sets and futuristic insanity. Enjoy!...
39. Godzilla (w/ Chris Gore)
Pop on your headphones, but be careful no giant dinosaurs sneak up on you! Attack Of The Show's Chris Gore bravely sat through Godzilla to discuss this summer movie disaster with the HDTGM crew, and it's agreed that cute baby Godzillas eating popcorn aren't enough to save this one. Keep suggesting bad summer movies for us to cover, and join HDTGM's Summer Movie League to compete for a cool prize!...
37. Speed 2: Cruise Control (w/ Scott Aukerman)
Are you listening to this podcast on a computer? If so, you could be a villain in Speed 2! In this epic summer sequel we lament the absence of Keanu, marvel at the lack of deaths when a cruise ship levels a community, and wonder why computer genius Willem Dafoe has a gun if he never uses it. Do you have a bad summer movie you think we should cover?...
36. On the Line (w/ Ike Barinholtz)
On the Line is a tale as old as time, the love story of Turkey Sub and Hubcap. What happens when boy banders try their hand at acting? Bizarre sound effects, terrible musical performances, and lots and lots of chewing noises. Ike Barinholtz joins us to discuss a movie so shamefully bad that even its most ardent supporters hide themselves with nom de plumes. So tune into one of the 90,000 screens playing it, and while you're at it, pick up a brand new How Did This Get Made? t-shirt !...
Minisode 35.5
It is time for yet another minisode. Are you ready to learn what your movie assignment for the week is? Well this week's movie is, drum roll please...........you didn't think I'd just TELL you, did you?...
35. Tiptoes (w/ Dave Holmes)
There is no tiptoeing around it, this movie blows! Not even a French Peter Dinklage in cornrows can save this non-comedy about a full-sized dwarf dealing with his wife's pregnancy. Not sold yet? Neither is Dave Holmes who joined us in watching this Sundance "Official Selection."...
28. Crank: Director's Edition
We can never talk enough about Crank and Crank 2. Fortunately we found someone just as excited about the movies to chat with us: Brian Taylor, the co-writer/director of the franchise. He joins Paul and Jason to tell us about Bai Ling's improvising, Jason Statham's secret comedic prowess, and what that mysterious underwear stain really was. As if that wasn't enough, he brings us the inside scoop from working with Nic Cage. We are proud to welcome Brian this week for latest HDTGM Director's Edition!...
If you have a little sister or niece there is a good chance you were forced into seeing The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 over the holidays. So that your torture won't be in vain, we've chosen it as our next How Did This Get Made? selection! Help us our by using Eardrop to record a tagline for the movie and you could hear it on next week's episode. See you then!...
26 Jingle All The Way
You'd think that the comedic prowess of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the acting talents of Sinbad, and the star power of a Jim Belushi cameo would make for the ultimate Christmas movie! Instead we have an illogical and unbelievable commercial masked as a movie. Join the How Did This Get Made? crew and Joe Mande for this bonus holiday episode and listen in to hear if your Eardrop made it! Happy Holidays!...
23. The Room: Director's Edition
We're very fortunate to have two experts this week joining us to discuss The Room. First off we have Steve Heisler from The AV Club who has made it his journalistic duty to learn everything he can about this disaster. Also joining us is Mark (Oh, hi Mark!), aka Greg Sestero who also worked behind-the-scenes as a producer. Tuxedo football, outdoor green screens, unnecessary double casting, Mark knows how it all came to be and he's here to share it all with us. Enjoy!...
There are so many fantastically bad horror films we could have chosen for this Halloween episode of How Did This Get Made?! We've combined our love of cheesy horror and unnecessary sequels and selected Leprechaun in the Hood. Are you good at photoshop? This week's game is for you. Design a better Leprechaun in the Hood poster for us and you might see it on Earwolf.com! Watch the movie, design the poster, get tickets for HDTGM LIVE, and have a spooky Halloween!...
For the first time ever, How Did This Get Made? has invited a director to join us in discussing their movie. Our guests next week will be comedian Patton Oswalt and director Lexi Alexander who will help us discuss Punisher: War Zone. This episode is coming out earlier than usual (October 3rd) so submit your questions for Lexi as soon as possible. And if you live on Los Angeles, be sure to see Punisher: War Zone at the New Beverly on October 4th....
How did we get this far without covering Gigli? The quintessential bad movie, it has remained a go-to punchline for nearly a decade. Catch Gigli out on DVD or Netflix Instant, and be sure to give us your new and improved title right here on Earwolf....
16. The Smurfs (w/ Paul F. Tompkins)
The Smurfs is a movie about an ad executive who is struggling with a pregnant girlfriend and a big assignment at work. Am I missing anything? Paul F. Tompkins joins the gang to discuss this kid's movie and its many flaws: The unnecessarily complicated language, the blatant animal abuse, the awkward casting of Tim Gunn, even the terrible trailers are up for judgment. We introduce the first ever Second Opinions segment, and as always close it up with You've Got Mail. If you've got a child's heart, or had to d...
15. The Back-Up Plan (w/ Jackie Clarke)
When the most striking attributes of a film are its too-loud eating sounds and hot dog centric bloopers, you know it's a prime candidate for How Did This Get Made?! This week Jackie Clarke joins Paul, June, and Jason to travel through the cheese caves and baby pools that populate this JLo flick. If you were concerned by the drinking, put off by the pratfalls, or curious about bush sightings, you are not alone! Listen in and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear your own backup plan....
13. Crank 2: High Voltage (w/ Jensen Karp)
Why can't more movies be like Crank 2? Sure it's racist, sexist, implausible and disgusting, but that's what makes it so much fun! Jensen Karp is our lucky guest in the studio with Paul and June (Jason is still in New York, but is live via satellite or something), and together they figure how tar enemas and full-body Tourette's can make Chev Chelios' second adventure so much better than the first. If this podcast doesn't get your heart pumping, well…you'll die, I guess. So you better listen!...
Minisode 13
What is better than one Crank film? TWO CRANK FILMS! Our movie for the week is Crank 2: High Voltage which is so adrenaline-fueled and insane that we have to ask: How could they possibly continue this franchise? Send us your ideas for Crank 3 here and on Facebook and we'll read our favorites on air!...
12. The Love Guru (w/ Matt Walsh)
Wayne's World was a successful sketch-turned-movie that satirized the music and mentality of the time with absolute precision. Austin Powers hit the cultural zeitgeist so hard that the quotes and characters remain in public consciousness. The Love Guru is, uh…well, it's a movie, that's for sure. Matt Walsh, director of the upcoming film High Road, joins the How Did This Get Made crew (including an internet connected Jason) to discuss how this pro-enlightenment, over-written piece of garbage got made. He eve...
11. The Tourist (w/ Gil Ozeri, Natasha Leggero)
When you pair two superstars like Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, what's the worst that can happen? Apparently it's The Tourist. Jason lucked out and missed this movie, but Paul, June, and special guests Natasha Leggero and Gil Ozeri are here to discuss the bad accents and lack of chemistry that fill this Golden Globe nominated film. Be sure to check out the newly redesigned Earwolf website where you can buy the Ridiculous Cage shirt and donate to help buy us a new studio. We promise not to spend it on plas...
Minisode Ten
The result of our Facebook poll is in! Did you get confused between the awesome comic and the terrible movie known as Jonah Hex? Did your vote for Mac & Me come with a large Coke and a side of fries? Or did you get invaded by the aliens of Skyline while completing the questionnaire? Whichever one you picked, it's time to watch it and send us the moral of the crappy, awful story!...
7. All About Steve (w/ Brandon Johnson)
Sorry for the delay with this episode, but it takes a while to fully comprehend All About Steve. Paul, Jason, June, and special guest Brandon Johnson tried their hardest, but still couldn't figure out how this mildly racist, poorly structured, bizarrely performed movie got made. See if you can guess how much money this flop cost to make, and listen for your alternate horror movie titles....
6. Battlefield Earth (w/ Rob Huebel)
It is rumored that Battlefield Earth contains subliminal messages designed to brainwash people into joining The Church of Scientology. If so, Paul, Jason, June, and Rob Huebel are the smartest, most able-minded people ever to sit down and suffer through it. If you share Jason's rage at the inconsistency of this film or Rob's anger at the extreme un-sexiness of the characters, than you must join us for this celebration of awfulness. Plus, listen to hear if your Razzie category was selected. Keep sending in y...
4. The Last Airbender (w/ Jon Daly)
Some movies are so bad they're good, some are so bad they're bad, and then there's The Last Airbender. It's the story of the lil' Avatar that could, and is riddled with enough racism and weird dialogue to disorient you for days. Jon Daly somehow got roped into the torture of this movie, and joins Paul, June, and Jason to work through the pain. Listen to hear if your back-handed compliment was used, and leave us comments on Earwolf and Facebook if you can explain the whole moon princess storyline....
1. Burlesque (w/ Nick Kroll)
Paul Scheer and his friends went to see Burlesque, and you might be shocked to hear that they didn't like it. Paul, June, Jason, and guest Nick Kroll help us sift through the glitter and sadness that makes up this Golden Globe nominated film. June shares with us some of the life lessons she learned from this future-classic and everyone shares their personal "WHAT THE FUCK?" moment. Email us at [email protected] with your thoughts on Burlesque and nominations for future movies to investigate....
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Find Full Archive of How Did This Get Made on Stitcher Premium... | {
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Perrigo Issues Shareholder Letter
Nov 9, 2015 11:33am
DUBLIN, Nov. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Perrigo Company plc ("Perrigo," "the Company") (NYSE: PRGO; TASE) today issued the following shareholder letter:
Perrigo Company
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, MYLAN STYLE: A QUESTION OF TRUST
Dear Perrigo Shareholder,
At Perrigo transparency and openness with our shareholders is the hallmark of our management's style. Yet, over the last seven months, and as recently as this past week, we are reminded yet again how poorly Mylan approaches this topic.
Because recent events have only increased our concerns over Mylan's poor governance practices and paltry record of honest communication with shareholders, we urge you as a shareholder to protect your right to have a voice in how your company is managed by taking NO ACTION and REJECTING the offer from Mylan.
MYLAN'S QUESTIONABLE GOVERNANCE PRACTICES
Mylan's poor governance practices are legendary. Examples include Mylan's CEO stating that the U.S. is "too shareholder centric," Mylan consistently receiving the worst possible governance score from ISS, a leading independent proxy advisory firm, and Mylan using an extreme governance structure to reject Teva's attractive offer and destroy potentially $19 billion in shareholder value. And this poor practice continues.
Just less than 10 days ago, on Friday October 30, 2015, shareholders and media alike learned that Mylan is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for dubious land transactions between Mylan and its vice chairman, lead "independent" director and compensation committee chief, Rodney Piatt. According to a July 2015 article in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Piatt, sold land to a business partner's firm for just $1. One day later, Mylan purchased the land for $2.9 million from that same partner's firm, and the partner reimbursed Mr. Piatt for an undisclosed amount.[i] Not only did Mylan wait a full seven weeks to make any disclosure about this SEC subpoena, but it buried the disclosure in a footnote on Page 53 of a Friday-afternoon filing that never explained the specific subject of the SEC's inquiry. Shareholders deserve better.
This approach to disclosure is typical for Mylan, whose own shareholders are suing the Company for not properly disclosing its draconian anti-takeover defenses when it sought a vote for its prior inversion transaction. And now the SEC has taken notice, recently passing a rule to require companies conducting acquisitions to more clearly identify material changes in their governance documents – changes that one commentator has dubbed the "Mylan Rule."[ii]
MYLAN'S GOVERNANCE "REFORMS" ARE ILLUSORY
Now, just as Mylan's offer for Perrigo is about to expire, Mylan's management has said that it is considering governance changes if the offer is successful. Yet, after having seven months to upgrade its broken corporate governance, Mylan offers only vague categories of topics, not specific proposals (let alone their recommendations or a realistic path to achievement). Worse, Mylan noted it would only consider possible governance changes if it completes its offer – Mylan won't even make these changes for its own shareholders!
The conditional and vague nature of Mylan's announcement demonstrates its motivations and true beliefs on governance. It is a desperate tactic, not a core governance belief. This remarkable conceit – that shareholders would accept a conditional promise on a vague topic without a clear roadmap to implementation – is what Mylan is asking you to substitute for tangible governance reform.
TRYING TO SCARE SHAREHOLDERS INTO TENDERING
Rather than practice good governance by being transparent and open with shareholders, Mylan is spreading misinformation designed to scare shareholders into tendering into its grossly inadequate offer. After issuing coercive threats about delisting, we now hear that Mylan is pushing shareholders to act before November 13 or be "left behind." Please do not believe this scare tactic. In the unlikely event that Mylan crosses the 50% threshold, Irish law requires a "subsequent offering period" for the following 14 days, after November 13. In other words, you can wait to tender into the subsequent offering period and receive the exact same consideration (regardless of Perrigo's share price) as if you tendered before November 13 – a fact that Mylan does not want emphasized. Mylan would be required to accept any such shares daily, and promptly pay for them on the same T+3 settlement schedule as shares tendered by November 13.
We believe our shareholders know better than to be fooled by Mylan's governance and scare tactics. Mylan's record of governance failures and misrepresentations speaks for itself – and it is a message that continues to repel investors.
Perrigo's Board of Directors strongly and unequivocally recommends that you DO NOT TENDER your shares into Mylan's offer.
Joseph C. Papa
Perrigo Company plc
Irish Takeover Rules
The directors of Perrigo accept responsibility for the information contained in this announcement. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the directors of Perrigo (who have taken all reasonable care to ensure such is the case), the information contained in this announcement is in accordance with the facts and does not omit anything likely to affect the import of such information.
A person interested in 1% or more of any class of relevant securities of Perrigo or Mylan may have disclosure obligations under Rule 8.3 of the Irish Takeover Panel Act, 1997, Takeover Rules, 2013 ("Irish Takeover Rules").
A disclosure table, giving details of the companies in whose "relevant securities" "dealings" should be disclosed can be found on the Irish Takeover Panel's website at www.irishtakeoverpanel.ie. "Interests in securities" arise, in summary, when a person has long economic exposure, whether conditional or absolute, to changes in the price of securities. In particular, a person will be treated as having an "interest" by virtue of the ownership or control of securities, or by virtue of any option in respect of, or derivative referenced to, securities. Terms in quotation marks are defined in the Irish Takeover Rules, which can be found on the Irish Takeover Panel's website.
Rule 27 of the Takeover Rules
There has been no material change to the information contained in Annex C of the Schedule 14D-9. With respect to the specific information requirements of Rule 27.1, there have been no changes to the information previously provided in Annex C of the Schedule 14D-9 as supplemented by the information provided in the letter to shareholders dated October 22nd, 2015 containing the profit forecasts of Perrigo for calendar year 2015 and calendar year 2016 (the "Profit Forecasts").
Rule 28.5 of the Takeover Rules
The directors of Perrigo confirm that the Profit Forecasts remain valid and each of EY and Morgan Stanley have indicated that they have no objection to their reports dated October 22nd, 2015 continuing to apply to the Profit Forecasts.
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acting through its affiliate, Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc, is financial advisor to Perrigo and no one else in connection with the matters referred to in this announcement. In connection with such matters, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc, each of their affiliates and each of their and their affiliates' respective directors, officers, employees and agents will not regard any other person as their client, nor will they be responsible to any other person other than Perrigo for providing the protections afforded to their clients or for providing advice in connection with the contents of this announcement or any other matter referred to herein.
Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or the Company's future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements of the Company or its industry to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "could," "would," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "intend," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential" or other comparable terminology. The Company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While the Company believes these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Risks and uncertainties include future actions that may be taken by Mylan in furtherance of its unsolicited offer; the timing, amount and cost of share repurchases; and the ability to execute and achieve the desired benefits of announced initiatives. These and other important factors, including those discussed under "Risk Factors" in the Perrigo Company's Form 10-K for the year ended June 27, 2015, as well as the Company's subsequent filings with the SEC, may cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this press release are made only as of the date hereof, and unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Additional Information and Where to Find It
This letter does not constitute an offer to buy or solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. In response to the exchange offer commenced by Mylan N.V., Perrigo has filed a solicitation/recommendation statement on Schedule 14D-9 with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Security holders are urged to read the solicitation/recommendation statement and other relevant materials if and when they become available because they will contain important information. The solicitation/recommendation statement and other SEC filings made by Perrigo may be obtained (when available) without charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and at the investor relations section of the Perrigo website at perrigo.investorroom.com. Shareholders may also obtain copies of the information by contacting Mackenzie Partners, Inc. at 212-929-5500 or 800-322-2885 Toll-Free in North America or by email at [email protected]
Perrigo Company plc, a top five global over-the-counter (OTC) consumer goods and pharmaceutical company, offers patients and customers high quality products at affordable prices. From its beginnings in 1887 as a packager of generic home remedies, Perrigo, headquartered in Ireland, has grown to become the world's largest manufacturer of OTC products and supplier of infant formulas for the store brand market. The Company is also a leading provider of generic extended topical prescription products and receives royalties from Multiple Sclerosis drug Tysabri®. Perrigo provides "Quality Affordable Healthcare Products®" across a wide variety of product categories and geographies primarily in North America, Europe, and Australia, as well as other markets, including Israel and China.
A copy of this announcement will be available on Perrigo's website at www.perrigo.com.
[i] Maremont, Mark. "Director at Generic-Drug Giant Mylan Had Undisclosed Ties to Land Deal." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones, 6 July 2015.
[ii] Solomon, Steven Davidoff. "Regulators Unbundle Some Attractions of Mergers." The New York Times. N.p., 3 Nov. 2015.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120301/DE62255LOGO
For further information: For further information: Arthur J. Shannon, Vice President, Investor Relations and Global Communications, (269) 686-1709, [email protected]; Bradley Joseph, Director, Investor Relations and Global Communications, (269) 686-3373, [email protected] | {
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With 3.7 Billion Messages Under Its Belt, GOGII's textPlus Launches Picture Messaging & Face Texts
Jason Kincaid @jasonkincaid / 10 years
At first glance, the stats from free text messaging startup GOGII and its textPlus application sound like they're too big by an order of magnitude: 3.7 billion messages sent since June 2009. 8.5 million downloads. 23 million phone numbers in the network. But they're real, and they're a big business. Today the company is launching two new features that make the textPlus experience even richer, with support for sending images and a nifty new feature called 'Face Text'.
The first feature is self-explanatory: you can attach images to your outbound text messages and send them for free. The second feature, called Face Text, is related, but it comes with a twist. Upon activating the feature, textPlus will take a photo using your phone's front-facing camera whenever you hit the send button, allowing you to quickly attach facial expressions whenever you send a message (think of it as emoticons meeting the photo booth — see the screenshot above). You can turn it off and there's a countdown timer so the feature should never surprise you, and I suspect that the teenage audience that absolutely loves these apps will eat this up.
GOGII is one of a new breed of startup building on the relatively ancient and ubiquitous technology of text messaging. They compete with Pinger's TextFree, which we wrote about last week and has similarly massive stats, and both companies have grown by leaps and bounds in the last year (interestingly, both Pinger and GOGII are part of the Kleiner Perkins iFund).
GOGII's textPlus shares at least one major feature in common with Pinger's TextFree: it allows you to send unlimited free text messages to your friends. But textPlus has a few differences. For one, it doesn't give you a new unique phone number like TextFree does — instead you'll have to message your friend's username to the GOGII shortcode (users will be able to get their own phone numbers in the near future).
Another key differences lies in the community nature of textPlus, which TextFree doesn't offer yet. The service effectively brings chat rooms to the mobile phone — fire up the app and you can create or join a chat room about, say, skateboarding, which behaves a lot like the AOL chat rooms of yore (around 500,000 communities have been created so far). But you can also elect to receive push notifications whenever there's a new message, which turns into a powerful tool when you combine the feature with a private community. GOGII says that many people create private communities for their families or sports teams, which can be powerful for staying in touch with a small group: when a member of these private communities sends a chat message, it gets immediately relayed to everyone else in the community. | {
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Q: How to get the specs of a server? I have a virtual machine and boss says "Hey, get me the specs on that server." Presumable because she wants to acquire a comparable one and will ask me to set it up from a backup of our current one.
What's a simple easy way to get the relevant specs?
The VMWare vSphere Client's Summary tab for the virtual machine is completely useless. It truncates all the strings such as the processor name and provides no way to see the whole string. Other settings provide only generic information such as the number of CPU cores.
I also don't know what "specs" she wants in particular, so your guess is as good as mine... whatever would be relevant for setting up a comparable virtual machine. I suppose as much information about the CPU type and speed as possible, network card and speed, OS, memory, disk sizes, etc.
I wish there was just a "getspecs" command I could run at the command line.
A: Coworker just recommended running "dxdiag" from the command line. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool pops up with a "System Information" group on the main tab, which displays:
*
*Computer Name: ~omitting~
*Operating System: Windows Server 2012 Datacenter 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200)
*Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
*System Manufacturer: VMware, Inc.
*System Model: VMware Virtual Platform
*BIOS: PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
*Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 0 @ 2.2GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
*Memory: 4096MB RAM
*Page file: 3579MB used, 1220MB available
But it doesn't show disk sizes or anything else.
A: My favorite way to do this is with RVtools. It is free and trusted, it connects to your vCenter server. It is easy to install connect and extract data for an number of VMs.
Helpful hints for RVtools find the view\filter at the top. You can highlight the data wanted and use cntl + c to copy or go to file and export. strong text
Also note that from Windows cmd C:\systeminfo is helpful for finding what you need.
A: Interesting question from your boss, but one that's largely irrelevant in the world of virtualisation.
The specification of your host servers is more relevant, that is, maintaining compatible processor families in your DRS cluster(s), e.g.: compatible EVC modes. Moving on from here, the next most relevant question is how much resource headroom you have; with RAM more often than not being more important that CPU bandwidth, disk I/O or network I/O.
So, if it's a capacity management exercise your boss is trying to address, I'd dig out the host specs (server make/model, #sockets, #cores, hyper-threading setting, EVC mode, physical RAM, #NICs, #HBAs), and their associated loadings, over, say a seven day period.
If it's merely a VM spec she's after, then guest O/S, RAM allocation, number of vCPUs, CPU shares/limits, memory shares/limits should suffice.
All of this is available through vCenter, although not in one place. My preference here is PowerCLI - you can quickly gather all of the above using the VMware cmdlets, such as Get-VMHost, Get-VM. Further information can be gathered using the ".NET views", e.g.:
Connect-ViServer -Server "vcenter-host";
$objGuest = Get-VM -Name "myguestname";
$objGuestView = Get-View -id $objGuest.id;
$objGuest | Format-List;
$objGuestView | Format-List;
The above code is a simple example. Shout if you'd like more info.
A: I would recommend exporting a list. Filter as needed, export to Excel, email to boss and call it a day. And, of course, there are scripts and tools that do essentially the same thing, but I can't imagine why an exported list such as from that link wouldn't be sufficient for the boss.
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Officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an Arab country in Southwest Asia spanning the southern part of the Syrian Desert down to the Gulf of Aqaba. It shares borders with Syria to the north, Iraq to the north-east, the West Bank and Israel to the west, and Saudi Arabia to the east and south. It shares control of the Dead Sea with Israel, and the coastline of the Gulf of Aqaba with the State of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Much of Jordan is covered by desert, particularly the Arabian Desert; however the north-western area, with the Jordan River, is regarded as part of the Fertile Crescent. The capital city of Amman is in the north-west.
Ethnic groups 98% Arab (48% Palestinian, 17% Jordanian, 14% Iraqi, 12% Bedouin, 5% Syrian, 1.6% Cherkess) and 2% others (Race = Mostly Caucasian). | {
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Angela shares her experience on Guide to Style.
Hello! It's been a whirlwind year, and I can't think of a better person to lead the way for me than Tim Gunn. I thought it would be fun to share with you the juicy behind-the-scenes details of filming the show and my experience with it!
I saw a call for the show, and having never seen an episode, I didn't actually know that it was a makeover show. I just saw Tim Gunn's name and since, like a lot of women in America, I had a schoolgirl crush on him, I threw my hat in the ring. After the "audition" held in midtown Manhattan, I got cold feet. I wrote the talent agent, saying that I didn't feel like I was the right fit for the show and suggested some other women instead. She immediately wrote back and said that the producers liked the story of a concert pianist undergoing a major life transformation. She encouraged me to be open to the experience, so I took a deep breath and dove in.
Everyone always asks me what it was like to meet Tim Gunn. It seems that every woman has a crush on him! I still have to pinch myself to believe that I was styled by one of America's foremost fashion gurus. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at the time, but there was a striking familiarity about him. In hindsight, I realize that because he used to be a professor he reminded me of my dad, who was a math professor, and all of my piano professors with whom I had spent countless hours. On the one hand, I found the blunt criticism strangely comforting because, well, that's what professors do and that's what I was used to. On the other hand, it was overwhelming since I had felt that white heat all my life and needed a break from the intense scrutiny. I feel immensely fortunate to have met such a generous spirit who, as he says, is a "truth teller" with impeccable taste and style. Whenever a client tells me how polished I look, I utter thanks to Tim.
Gretta is the fun and supportive girlfriend that everyone should have. She is warm, wise, and intelligent. She has substance and style, and she understands a woman's psychological make-up. I have the utmost respect for her as a businesswoman, and I learned a lot as we all sat around gabbing in between takes.
Ted Gibson is the sweetest person ever! I loved him from the moment I met him. He exudes extraordinary kindness, and he knows how to make a woman feel beautiful. I loved how I felt sitting in his chair, and I cannot sing his praises enough.
Reem's dresses are sheer art. The camera didn't pick up the architectural perfection and the fine details. Her studio felt like a gallery and her work is the kind that stirs emotion, giving one a reason to dream again. Her passion for life is simply contagious.
Is my husband really as sweet and amazing as he comes across on the show? Yes! I think all of my friends and colleagues would agree that rarely have they met a more committed or supportive husband. We've been married for seven years, and I still feel the same way about him as I did on our wedding day. I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have him as my husband!
Since the show, one of the producers indirectly set us up with eLUXURY.com (owned by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey), and Om Aroma, my skincare company, is the first and only luxury organic skincare brand that they carry. I used to always study eLUXURY when I was researching brands so it's an amazing dream come true for me! They have been extremely supportive and committed to our line and even attended the press event that you saw on the show. I used to dream of wearing gorgeous dress pants with a fitted silk charmeuse shirt, a classic Burberry coat, and well-heeled shiny shoes (made for wide feet, of course)! It represents something far beyond fashion--it's about feeling good in my body, loving life enough to get dressed up for it, and living out my dreams. To take a break from the piano for the first time in my life was something that I had also dreamed of since my early twenties. It took a decade to finally do it. More than anything, this whole experience gave me the strength, affirmation and knowledge that I was doing the right thing. Now I will concentrate on Om Aroma and will dedicate the same passion to it as I did to the piano. I can't think of a better--or more stylish--way than to have made that transition with Tim Gunn's Guide to Style! So, Tim, Gretta, and everyone at Bravo, here's to savoring life, making things happen, and having fun--all in a Burberry trench coat. | {
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by Dr Alex Umbers and Dr Kara Thompson
S2 Episode 9: The Birth of a Doula. Holding Space for Women.
Being young, fit and healthy, Gabrielle naturally thought her first pregnancy would progress smoothly. Having never known anyone who had experienced or spoken about miscarriage, Gabrielle's world was rocked by the loss of her first pregnancy. Despite being surrounded by people in New York City, she felt completely alone. Where were the people who understood, the women who had been through something similar, to be with her and to hold her? This was to be the first moment that led Gabrielle to start Gather - a Collective Space for Women, on her return home to Melbourne. Gabrielle also takes us through the subsequent births of her children and how they inspired her to undergo a complete career change and retrain as a Birth Doula . Gabrielle shares the story of her massive postpartum hemorrhage following the birth of her first child, the disconnect in her care experience in her second birth, and finally the healing experience of her third birth. Covering everything from mother guilt, to the importance of the postpartum period, to the beauty of matrescence. This is a story of the birth of a Doula.
The podcast Pregnancy Uncut is embedded on this page from an open RSS feed. All files, descriptions, artwork and other metadata from the RSS-feed is the property of the podcast owner and not affiliated with or validated by Podplay. | {
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Scottish Defence League is a Nazi piece of work
A LEADING member of the sinister far-right Scottish Defence League is today unmasked as a vile racist with links to outlawed neo-Nazis.
The Scottish Sun can reveal hate-filled bigot Paul Newlands is a major driving force behind the prejudice and tensions stirred up by the extremist faction.
He was snapped in Berwick last month at an SDL demo now under investigation by police over sickening racist chants. And the tattoo-covered rabble-rouser uses Facebook and Twitter to spout his bile.
Organisers of the SDL — an offshoot of the English Defence League — insist it is NOT racist, but is a protest group opposing immigration and Islamic fundamentalism in the UK. But our investigation has uncovered widespread racism within its ranks — including links to banned Nazi outfit Combat 18 and Greek fascists Golden Dawn.
Newlands, 39, regularly attends SDL rallies across Scotland and has close links with far-right groups in England such as the EDL and the North West Infidels.
He proudly shows off his tattoos of the Combat 18 logo and the fascist swastika symbol on Facebook and has 'SDL' inked on the back of his shaved head.
Before last month' s march he boasted on Twitter of hooking up with equally-warped pals at the rally, writing: "I go anywhere to defend my white race."
He says of one Asian target: "The p*ki b*****d needs hung."
Newlands' page on the site is overflowing with revolting abuse, including twisted mock-up photos showing US President Barack Obama and his wife as monkeys.
There are swastika pictures, images of the Nazi 'Sieg Heil' salute, videos glorifying Hitler, a badge from American white-supremacists the Ku Klux Klan, and a foul cartoon captioned: "Around blacks, never relax."
He also refers to a black woman as a "f*****g n*****" and shares a tweet posted by another racist cruelly mocking Comic Relief, which says: "Help the struggling African... I say die with flies round your eyes."
Terror ink ... Combat 18 tattoo
Newlands makes fun on the site of the tragic death of Northern Ireland cop Philippa Reynolds, 27, who died in a car crash last month — and tells followers: "Today like every other day I will abuse the #golliwog at work." He is also revealed to be a fan of Golden Dawn, which has risen to prominence in riot-torn Greece.
Scottish Sun reporters traced Newlands to his home on Edinburgh's Muirhouse scheme — and watched as he strolled over to an Asian-owned store and joked with a worker unloading his van.
But when we confronted him about his political views he said "F**k off" — then flashed a Nazi salute before yelling: "Sieg Heil."
Newlands was among around 50 far-right fanatics who descended on Berwick on February 16 — where he was pictured alongside SDL organiser Graham Walker.
Walker has whined about the group being dubbed bigots, moaning: "We're branded racist but we are not — extremists are not a race."
The SDL was joined in the English border town by a handful of EDL idiots who drank and chanted rowdily before facing off anti-fascist campaigners.
A Saltire said to be in memory of Glasgow lad Kriss Donald — slain by Asian race-hate thugs in 2004 — was passed around members, who posed for snaps.
Border patrol ... cops tackle trouble at Berwick demo
One young girl brandished a placard saying 'Never forget Glasgow Airport' — a reference to the 2007 terror attack.
The gang were confronted by the Berwick United Against Fascism group, who shouted: "Nazi scum off our streets." SDL members retorted: "You can shove your f*****g Islam up your arse."
After listening to speeches by their leaders, they headed back to the pub to carry on boozing.
Northumbria Police made five arrests on the day and are investigating claims of racist comments at the rally.
Assistant Chief Constable Steve Ashman said: "A number of people failed to live up to their responsibilities. We acted immediately to head off any trouble.
"People expressed concerns to us over potentially racist language used. We'll review information received and appropriate action will be taken where offences were committed." Cops said of the five arrested, one was cautioned for being drunk and disorderly, two were freed after being held over alleged breaches of the peace, and one was given a penalty notice for disorderly conduct.
No further action was taken against another who was allegedly caught in possession of cannabis.
Another SDL member, who can't be named for legal reasons, was at the demo days after he appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on a charge of alleged racial hatred.
Who are the SDL?
Demo ... SDL boasts 4,000 members
THE SDL is an offshoot of the English Defence League, set up in 2009.
Both are opposed to what they say is growing Islamic extremism in the UK — and both insist they are NOT racist.
SDL leaders boast of up to 4,000 members — but true numbers are thought to be far lower. They also play up links with soccer thugs including Hibs' notorious Capital City Service.
Scots police footie intelligence officers are believed to have worked with English counterparts to identity SDL yobs.
Leaders 'feed on the poor'
THE Scottish Defence League was accused of preying on poverty-stricken Scots to spread its vile views.
Top academic Dr Alastair McIntosh branded the SDL a "noisy minority" who use immigrants as figures of hate.
Dr McIntosh, of Glasgow's Centre of Human Ecology, said: "They feed on people feeling hard done by. When people are hurting, which a great many are with benefit cuts, it's easy to turn that feeling into a hatred of anyone from the outside.
"The current economic climate is ripe for these views to grow. These right-wing groups exploit concerns that people have. What is ugly is they draw attention to themselves when Scotland is considering its political future."
Fuhrer's fan club
NEO-NAZI terror group Combat 18 was set up in England in 1992 — but its racial hatred has spread across the globe.
The gang is associated with Blood and Honour and the National Front.
Its 18 name comes from the initials of Adolf Hitler — the first and eighth letters of the alphabet.
Founder Charlie Sargent — who left over allegations he was an MI5 spy — was jailed for life in 1997 for murder.
Golden Dawn is a right-wing Greek outfit which won a council seat in Athens in 2010. It was involved in the Greek riots of 2010-11.
Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/feeds/smartphone/scotland/4821977/Scottish-Defence-League-moron-is-a-Nazi-piece-of-work.html#ixzz2MTSOPIsP
14 March 2013 at 17:36 Reply
Racial Socialists and Nationalists think commies and libtards and anti-nazis are vile. We are right, and we will win. Losing is a sin. | {
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Sicko RINO Mitt Romney creates phony "Pierre Delecto" Twitter account so he can bash Trump and praise himself
Sen. Mitt Romney (RINO-Utah) is a bitter, bitter man.
The two-time Republican presidential contender who didn't capture the party's nomination in 2008 then lost a winnable election against an unpopular President Obama in 2012, has never forgiven Donald Trump for doing what the former Massachusetts governor was never able to do.
Win the White House.
So full of contempt for President Trump is this man that he has gone out of his way to become the new iteration of anti-Trump RINO (Republican In Name Only) Jeff Flake and the late John McCain, both of Arizona.
So deranged is Romney that he actually took the time to create a fake Twitter account under the ridiculous name of "Pierre Delecto" so that he could anonymously bash the president will simultaneously praising himself.
As reported by The Atlantic, Romney admitted that he had a secret Twitter account but did not reveal the identity of that account. When the reporter asked about a hashtag — #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY — that the president tweeted into existence earlier this month, Romney replied, per the magazine:
"That's kind of what he does," Romney said with a shrug, and then got up to retrieve an iPad from his desk. He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account—"What do they call me, a lurker?"—to keep tabs on the political conversation. "I won't give you the name of it," he said, but "I'm following 668 people." Swiping at his tablet, he recited some of the accounts he follows, including journalists, late-night comedians ("What's his name, the big redhead from Boston?"), and athletes. Trump was not among them. "He tweets so much," Romney said, comparing the president to one of his nieces who overshares on Instagram. "I love her, but it's like, Ah, it's too much."
Romney is usually pretty guarded so the reveal that he had a secret Twitter identity was a big deal and it set Internet sleuths into action.
Slate contributor Ashley Feinberg came up with it: Pierre Delecto.
What a petty little puke
As The Gateway Pundit reported, it was obvious from 'Pierre's' liked tweets and retweets he can't stand President Trump, as he retweeted posts from #NeverTrumpers George Conway (White House counselor KellyAnne Conway's jealous husband), libertarian Jonah Goldberg, and Evan McMullin, a former CIA operative and frequent Trump critic who ran as an Independent for president in 2016 (and attended BYU in Salt Lake City, Utah).
These are the people Pierre Romney seeks to highlight and support over a president whose only 'fault' is that he's not a member of the political establishment and never will be.
"Everything about this story says so much about Mitt Romney: his pettiness, his insecurity, his lack of character, honesty, and decency, starting with how it all unraveled: Romney doing business with the establishment media — in this case, the far-left Atlantic and activist-reporter, McKay Coppins, who was originally hired at BuzzFeed to destroy Romney's 2012 presidential campaign," Breitbart News' John Nolte wrote.
Coppins was hired back in the 2011 by BuzzFeed as a "media-approved Mormon," in Nolte's words — someone who could criticize Romney as he ran to unseat Obama without being called a religious zealot. He even accused Romney of inciting a "race war" over his proposals to reform welfare.
These are the kind of people with which Romney now wants to associate: Left-wing hypocrites and bigots who themselves were so opposed to his candidacy.
This sordid fake Twitter account episode reminds us of another one used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who used the account "Carlos Danger" to troll for under-aged girls.
Romney is a disgrace, period. He couldn't win the presidency, Trump didn't want him fouling up his Cabinet, so he's angry.
Petty and angry.
TheAtlantic.com
Tagged Under: 2012 Election, barack obama, critic, democrats, fake account, GOP nominee, hypocrite, insanity, jealous much, left cult, Libtards, lunatics, Mitt Romney, Pierre Delecto, political establishment, President Trump, race war, Republican nomination, RINO, Twitter
WATCH: Female athlete speaks out against transgender agenda ruining women's sports
Teen Vogue: 'We need to think beyond the incorrect idea that periods are just for women,' wants tampons provided in men's bathrooms
'Gay mafia' launches vicious & vulgar attacks on conservative author after his viral story pointed out inconvenient truths
The totalitarian American left – VIDEO
The totalitarian American left
Now is the time for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and stop the lawless, treasonous left
CNN's "media coordinator" admits network is nothing but anti-Trump all the time, no serious effort made to report unbiased content
America is going through a classic case of luciferian inversion: With decades long trail of dead bodies following them wherever they go, the Clintons are a perfect example
New rule from the insane Left: WHITE PEOPLE not allowed to speak, ever
Video: Gender studies professor blames Trump for black female obesity
Schiff made it all up: There are no whistleblowers… criminal coup effort relies on endless series of fabrications from deep state Dems
Concerned citizens report Greta Thunberg's parents to Child Services in Sweden for child abuse
'It's an assembly line': De-transitioned man says parents encouraging kids to become transgender are guilty of 'child abuse'
Waffling Warren: So now gender reassignment surgery is a right?
Climate propaganda is directly linked to the LGBT agenda, and their goals are the same: to destroy children and depopulate the planet
More phony outrage from the "mainstream media" over violent Trump meme video that almost nobody saw before it became a manufactured "scandal"
PUSH BACK: 600,000 Mexicans erupt in massive public march to stop abortion genocide, LGBT indoctrination assault on their children
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All content posted on this site is protected under Free Speech. Lunatics.news is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. Lunatics.news assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. All trademarks, registered trademarks and service marks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners. | {
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April 2018 Advocate of the Month
Jerry, one of the people who lives in our Hoff home, and Kimberly.
"Kimberly showcases exactly how to be an amazing advocate through her hard work, compassion, and dedication to our Hoff Home," observes Sarah Dadzie, Program Director. Kimberly Fitzhugh is the Family Living Director for the home.
Sarah nominated Kimberly for Advocate of the Month because of her exceptional heart. "Kimberly listens very carefully to the people who live in our Hoff Home. She makes sure that Cathy, Jerry, Richard, and Rose are active in the community in ways that interest them. Kimberly also ensures they are having fun—both inside and outside of where they live."
"Kimberly really makes the house feels like a home," notes Sarah. "She's a great cook and loves preparing special meals. With Kimberly's support, our Hoff Home family established an evening routine they all enjoy—watching and laughing at The Family Feud together every night!"
Sharing what she believes are the keys to being a great advocate Kimberly reflects, "It's dedication, patience, and support that are needed." One of her favorite moments working in our Hoff Home was when Santa and Mrs. Claus came to the house and surprised the people who live there. "We had such a good time, and the joy that was on each of their faces was priceless," Kimberly reminisces.
Kimberly shares that she is grateful for her experiences at our Hoff Home. "I love the people who live here—they're family," she reveals. "I'm their friend, cook, and counselor. We have weekly one-on-one talks where we share anything that's happening in our home and lives."
"Kimberly has such a caring heart," reflects Sarah. "You can see it and you can feel it whenever you visit our Hoff Home."
Bello Machre On April 17, 2018 / Advocate of the Month, News | {
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SharePoint Overview: What is It?
SharePoint Overview: What is It For?
Currently use traditional tools for information management: file shares, Exchange for Email, etc.
Increase the importance of metadata – right in the authoring application!
Digital Preservation: Introduction and Case Study -. sarah shreeves tim donohue april 21, 2008. outline. what is digital preservation? what is digital preservation management? what standards and tools are available? case study of ideals.
College II -. reading, study skills, & vocabulary. building vocabulary and study skills. reading for the real world. reading for the real world. getting meaning from context. end of chapter (2). learning the vocabulary of english.
Management Accounting : Case Study -. society of certified management accountants of sri lanka. case study. ifac's ies 6: test on professional capabilities and competence test on management accounting skills test on strategic skills . | {
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As a child, I lived in fear of the dark. I am not sure why, but I did. I wanted a nightlight, or a door opened partway, or small lamp left illuminated. I laugh about it now, but it was a real and present danger to me. I dreaded the darkness. Now, as an adult, when it is time for sleep, the darker the room, the better the sleep. As for my fear of the dark, it is nonexistent.
When God first chose to start the timeline of man's history, He spoke to this very matter; it was His first order of business. He did not act from fear; He was motivated by the truth that if anything is going to get done, there must be light. In creation, His first deed was "let there be light." Yet again, at Calvary when darkness reigned, He saw to it that light would shine from out of darkness.
People around us live in darkness. They need the Light. Christ's words to us obligate us to turning on the lights in world. His words are clear: "ye are the light of the world." In the verses following, He shares that there is public light work and personal light work. Note His illustrations. We are to be like cities on the hill, our public light work. Then there is the personal light work; He speaks of lighting candles in rooms.
We are obligated to be light bearers. We must bear it in our personal work and our public work. Are you balanced in this? When you are one-on-one, do you turn on the lights? When you have moments of public ministry, do you let your light shine.
Are you the brightest light bearer for Him? | {
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Consumers who are attempting to save money are not getting returns as good as they could be as they are ignoring their Isas.
According to research from Fidelity, up to 90 per cent of people are now looking to set money aside, but 42 per cent of people in the UK are not taking advantage of their Isa allowance.
Carried out to mark the first anniversary of the increased Isa investment levels, the study also found that just one in ten people are making the most of the money by also using the stocks and shares Isa limit that is available to them.
Tom Stevenson, investment director at Fidelity Investment Managers, said: "Isas are a fantastic use-it-or-lose-it tax perk - no further tax to pay ever and a generous £20,400 allowance for a couple."
Prospective savers may have been pleased to hear that the Halifax Cash Isa Promise has been introduced, meaning that interest at the headline rate will be paid from the day the application is received by the institution. | {
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'You can't fool people when your eyes shine for someone': Mher Baghdasaryan on his feelings and more
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EXCLUSIVE: Designer Marianna Harutunian on beautiful crystal mask she made for Jennifer Lopez's "In The Morning" new music video, her collaboration for Lady Gaga's 911 and her feelings for Armenia and Artsakh
Armenian-American jewelry designer Marianna Harutunian, who outshines with her original and unique art pieces, has already become one of the most favorite designers for lots of world-known celebrities, among them-Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Cara Delevingne, Nicki Minaj, Pink, Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga.
Recently Marianna has shocked the fashion world with her beautiful crystal headpiece which shines in Jennifer Lopez's "In The Morning" new music video.
"I was asked if I would like to create something for JLo by her stylists Mariel Haenn and Rob Zangardi also known as Rob&Mariel", Marianna told in her new interview with NEWS.am STYLE.
"Because of the time frame I couldn't custom make the headpiece, but luckily I had exactly what they needed and it fit her perfectly without needing any adjustments. I did custom make 10 nail tip rings to match the headpiece", says the designer.
"Ethereal Fashion Fantasy"-this is how Vogue.co.uk describes JLo's style in the music video. Speaking about Marianna's crystal mask the website writes, "The best fashion moment of all, however, comes near the end of the video. Lopez emerges in a tiered, feathered Valentino coat that stands several feet high, complete with a Marianna Harutunian crystal mask. (Harutunian is a jewellery designer who has also made custom pieces for Lady Gaga.)"
Those, who have once seen Marianna's art pieces can't help admiring her style, and the designer is very touched for that valuation.
"I'm just trying to bring my visions to life. I'm humbled and grateful for the acknowledgment. It's truly a dream come true. Doing what you love is a blessing", she says.
As for Lady Gaga's 911, Marianna says she couldn't even imagine, that the music video would be inspired by Armenian film director Sergey Parajanov's "The Color of Pomegranates".
"Lady Gaga is an icon, so working with her is always exciting. I was asked to make a headpiece about a week before the video shoot date. They sent me the sketches of what they were looking for so I custom created this specifically for the video. Normally I would ask for some time to create a piece like this, but since they didn't have any I worked many hours to complete it in time. It took me about a week to complete it. I used brass pieces curving them to give it a three dimensional look. I set it on a headband to secure it on his head.
I actually did not know the premise of the video until it came out. I'm assuming it was top secret. That made it more exciting when I watched the video for the first time and found out the inspiration".
The Armenian-American designer was supporting her homeland Armenia during the war in Artsakh started on September 27 by Azerbaijan and Turkey.
"2020 was an emotional roller coaster to say the least. I was not in a good place along with all the Armenians in the world. We have been through so much grief and heartache. And we are still suffering. Armenia is always on my mind even though I'm not there. It was very hard to create with what was happening. I do know that we will overcome this and be stronger than ever. We aren't going anywhere. Never have never will", says Marianna speaking also about Covid 19 and all the difficulties it brought to the fashion industry.
"COVID-19 was the worst possible tragedy that happened in 2020 for all of us especially small businesses. It affected me deeply with my clients like Disneyland, productions for music videos, editorials and etc. Times are hard so I tried to put my energy in creating with the hope of things getting back to normal soon. Besides there is a constant fear not really for myself, but I am fearful for my parents and older relatives. Over 400,000 people have died so far in the USA. Hoping and praying for a better, brighter and healthier 2021 for all of us. Looking forward to show my new designs that I'm working on very soon. I'm feeling optimistic for 2021 even if it has been a slow start for me and most of the people in the industry, creating keeps me sane! Excited for our new administration and hopeful for a positive change".
The designer has made some new pieces also for Tyra Banks and singer Brandy.
"For Tyra it was for 'Dancing with the Stars' and for Brandy I'm not sure but be on the look out she used one of my headpieces. Sometimes I never know until it comes up", she says.
Syune Arakelyan
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E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS AND COMPANY (DD)
Acquired. Industry: materials
Founded in 1802, DuPont provides a broad range of products, including: seeds, insecticides, and herbicides for the agriculture industry; materials and systems for photovoltaics, consumer electronics, and displays; enzymes for animal nutrition, detergents, food manufacturing, and ethanol production; ingredients such as cultures and probiotics, emulsifiers, and natural sweeteners for the food industry; packaging and industrial polymers and ...Morefilms; and protective material such as Kevlar and Tyvek. Less
Share Repurchase (April 6, 1995)
On April 6, 1995, the company acquired 156 million shares of its common stock from Seagram for $56.25 per share.
Spin-off (Oct. 21, 1998)
On September 28, 1998, the company announced that the Board of Directors had approved a plan to divest the company's 100 percent-owned petroleum business (Conoco). On October 21, 1998, Conoco sold, in an initial public offering (IPO), 191,456,427 shares of Conoco Class A common stock at $23 per share, leaving DuPont a 69.5 percent interest in Conoco. The company expects to receive a favorable ruling from the Internal Revenue Service and complete the divestiture by offering to exchange its remaining Conoco shares for DuPont shares in a tax-free split off no later than third quarter 1999. This business is presented as discontinued operations in the financial statements and notes.
Acquisition (Oct. 1, 1999)
On October 1, 1999, the company acquired the approximately 80 percent of Pioneer Hi-Bred International not previously owned by the company for $7,684 million consisting of $3,419 million representing cash payments for the purchase of Pioneer shares; and $4,154 million representing the fair value of 68,612,135 shares of DuPont common stock issued in exchange for Pioneer shares;
Other (Dec. 31, 2006)
On December 31, 2006, the company adopted new disclosure requirements for accounting for defined benefit pension and other postretirement plans. Total assets and stockholders' equity were reduced by $2,159 million and $1,555 million, respectively, as a result of such adoption.
Balances of related after-tax components comprising accumulated other comprehensive loss are: ... Pension benefits Net losses: $(5,527) [MM]
Acquisition (May 19, 2011)
In January 2011, DuPont and its wholly owned subsidiary, DuPont Denmark Holding ApS (DDHA), entered into a definitive agreement with Danisco A/S (Danisco), a global enzyme and specialty food ingredients company, for DDHA to make a public tender offer for all of Danisco's outstanding shares at a price of 665 Danish Kroner (DKK) in cash per share. On April 29, 2011, DDHA increased the price of its tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Danisco to DKK 700 in cash per share. On May 19, 2011, the company acquired approximately 92.2 percent of Danisco's outstanding shares, excluding treasury shares, pursuant to the previously announced tender offer. From May 19, 2011 to September 22, 2011, DuPont acquired all of Danisco's remaining outstanding shares. This acquisition has established DuPont as a leader in industrial biotechnology with science-intensive innovations that address global challenges in food production and reduced fossil fuel consumption. The Danisco acquisition was valued at $6,417 [million], plus net debt assumed of $617. As part of the Danisco acquisition, DuPont incurred $85 in transaction related costs during 2011, which were recorded in costs of goods sold and other operating charges. In 2011, Danisco contributed net sales of $1,713 and net income attributable to DuPont of $(7), which excludes $30 after-tax ($39 pre-tax) of additional interest expense related to the debt issued to finance the acquisition. Danisco's contributions included a $125 after-tax ($175 pre-tax) charge related to the fair value step-up of inventories acquired and sold during 2011.
DuPont and The Dow Chemical Company announced that their boards of directors unanimously approved a definitive agreement under which the companies will combine in an all-stock merger of equals. The combined company would be named DowDuPont. Dow shareholders will receive 1 share of DowDuPont for each Dow share, and DuPont shareholders will receive 1.282 shares in DowDuPont for each DuPont share. Dow and DuPont shareholders will each own approximately 50 percent of the combined company, on a fully diluted basis, excluding preferred shares.
Acquired (Sept. 1, 2017)
DowDuPont today announced the successful completion of the merger of equals between The Dow Chemical Company and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, effective Aug. 31, 2017. The combined entity is operating as a holding company under the name DowDuPont with three divisions Agriculture, Materials Science and Specialty Products. Shares of DuPont and Dow ceased trading at the close of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Aug. 31, 2017. Beginning September 1, DowDuPont will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock ticker symbol "DWDP." Pursuant to the merger agreement, Dow shareholders received a fixed exchange ratio of 1.00 share of DowDuPont for each Dow share, and DuPont shareholders received a fixed exchange ratio of 1.282 shares of DowDuPont for each DuPont share. | {
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Probate We are leading Probate Solicitors regionally and nationwide. Call one of our Probate Solicitors today.
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The word Probate means to prove. Probate occurs when a person dies leaving a Will outlining their Testamentary wishes. The party who is responsible for the distribution of your estate is known as the Executor. An Executor will seek to obtain a Grant of Probate and also compile a schedule of assets such as property or bank accounts and pay all your debts. Once debts are paid the balance of the Estate is distributed to the beneficiaries of the Estate.
How can our Probate Solicitors help?
When engaging our Probate solicitors in order to apply for a Grant of Probate or a Grant of Administration you will be advised as to the necessary requirements. Our Probate Solicitors will look after all matters in relation to the distribution of the Estate of the deceased including contacting banks, Credit Unions, Post Offices, insurance companies and beneficiaries. Our Probate Solicitors will also complete a list of the estate assets and handle the distribution to the beneficiaries.
Our Probate Solicitors have the knowledge and experience to advise on all aspects of the administration of Estates. We will advise you on how to make what can be a stressful experience to one which is manageable. Our Probate Solicitors understand the impact and stress that these decisions may cause and are here to help you through that experience. Our Probate Solicitors will assist you with all aspects of the administration of Estates.
Our Probate Solicitors review the relevant legal documentation and move quickly to bring the process to a swift conclusion while keeping you up to date throughout. We strive to make sure your experience is stress free.
Types of Grants
Grant of Probate
In cases where parties have left a Will, the Executor has the responsibility to apply to the Probate office for a Grant of Probate. Under Irish Law the Executor must administer the Will. If the Executor is not in a position to administer the Will, then they should renounce their position and allow a suitable and correct party to take over the position as Executor. In some cases, there is more than one Executor and they may jointly apply for the Grant of Probate.
Grant of Administration
In cases where parties have not left a Will, the Administrator (which is a similar position to the Executor) has the responsibility and will apply to the Probate office for a Grant of Administration. Under Irish Law the Administrator must administer the Estate of the deceased. It is important that in a case of Administration, the administrator of the Estate is generally the nearest relative or next of Kin.
Grant of Administration with Will Annexed
A Grant of Administration with Will annexed is applied for in a limited number of cases such as:
The appointed Executor has become disabled, is of unsound mind or is a minor and accordingly does not have the capacity to carry out the duties they have charge of;
The appointed Executor is out of the Jurisdiction and unable or unwilling to carry out their duties;
The appointed Executor renounces their right to deal with the Estate;
There is no appointed Executor; or
The appointed Executor refuses to carry out their duties.
In any of the cases outlined above the beneficiaries under the Will is the person entitled to apply for a Grant of Administration with Will annexed. If the appointed Executor dies before the party who signed the Will or if there is no residue clause in the Will the distribution of the Estate will be governed by Irish Probate Law.
Estates under €25,000
In cases where an Estate is under €25,000 there is a procedure which allows the Estate to be administered without the need to apply for either a Grant of Probate or Grant of Administration. In many cases this procedure is used when there is no property and involves only funds in a Credit Union or Bank Account. In such cases the relevant bank or credit union will simply release the funds.
Rules of Intestacy
In circumstances where there is no Will the Rules of Intestacy will determine who the beneficiaries are to be. A beneficiary will be entitled to apply for a Grant of Administration.
The order as to who can inherit under Rules of Intestacy where there is no Will is as follows:
Spouse and Children/Civil Partner & Children
Great-Grandchildren
Great-Great Grandchildren
First Cousins/Great Uncles & Aunts / Great Nephews and Nieces
Great-great Grandparents
How long does the probate process take?
Typically, the relevant grant is received within 3-6 months from the date of receipt of all the relevant information. The timelines largely depend on the level of applications the Probate office is dealing with. Once the grant is received, certified copies are sent to the various Financial institutions so that the funds can be received and distributed. It should be noted that delays can occur where a Will is contested. Our Probate Solicitors can advise as to any likely timeframe and likely delays.
Further, it is important to note that an Executor or Administrator has 12 months to deal with the distribution of an Estate from the date of death. If an Executor or Administrator fail in this regard a potential beneficiary may apply for the relevant Grant.
The following taxes must be considered in any Probate process:
There are a number of taxes that can arise during the course of administration of an estate, such as:
Capital Gains Tax – Where an asset such as a property is sold and has increased in value between the date of death and date of sale, then Capital Gains Tax must be paid.
Income Tax – If the deceased made an income during their lifetime or since death, returns would have to be completed to the date of death and any taxes paid.
Probate Tax – This only applies to Estates where the person died between 18/06/1993 and 05/12/2000.
Capital Acquisitions Tax (CAT) – This is inheritance tax that applies to beneficiaries of the Estate. Generally, each beneficiary has a tax-free threshold which changes from time to time in the Budget.
It is imperative to note that a suitable and qualified tax advisor should be appointed to deal with all and any tax returns for the estate.
Legal Services Offered:
Assisting with Probate;
Assisting with Administration;
Contesting Will;
Lack of Capacity;
Undue Influence; and
Failure to provide for certain family members.
Our 4-stage process
A consultation with our Probate Solicitors will make sure you understand the nature of the process and the documentation involved in a Probate. We will discuss the Will and contents of the Estate, such as properties, bank accounts, shares and personal contents and the distribution of same.
Once our Probate Solicitors have all information, they will draft the Probate application and arrange an appointment for you to sign the relevant documentation. Once signed and completed we will lodge the papers in the Probate Office and advise you of the likely timelines.
Probate Office
Once we receive the relevant Grant of Probate or Grant of Administration from the Probate Office, we will write to each financial institution enclosing certified copies of same. We then complete the Estate Accounts detailing all aspects such as the assets, payments made and the distribution of the Estate.
Post-Grant
The final stage is to approve the Estate Accounts confirming that all debts and expenses of the Estate will be paid and the balance distributed to the beneficiaries in accordance with the Will or Rules of Intestacy.
Phone us on +353 (0)1 255 24882 or +353 (0)71 984 1322 for more information or to book an appointment.
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Making Economic Sense - Second Edition
Making Economic Sense 2nd Edition Murray N. Rothbard Ludwig von Mises Institute AUBURN, ALABAMA Copyright © 1995, 20...
Author: Murray Newton Rothbard
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Making Economic Sense 2nd Edition
Ludwig von Mises Institute AUBURN, ALABAMA
Copyright © 1995, 2006 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information write the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832. ISBN: 0-945466-46-3
CONTENTS Preface by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi Introduction to the Second Edition by Robert P. Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii MAKING ECONOMIC SENSE 1
Is It the "Economy, Stupid"? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Ten Great Economic Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Discussing the "Issues" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Creative Economic Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Chaos Theory: Destroying Mathematical Economics From Within? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Statistics: Destroyed From Within? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
The Consequences of Human Action: Intended or Unintended? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
The Interest Rate Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Are Savings Too Low? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
A Walk on the Supply Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Keynesian Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Keynesianism Redux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Making Economic Sense
THE SOCIALISM OF WELFARE 13
Economic Incentives and Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
Welfare as We Don't Know It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
The Infant Mortality "Crisis" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
The Homeless and the Hungry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Rioting for Rage, Fun, and Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
The Social Security Swindle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Roots of the Insurance Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
Government Medical "Insurance" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
The Neocon Welfare State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
By Their Fruits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
The Politics of Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84
Government vs. Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Environmentalists Clobber Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
Government and Hurricane Hugo: A Deadly Combination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92
The Water Is Not Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
POLITICS AS ECONOMIC VIOLENCE 28
Rethinking the '80s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
Bush and Dukakis: Ideologically Inseparable . . . . . . . . . . .106
Perot, The Constitution, and Direct Democracy . . . . . . . .110
The Flag Flap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Clintonomics: The Prospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116
Clintonomics Revealed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119
Price Controls are Back! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123
The Health Plan's Devilish Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127
Contents 36
Outlawing Jobs: The Minimum Wage, Once More . . . . . .133
The Union Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136
The Legacy of Cesar Chavez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140
Privatization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144
What To Do Until Privatization Comes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146
Population "Control" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150
The Economics of Gun Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153
Vouchers: What Went Wrong? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156
The Whiskey Rebellion: A Model for Our Time? . . . . . . .160
Eisnerizing Manassas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164
ENTERPRISE UNDER ATTACK 46
Stocks, Bonds, and Rule by Fools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169
The Salomon Brothers Scandal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
Nine Myths About the Crash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176
Michael R. Milken vs. The Power Elite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
Panic on Wall Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185
Government-Business "Partnerships" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Airport Congestion: A Case of Market Failure? . . . . . . . . .192
The Specter of Airline Re-Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195
Competition at Work: Xerox at 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199
The War on the Car . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .201
FISCAL MYSTERIES REVEALED 56
Are We Undertaxed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
The Return of the Tax Credit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212
Deductibility and Subsidy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215
That Gasoline Tax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217
Babbitry and Taxes: A Profile in Courage? . . . . . . . . . . . . .221
Flat Tax or Flat Taxpayer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224
Mrs. Thatcher's Poll Tax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227
Exit the Iron Lady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .230
The Budget Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
The Balanced-Budget Amendment Hoax . . . . . . . . . . . . . .236
ECONOMIC UPS AND DOWNS 66
The National Bureau and Business Cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . .243
Inflationary Recession, Once More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246
Deflation, Free or Compulsory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .250
Bush and the Recession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254
Lessons of the Recession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .258
The Recession Explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264
THE FIAT MONEY PLAGUE 72
Taking Money Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271
The World Currency Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .295
New International Monetary Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .300
"Attacking" the Franc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .302
Back to Fixed Exchange Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .306
The Cross of Fixed Exchange Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311
The Keynesian Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .315
Money Inflation and Price Inflation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317
Bank Crisis! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .321
Anatomy of the Bank Run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .325
Q & A on the S & L Mess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328
Inflation Redux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333
Inflation and the Spin Doctors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .336
Alan Greenspan: A Minority Report on the Fed Chairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339
The Mysterious Fed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .341
First Step Back to Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .344
Fixed-Rate Fictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .347
ECONOMICS BEYOND THE BORDERS 89
Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity . . . . . . . .355
"Free Trade" in Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .367
The Nafta Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370
Is There Life After Nafta? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .375
"Fairness" and the Steel Steal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .378
The Crusade Against South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .383
Are Diamonds Really Forever? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .385
Oil Prices Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .388
Why the Intervention in Arabia? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .392
A Trip to Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397
Peru and the Free Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399
A Gold Standard for Russia? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .402
Should We Bail Out Gorby? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .404
Welcoming the Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .408
THE END OF COLLECTIVISM 103
The Collapse of Socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .413
The Freedom Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .416
How to Desocialize? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .419
A Radical Prescription for the Socialist Bloc . . . . . . . . . . . .422
A Socialist Stock Market? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425
The Glorious Postwar World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .428
The Revolution Comes Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .431
The Trouble with the Quick Fix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .436
OUR INTELLECTUAL DEBTS 111
William Harold Hutt : 1899–1988 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .443
Friedrich August von Hayek: 1899–1992 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .446
V. Orval Watts: 1898–1993 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .450
Ludwig von Mises: 1881–1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .452
Margit von Mises: 1890–1993 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .455
The Story of the Mises Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .458
POSTSCRIPT 117
The November Revolution . . . And What to Do About It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .467
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .499
he academic contributions of Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) are legion, but he also had a passion for public persuasion. A free society can only be sustained if the general public is aware of the vital importance of the market and the terrible consequences of statism. That's why Rothbard hoped to convince everyone about the virtues of the free economy. For Rothbard, educating the public was strategically necessary and morally obligatory. It was also lots of fun. From 1982 to 1995, the Free Market was home to Rothbard's monthly explanation of economic events. He presented theory and policy in clear, sprightly prose while never sacrificing intellectual rigor. Keeping with Mencken's rule, Rothbard's clear writing was a product of his clear thought. Even when discussing subjects like interest rates and excise taxes—subjects economists typically take pains to make unbearably boring— Rothbard teaches and entertains at the same time. The Free Market essays are a crucial part of the legacy he has left us. As he skewers both parties in all branches of government, and all their connected interests, we see a principled Austrian School economist at work. The Second Edition is expanded to include "Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity," a monograph printed by the Mises Institute in 1986; "Taking Money Back," a piece crafted
in 1991 to make a populist case for radical monetary reform, and a brief but moving obituary of Mises published in 1973. No matter how specialized and distant from reality the economic profession becomes, Rothbard proves it is always possible to communicate truth more broadly. In this area, as in so much else, Rothbard shows us the way.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Auburn, Alabama January 2006
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
urray Newton Rothbard (1926–1995) was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. I choose the somewhat vague term thinker because Rothbard's interests were so diverse that they defy conventional classification. Yes, Rothbard was an economic theorist in the "Austrian" tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. But Rothbard also wrote a detailed history of the Great Depression, two volumes on the history of economic thought, several methodological articles, as well as an incredibly lucid text on economic principles. With the specialization of the modern economics profession, these feats alone would be unusual: You do either economic theory, economic history, history of economic thought (if you don't care about getting a job, at any rate), or—if you're one of the few economists who can actually produce prose that students and the lay public find comprehensible—you go ahead and write an introductory textbook. Except for freaks like Paul Samuelson (and Murray Rothbard), you don't do all of these things, just as a surgeon specializes in the heart or the brain, but never both. And yet we can't stop there. In addition to his contributions to all areas of economics, Rothbard wrote four (provocative) volumes on the history of colonial America. He also drew on philosophy, political science, and legal theory to synthesize a 357-page deductive treatise on the nature and content of the legal code in a just and free society. Oh yes, I almost forgot:
Rothbard virtually single-handedly created the modern libertarian movement through his ceaseless agitation and two books, one explaining the terrible consequences of all government intervention and the other giving the virtual blueprints for a society with no government. "An impressive fellow," you may say, "who was no doubt a genius. Yet surely he was a humorless robot of a man, spewing forth lonely and bitter critiques of all those lesser mortals with whom he could not identify." Now this relates to the really surprising aspect of Murray Rothbard—the guy was funny, and he was a real person. You will see this immediately as you read the essays, but I fear that if the present volume is your only sampling of Rothbard's work, it may give the impression that his writing was remarkably entertaining in light of how, well, stuffy the topics were. But what do you expect? Most of these essays were originally published in the Free Market, a newsletter obviously devoted to economic and political issues, subjects that can at times (despite their tremendous importance) be a bit dry. If this is indeed your reaction, you absolutely must go on to read The Irrepressible Rothbard, a collection of some of his lighter essays. There you will see the same impeccable logic, brutal honesty, and wonderful wit, but in the context of antiwar polemics, politically incorrect musings on various racial and sexual conflicts, surprisingly plausible conspiracy theories, insensitive ad hominem (yet undeniably funny) attacks on people Rothbard can't stand, good old Clinton bashing, and, believe it or not, movie reviews that are far more insightful than what you will likely get in your local newspaper. As I mentioned above, most of the essays in the present volume originally ran in the the Free Market, a monthly newsletter put out by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which was founded in 1982 to promote and advance the legacy of Rothbard's beloved mentor. Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the undisputed champion of the Austrian School of economics during his lifetime. (The term "Austrian" refers to the nationality of the
School's pioneers; Austrian economists do not study the unemployment rate of Vienna.) Among his theoretical achievements was the incorporation, in the early twentieth century, of money prices into the subjectivist, marginalist framework that other economists of that day had used only to explain prices in a barter economy. Mises also drew on the work of his own mentor, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, as well as Knut Wicksell, to elaborate a theory of the business cycle that laid the blame not on capitalism but rather on the central government's manipulations of the banking system. (It was for his elaboration of the Misesian cycle theory that Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974.) Another major contribution was Mises's work on methodology, in which he argued that economic laws were a subset of "praxeology"—the logic or science of human action—and were not comparable to the physical laws of the natural sciences. In the natural sciences, we observe the actual outcome—the trajectory of a cannonball, let us say—and then we must come up with hypotheses to explain the causal forces at work. In contrast, in the social sciences (whether criminology, sociology, psychology, or economics) we presumably know the motivating forces at work, at least at a certain level of generality: When a man robs a bank, we do not study the physical forces on the atoms in his body, but rather ask, "What drove him to this desperate act? Didn't he have a strong role model to teach him right from wrong?" and so on. (It's not so much that we couldn't use the methods of the physicist or chemist, but just that they wouldn't take us very far. They certainly wouldn't help detectives recover the loot! For that task, we need to "get inside the head" of the thief.) Mises looked at the growing body of economic analysis (at least in the early twentieth century) and crystallized its essence as logical deductions from the fact that people act; in other words, Mises felt all valid economic laws were implied by the fact that people are rational (though fallible) beings who choose means to (attempt to) achieve desired ends. I bring this point up because there is a tendency among certain people to lump all "free market" economists together, so that Milton
Friedman and Ludwig von Mises (or Murray Rothbard) are "basically saying the same thing." This issue of the proper foundation of economic science is one major example of the error of such careless grouping; in exact contradiction to the view of Mises and Rothbard, Milton Friedman is famous for his defense of positivism in economics, i.e., the application of the methods of the physical sciences to the social sciences. There is another difference between Mises (and Rothbard) and such popular advocates of laissez-faire as Milton Friedman or, more recently, heroes of American political "conservatives" such as Lawrence Kudlow or Alan Greenspan. It is true that all of these economists would agree, say, that a cut in the capital gains tax would be good for the American economy, or that raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour would hurt inner city minorities. In that sense they are all "anti-government." But Mises (and even more so, Rothbard) were far more consistent in their promotion of individual liberty and free enterprise, and their condemnation of government intervention in the economy. Thus Friedman could advocate a "negative income tax"— i.e., a welfare program that is novel only in the method by which the amounts of the checks are calculated—and Greenspan and Kudlow certainly do not feel "government is the problem" when it comes to the Federal Reserve. Of course, some may feel that these last remarks are both unfair and politically naïve. Indeed, one of the biggest complaints against Mises, and especially Rothbard, is that they were stubborn, "dogmatic" ideologues, who couldn't support a move in the right direction because of their unrealistic principles. Although I don't subscribe to this objection, this Introduction is hardly the place for me to answer it. Let me mention, though, that another popular objection is that Rothbard was a sellout who would ally with various communists, Democrats, protectionist Republicans, etc. based on the shifting political winds. Now say what you will about his strategic vision—and the huge growth of the extremely radical "anarcho-capitalist" movement is a point in his favor—but Rothbard can't be both a dogmatic purist and an opportunistic sellout at the same time!
I wish I could include some of my personal anecdotes of Rothbard to give you a sense of the man, but unfortunately I never met him. As many say of John F. Kennedy, I can truly remember exactly where I was when I learned the news. I was an economics major at Hillsdale College, and another student mentioned to me that "some big free market economist" had died. With a sinking stomach I asked, "It's not Murray Rothbard, is it?" to which my friend replied, "Yeah, that was his name." I was extremely disappointed because, in many respects, Rothbard's work (in both economics proper and political philosophy) had been the standard by which I would judge my own. On those issues where we disagreed—and there were many—I wanted to hear him reply to my critiques, and now that would be impossible. (Yes, I was as self-absorbed as any other American undergrad.) But on those issues where we agreed—where Rothbard really nailed the issue on the head, in my mind—wow did he do it beautifully. You will see this in the present collection. In addition to being correct, Rothbard's prose is also precise and direct. (In contrast, Hayek's points are often valid and extremely precise, but might involve seven clauses and three semicolons.) You will also get a sense of Rothbard's extreme breadth of knowledge. To paraphrase Mark Twain: the older I get, the smarter Murray Rothbard becomes. I realized this when I first taught an advanced class in Austrian economics, and one of the readings was Rothbard's famous (1956) essay, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics." Having just graduated from a fairly highly ranked doctoral program in mathematical economics, I considered myself quite knowledgeable about abstract concepts such as von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions. I was quite surprised, then, to see that Rothbard was perfectly adept with the mathematical sophistication in these demonstrations, and could point out their underlying (false) assumptions. I was surprised yet again when rereading the present collection, and came across Rothbard's essay on chaos theory. Because of an honors seminar on "spontaneous order" (i.e., the emergence of orderly macro phenomena from simple micro foundations) I
had just read an entire book on the history and current applications of chaos theory—and that's how I knew that Rothbard had apparently done the same, because his essay contains references to names and subtle points that suggest a deep understanding. What's particularly ironic is that I had read this essay years earlier, when Making Economic Sense first appeared, and must have skimmed over these subtleties because at the time I didn't quite know what Rothbard was talking about. The one other anecdote I can share concerns a roadtrip that I was taking with my mother and her friend. I had taken my (first edition) copy of Making Economic Sense even though I had read it cover to cover before. At some point in the trip, my mother's friend became bored and asked if she could look at it. I agreed with hesitation; even though I knew Rothbard was great, surely a "real person" would find him boring and/or crazy! But as it turns out, she was chuckling after a few pages, and even began discussing the book with my mother. She particularly liked Rothbard's observation that new houses can't be built to last as long as older ones, because, "Oh, we couldn't afford to build it that way today." In short, although I can't remember exactly what drove my insecurity—hey, I think I was still a teenager—it was completely unfounded. Although many of us younger libertarians were shocked and disillusioned with the Republican Party over George W. Bush's unprecedented deficits and propensity to conquer other countries, some of the enclosed essays show us that this is nothing new. Of Ronald Reagan Rothbard writes, It is no accident that the same administration that manages to combine the rhetoric of 'getting government off our back' with the reality of enormously escalating Big Government, should also have brought back a failed and statist Keynesianism in the name of prosperity and free enterprise.
In a later essay he continues: Since the beginning of the Reagan administration, the much heralded "cuts" in the officially dubbed "income-tax"
segment of our payroll taxes have been more than offset by the rise in the "Social-Security" portion. But since the public has been conditioned into thinking that the Social Security tax is somehow not a tax, the Reagan-Bush administrations have been able to get away with their pose as heroic champions of tax cuts and resisters against the tax-raising inclinations of the evil Democrats.
As far as the Middle East, Rothbard's essay "Why the Intervention in Arabia?" is cogent reading for today. (A similar phenomenon occurs if one listens to the stand-up rantings of the late comedian Bill Hicks. Even though he died before the invasion of Iraq, one could listen to his criticism of "Bush's" justifications for war, as well as his hypocritical demonization of Saddam, for several minutes without realizing that Hicks is referring to George Herbert Walker Bush.) I began this Introduction by stating that Murray Rothbard was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. Largely through the efforts of the Mises Institute, his work, of which the present collection is just a morsel, continues to reach ever wider audiences. Although it's much too soon to be confident, perhaps future writers will refer to Murray Rothbard as one of the most influential thinkers of the twenty-first century.
Robert P. Murphy Hillsdale College December 2005
1 IS IT THE "ECONOMY, STUPID"?
ne of the persistent Clintonian themes of the 1992 campaign still endures: if "it's the economy, stupid," then why hasn't President Clinton received the credit among the public for our glorious economic recovery? Hence the Clintonian conclusion that the resounding Democratic defeat in November, 1994, was due to their failure to "get the message out" to the public, the message being the good news of our current economic prosperity. Some of the brighter Clintonians realized that the President and his minions had been repeating this very message endlessly all over America; so they fell back on the implausible alternative explanation that the minds of the voting public had been temporarily addled by listening to Rush Limbaugh and his colleagues. So what went wrong with this popular line of reasoning? As usual, there are many layers of fallacy contained in this political analysis. In the first place, it's crude economic determinism, what is often called "vulgar Marxism." While the state of the economy is certainly important in shaping the public's political attitudes, there are many non-economic reasons for public protest.
First published in February 1995. 3
The public is particularly exercised, for example, about crime, gun control, the flood of immigration, and the continuing wholesale assault by government and the dominant liberal culture upon religion and upon "bourgeois" as well as traditional ethical principles. Other non-economic reasons: a growing pervasive skepticism about politicians keeping their pledges to the voters, a skepticism born of hard-won experience rather than of some infection by a bacillus of "cynicism." A fortiori removed from economics is an intense revulsion for the president, his wife, and their personal traits ("the character question"), a visceral response that made a powerful impact on the election. But even apart from the numerous non-economic motivations for political attitudes and actions by the public, the common "it's the economy" argument even leaves out some of the important features of economic-based motivation in politics. For the famous Clintonian slogan does not even begin to focus on all the relevant features of the economy. Instead, to capture the Clintonian meaning, the sentiment should be rephrased as "it's the business cycle, stupid." For what the Clintonians and the media are really advocating is "vulgar business-cycle determinism": if the economy is booming, the ins will be reelected: if we're in recession, the public will oust the ruling party. The "Business cycle" may at first appear to be equivalent to "the economy," but in fact it is not. There are vital aspects of the economy felt by the voters that are not cyclical, not part of a boom-bust process, but that rather reflect "secular" (long-run) trends. What's happening to taxes and to secular living standards, and among such standards the intangible, unmeasurable but vital concept of the "quality of life," is extremely important, often more so than whether we are technically in the expansion or contraction phase of the cycle. Indeed, the major economic grievance agitating the public has little or nothing to do with the cycle, with boom or recession: it is secular and seemingly permanent, specifically a slow,
inexorable, debilitating decline in the standard of living that grinds down the people's spirit as well as their pocketbooks. Taxes, and the tax bite into their earnings, keep going up, on the federal, state, county, and local levels of government. Semantic disguises don't work any more: call them "fees," or "contributions," or "insurance premiums," they are taxes nevertheless, and they are increasingly draining the people's substance. And while Establishment economists, statisticians, and financial experts keep proclaiming that "inflation has been licked," that "structural economic factors preclude a return to inflation," and all the rest of the blather, all consumers know in their hearts and wallets that the prices they pay at the supermarket, at the store, in tuition, in insurance, in magazine subscriptions, keep going up and up, and that the dollar's value keeps going down and down. The contemptuous charge by economic "scientists" that all this experience by consumers is merely "anecdotal," that hard quantitative data and their statistical manipulations demonstrate that economic growth is lively, that the economy is doing splendidly, that inflation is over, and all the rest, doesn't cut any ice either. In the end, all this "science" has only succeeded in convincing the public that economic and statistical experts rank up there with lawyers and politicians as a bunch of—how shall we put it?—"disinformation specialists." If everything is going so well, the public increasingly wants to know, how come young married couples today can no longer afford the standard of living enjoyed by their parents when they were newlyweds? How come they can't afford to buy a home of their own? One of the glorious staples of the American experience has always been that each generation expects its children to be better off than they have been. This expectation was never the result of mindless "optimism"; it was rooted in the experience of each preceding generation, which indeed had been more prosperous than their parents. But now the reality is quite the opposite. People know they are worse off than their parents, and therefore they rationally
expect their children to be in still worse shape. Everywhere you turn you get a similar answer: "Why couldn't you construct a new building with the same sturdy qualities as this (50-year old) house? . . . Oh, we couldn't afford to build it that way today." Even official statistics bear out this point, if you know where to look. For example, the median real income in dollars, (that is, corrected for inflation) of American families is lower than it was in 1973. Then, if we disaggregate households, we get a far gloomier picture. Family income has not only been slightly reduced; it has collapsed in the last 20 years because of the phenomenal increase of the proportion of married women in the workforce. This massive shift from motherhood and the domestic arts to the tedium of offices and time clocks has been interpreted by our dominant liberal culture as a glorious triumph of feminism in liberating women from the drudgery of being housewives so that they can develop their personalities in a fulfilling career. While this may be true for some occupations, one still hears on every side, once again, that the "reason I went to work is because we could no longer afford to live on one salary." Again, since there is no way to quantify subjective motivations, we can't measure this factor, but I suspect that the great bulk of working women, i.e., those in non-glamorous careers, are only working to keep the family income from falling steeply. Given their druthers, I suspect they would happily return to the much-maligned "Ozzie and Harriet" family of the Neanderthal era. Of course, there are some sectors of the economy that are indeed growing rapidly, where prices are falling instead of rising; notably the computer industry, and whatever emerges from the much-hyped "information superhighway," when, at some wonderful point in the near or mid-future, Americans can drown their increasing miseries in the glories of 500 interactive, digital, cybernetic channels, each offering another subvariant of mindless pap.
This is a future that may satisfy techno-futurist gurus like Alvin Toffler and Newt Gingrich, but the rest of us, I bet, will become increasingly unhappy and ready to lash out at the political system that—through massive taxation, cheap money and credit, social insurance schemes, mandates, and government regulation—has brought us this secular deterioration, and has laid waste to the American dream. Z
2 TEN GREAT ECONOMIC MYTHS
ur country is beset by a large number of economic myths that distort public thinking on important problems and lead us to accept unsound and dangerous government policies. Here are ten of the most dangerous of these myths and an analysis of what is wrong with them. Myth 1: Deficits are the cause of inflation; deficits have nothing to do with inflation. In recent decades we always have had federal deficits. The invariable response of the party out of power, whichever it may be, is to denounce those deficits as being the cause of perpetual inflation. And the invariable response of whatever party is in power has been to claim that deficits have nothing to do with inflation. Both opposing statements are myths. Deficits mean that the federal government is spending more than it is taking in in taxes. Those deficits can be financed in two ways. If they are financed by selling Treasury bonds to the public, then the deficits are not inflationary. No new money is created; people and institutions simply draw down their bank deposits to pay for the bonds, and the Treasury spends that money. Money has simply been transferred from the public to First published in April 1984.
the Treasury, and then the money is spent on other members of the public. On the other hand, the deficit may be financed by selling bonds to the banking system. If that occurs, the banks create new money by creating new bank deposits and using them to buy the bonds. The new money, in the form of bank deposits, is then spent by the Treasury, and thereby enters permanently into the spending stream of the economy, raising prices and causing inflation. By a complex process, the Federal Reserve enables the banks to create the new money by generating bank reserves of one-tenth that amount. Thus, if banks are to buy $100 billion of new bonds to finance the deficit, the Fed buys approximately $10 billion of old Treasury bonds. This purchase increases bank reserves by $10 billion, allowing the banks to pyramid the creation of new bank deposits or money by ten times that amount. In short, the government and the banking system it controls in effect "print" new money to pay for the federal deficit. Thus, deficits are inflationary to the extent that they are financed by the banking system; they are not inflationary to the extent they are underwritten by the public. Some policymakers point to the 1982–83 period, when deficits were accelerating and inflation was abating, as a statistical "proof' that deficits and inflation have no relation to each other. This is no proof at all. General price changes are determined by two factors: the supply of, and the demand for, money. During 1982–83 the Fed created new money at a very high rate, approximately at 15 percent per annum. Much of this went to finance the expanding deficit. But on the other hand, the severe depression of those two years increased the demand for money (i.e., lowered the desire to spend money on goods) in response to the severe business losses. This temporarily compensating increase in the demand for money does not make deficits any less inflationary. In fact, as recovery proceeds, spending picked up and the demand for money fell, and the spending of the new money accelerated inflation.
Myth 2: Deficits do not have a crowding-out effect on private investment.
In recent years there has been an understandable worry over the low rate of saving and investment in the United States. One worry is that the enormous federal deficits will divert savings to unproductive government spending and thereby crowd out productive investment, generating evergreater long-run problems in advancing or even maintaining the living standards of the public. Some policymakers once again attempted to rebut this charge by statistics. In 1982–83, they declare deficits were high and increasing while interest rates fell, thereby indicating that deficits have no crowding-out effect. This argument once again shows the fallacy of trying to refute logic with statistics. Interest rates fell because of the drop of business borrowing in a recession. "Real" interest rates (interest rates minus the inflation rate) stayed unprecedentedly high, however—partly because most of us expect renewed inflation, partly because of the crowding-out effect. In any case, statistics cannot refute logic; and logic tells us that if savings go into government bonds, there will necessarily be less savings available for productive investment than there would have been, and interest rates will be higher than they would have been without the deficits. If deficits are financed by the public, then this diversion of savings into government projects is direct and palpable. If the deficits are financed by bank inflation, then the diversion is indirect, the crowding-out now taking place by the new money "printed" by the government competing for resources with old money saved by the public. Milton Friedman tries to rebut the crowding-out effect of deficits by claiming that all government spending, not just deficits, equally crowds out private savings and investment. It is true that money siphoned off by taxes could also have gone into private savings and investment. But deficits have a far greater crowding-out effect than overall spending, since deficits
financed by the public obviously tap savings and savings alone, whereas taxes reduce the public's consumption as well as savings. Thus, deficits, whichever way you look at them, cause grave economic problems. If they are financed by the banking system, they are inflationary. But even if they are financed by the public, they will still cause severe crowding-out effects, diverting much-needed savings from productive private investment to wasteful government projects. And, furthermore, the greater the deficits the greater the permanent income tax burden on the American people to pay for the mounting interest payments, a problem aggravated by the high interest rates brought about by inflationary deficits. Myth 3: Tax increases are a cure for deficits. Those people who are properly worried about the deficit unfortunately offer an unacceptable solution: increasing taxes. Curing deficits by raising taxes is equivalent to curing someone's bronchitis by shooting him. The "cure" is far worse than the disease. One reason, as many critics have pointed out, raising taxes simply gives the government more money, and so the politicians and bureaucrats are likely to react by raising expenditures still further. Parkinson said it all in his famous "Law": "Expenditures rise to meet income." If the government is willing to have, say, a 20 percent deficit, it will handle high revenues by raising spending still more to maintain the same proportion of deficit. But even apart from this shrewd judgment in political psychology, why should anyone believe that a tax is better than a higher price? It is true that inflation is a form of taxation, in which the government and other early receivers of new money are able to expropriate the members of the public whose income rises later in the process of inflation. But, at least with inflation, people are still reaping some of the benefits of exchange. If bread rises to $10 a loaf, this is unfortunate, but at least you can still eat the bread. But if taxes go up, your money is expropriated for the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats, and you are
left with no service or benefit. The only result is that the producers' money is confiscated for the benefit of a bureaucracy that adds insult to injury by using part of that confiscated money to push the public around. No, the only sound cure for deficits is a simple but virtually unmentioned one: cut the federal budget. How and where? Anywhere and everywhere. Myth 4: Every time the Fed tightens the money supply, interest rates rise (or fall); every time the Fed expands the money supply, interest rates rise (or fall). The financial press now knows enough economics to watch weekly money supply figures like hawks; but they inevitably interpret these figures in a chaotic fashion. If the money supply rises, this is interpreted as lowering interest rates and inflationary; it is also interpreted, often in the very same article, as raising interest rates. And vice versa. If the Fed tightens the growth of money, it is interpreted as both raising interest rates and lowering them. Sometimes it seems that all Fed actions, no matter how contradictory, must result in raising interest rates. Clearly something is very wrong here. The problem is that, as in the case of price levels, there are several causal factors operating on interest rates and in different directions. If the Fed expands the money supply, it does so by generating more bank reserves and thereby expanding the supply of bank credit and bank deposits. The expansion of credit necessarily means an increased supply in the credit market and hence a lowering of the price of credit, or the rate of interest. On the other hand, if the Fed restricts the supply of credit and the growth of the money supply, this means that the supply in the credit market declines, and this should mean a rise in interest rates. And this is precisely what happens in the first decade or two of chronic inflation. Fed expansion lowers interest rates; Fed tightening raises them. But after this period, the public and the
market begin to catch on to what is happening. They begin to realize that inflation is chronic because of the systemic expansion of the money supply. When they realize this fact of life, they will also realize that inflation wipes out the creditor for the benefit of the debtor. Thus, if someone grants a loan at 5 percent for one year, and there is 7 percent inflation for that year, the creditor loses, not gains. He loses 3 percent, since he gets paid back in dollars that are now worth 7 percent less in purchasing power. Correspondingly, the debtor gains by inflation. As creditors begin to catch on, they place an inflation premium on the interest rate, and debtors will be willing to pay it. Hence, in the long-run anything which fuels the expectations of inflation will raise inflation premiums on interest rates; and anything which dampens those expectations will lower those premiums. Therefore, a Fed tightening will now tend to dampen inflationary expectations and lower interest rates; a Fed expansion will whip up those expectations again and raise them. There are two, opposite causal chains at work. And so Fed expansion or contraction can either raise or lower interest rates, depending on which causal chain is stronger. Which will be stronger? There is no way to know for sure. In the early decades of inflation, there is no inflation premium; in the later decades, such as we are now in, there is. The relative strength and reaction times depend on the subjective expectations of the public, and these cannot be forecast with certainty. And this is one reason why economic forecasts can never be made with certainty. Myth 5: Economists, using charts or high speed computer models, can accurately forecast the future. The problem of forecasting interest rates illustrates the pitfalls of forecasting in general. People are contrary cusses whose behavior, thank goodness, cannot be forecast precisely in advance. Their values, ideas, expectations, and knowledge
change all the time, and change in an unpredictable manner. What economist, for example, could have forecast (or did forecast) the Cabbage Patch Kid craze of the Christmas season of 1983? Every economic quantity, every price, purchase, or income figure is the embodiment of thousands, even millions, of unpredictable choices by individuals. Many studies, formal and informal, have been made of the record of forecasting by economists, and it has been consistently abysmal. Forecasters often complain that they can do well enough as long as current trends continue; what they have difficulty in doing is catching changes in trend. But of course there is no trick in extrapolating current trends into the near future. You don't need sophisticated computer models for that; you can do it better and far more cheaply by using a ruler. The real trick is precisely to forecast when and how trends will change, and forecasters have been notoriously bad at that. No economist forecast the depth of the 1981–82 depression, and none predicted the strength of the 1983 boom. The next time you are swayed by the jargon or seeming expertise of the economic forecaster, ask yourself this question: If he can really predict the future so well, why is he wasting his time putting out newsletters or doing consulting when he himself could be making trillions of dollars in the stock and commodity markets? Myth 6: There is a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. Every time someone calls for the government to abandon its inflationary policies, establishment economists and politicians warn that the result can only be severe unemployment. We are trapped, therefore, into playing off inflation against high unemployment, and become persuaded that we must therefore accept some of both. This doctrine is the fallback position for Keynesians. Originally, the Keynesians promised us that by manipulating and fine-tuning deficits and government spending, they could and
would bring us permanent prosperity and full employment without inflation. Then, when inflation became chronic and ever-greater, they changed their tune to warn of the alleged tradeoff, so as to weaken any possible pressure upon the government to stop its inflationary creation of new money. The tradeoff doctrine is based on the alleged "Phillips curve," a curve invented many years ago by the British economist A.W. Phillips. Phillips correlated wage rate increases with unemployment, and claimed that the two move inversely: the higher the increases in wage rates, the lower the unemployment. On its face, this is a peculiar doctrine, since it flies in the face of logical, commonsense theory. Theory tells us that the higher the wage rates, the greater the unemployment, and vice versa. If everyone went to their employer tomorrow and insisted on double or triple the wage rate, many of us would be promptly out of a job. Yet this bizarre finding was accepted as gospel by the Keynesian economic Establishment. By now, it should be clear that this statistical finding violates the facts as well as logical theory. For during the 1950s, inflation was only about one to two percent per year, and unemployment hovered around three or four percent, whereas later unemployment ranged between eight and 11 percent, and inflation between five and 13 percent. In the last two or three decades, in short, both inflation and unemployment have increased sharply and severely. If anything, we have had a reverse Phillips curve. There has been anything but an inflation-unemployment tradeoff. But ideologues seldom give way to the facts, even as they continually claim to "test" their theories by facts. To save the concept, they have simply concluded that the Phillips curve still remains as an inflation-unemployment tradeoff, except that the curve has unaccountably "shifted" to a new set of alleged tradeoffs. On this sort of mind-set, of course, no one could ever refute any theory. In fact, current inflation, even if it reduces unemployment in the shortrun by inducing prices to spurt ahead of wage rates
(thereby reducing real wage rates), will only create more unemployment in the long run. Eventually, wage rates catch up with inflation, and inflation brings recession and unemployment inevitably in its wake. After more than two decades of inflation, we are now living in that "long run." Myth 7: Deflation—falling prices—is unthinkable, and would cause a catastrophic depression. The public memory is short. We forget that, from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-eighteenth century until the beginning of World War II, prices generally went down, year after year. That's because continually increasing productivity and output of goods generated by free markets caused prices to fall. There was no depression, however, because costs fell along with selling prices. Usually, wage rates remained constant while the cost of living fell, so that "real" wages, or everyone's standard of living, rose steadily. Virtually the only time when prices rose over those two centuries were periods of war (War of 1812, Civil War, World War I), when the warring governments inflated the money supply so heavily to pay for the war as to more than offset continuing gains in productivity. We can see how free-market capitalism, unburdened by governmental or central bank inflation, works if we look at what has happened in the last few years to the prices of computers. Even a simple computer used to be enormous, costing millions of dollars. Now, in a remarkable surge of productivity brought about by the microchip revolution, computers are falling in price even as I write. Computer firms are successful despite the falling prices because their costs have been falling, and productivity rising. In fact, these falling costs and prices have enabled them to tap a mass market characteristic of the dynamic growth of free-market capitalism. "Deflation" has brought no disaster to this industry. The same is true of other high-growth industries, such a electronic calculators, plastics, TV sets, and VCRs. Deflation,
far from bringing catastrophe, is the hallmark of sound and dynamic economic growth. Myth 8: The best tax is a "flat" income tax, proportionate to income across the board, with no exemptions or deductions. It is usually added by flat-tax proponents, that eliminating such exemptions would enable the federal government to cut the current tax rate substantially. But this view assumes, for one thing, that present deductions from the income tax are immoral subsidies or "loopholes" that should be closed for the benefit of all. A deduction or exemption is only a "loophole" if you assume that the government owns 100 percent of everyone's income and that allowing some of that income to remain untaxed constitutes an irritating "loophole." Allowing someone to keep some of his own income is neither a loophole nor a subsidy. Lowering the overall tax by abolishing deductions for medical care, for interest payments, or for uninsured losses, is simply lowering the taxes of one set of people (those that have little interest to pay, or medical expenses, or uninsured losses) at the expense of raising them for those who have incurred such expenses. There is furthermore neither any guarantee nor even likelihood that, once the exemptions and deductions are safely out of the way, the government would keep its tax rate at the lower level. Looking at the record of governments, past and present, there is every reason to assume that more of our money would be taken by the government as it raised the tax rate backup (at least) to the old level, with a consequently greater overall drain from the producers to the bureaucracy. It is supposed that the tax system should be analogous to roughly that of pricing or incomes on the market. But market pricing is not proportional to incomes. It would be a peculiar world, for example, if Rockefeller were forced to pay $1,000 for a loaf of bread—that is, a payment proportionate to his income relative to the average man. That would mean a world in which equality of incomes was enforced in a particularly bizarre and inefficient manner. If a tax were levied like a market price, it
would be equal to every "customer," not proportionate to each customer's income. Myth 9: An income tax cut helps everyone; not only the taxpayer but also the government will benefit, since tax revenues will rise when the rate is cut. This is the so-called "Laffer curve," set forth by California economist Arthur Laffer. It was advanced as a means of allowing politicians to square the circle; to come out for tax cuts, keeping spending at the current level, and balance the budget all at the same time. In that way, the public would enjoy its tax cut, be happy at the balanced budget, and still receive the same level of subsidies from the government. It is true that if tax rates are 99 percent, and they are cut to 95 percent, tax revenue will go up. But there is no reason to assume such simple connections at any other time. In fact, this relationship works much better for a local excise tax than for a national income tax. A few years ago, the government of the District of Columbia decided to procure some revenue by sharply raising the District's gasoline tax. But, then, drivers could simply nip over the border to Virginia or Maryland and fill up at a much cheaper price. D.C. gasoline tax revenues fell, and much to the chagrin and confusion of D.C. bureaucrats, they had to repeal the tax. But this is not likely to happen with the income tax. People are not going to stop working or leave the country because of a relatively small tax hike, or do the reverse because of a tax cut. There are some other problems with the Laffer curve. The amount of time it is supposed to take for the Laffer effect to work is never specified. But still more important: Laffer assumes that what all of us want is to maximize tax revenue to the government. If—a big if—we are really at the upper half of the Laffer curve, we should then all want to set tax rates at that "optimum" point. But why? Why should it be the objective of every one of us to maximize government revenue? To push to the maximum, in short, the share of private product that gets
siphoned off to the activities of government? I should think we would be more interested in minimizing government revenue by pushing tax rates far, far below whatever the Laffer Optimum might happen to be. Myth 10: Imports from countries where labor is cheap cause unemployment in the United States. One of the many problems with this doctrine is that it ignores the question: why are wages low in a foreign country and high in the United States? It starts with these wage rates as ultimate givens, and doesn't pursue the question why they are what they are. Basically, they are high in the United States because labor productivity is high—because workers here are aided by large amounts of technologically advanced capital equipment. Wage rates are low in many foreign countries because capital equipment is small and technologically primitive. Unaided by much capital, worker productivity is far lower than in the United States. Wage rates in every country are determined by the productivity of the workers in that country. Hence, high wages in the United States are not a standing threat to American prosperity; they are the result of that prosperity. But what of certain industries in the U.S. that complain loudly and chronically about the "unfair" competition of products from low-wage countries? Here, we must realize that wages in each country are interconnected from one industry and occupation and region to another. All workers compete with each other, and if wages in industry A are far lower than in other industries, workers—spearheaded by young workers starting their careers—would leave or refuse to enter industry A and move to other firms or industries where the wage rate is higher. Wages in the complaining industries, then, are high because they have been bid high by all industries in the United States. If the steel or textile industries in the United States find it difficult to compete with their counterparts abroad, it is not because foreign firms are paying low wages, but because other American industries have bid up American wage rates to such a high level
that steel and textile cannot afford to pay. In short, what's really happening is that steel, textile, and other such firms are using labor inefficiently as compared to other American industries. Tariffs or import quotas to keep inefficient firms or industries in operation hurt everyone, in every country, who is not in that industry. They injure all American consumers by keeping up prices, keeping down quality and competition, and distorting production. A tariff or an import quota is equivalent to chopping up a railroad or destroying an airline—for its point is to make international transportation artificially expensive. Tariffs and import quotas also injure other, efficient American industries by tying up resources that would otherwise move to more efficient uses. And, in the long run, the tariffs and quotas, like any sort of monopoly privilege conferred by government, are no bonanza even for the firms being protected and subsidized. For, as we have seen in the cases of railroads and airlines, industries enjoying government monopoly (whether through tariffs or regulation) eventually become so inefficient that they lose money anyway, and can only call for more and more bailouts, for a perpetual expanding privileged shelter from free competition. Z
DISCUSSING THE "ISSUES"
epending on your temperament, a presidential election year is a time for either depression or amusement. One befuddling aspect of campaign time is the way the Respectable Media redefine our language. Orwell wrote a half-century ago that he who controls the language wields the power, and the media have certainly shown that they have learned this lesson. For example, the Respectable Media have presumed to declare what "the issues" are in any campaign. If Candidate X finds his
First published in February 1992.
Opponent Y's hand in the till, the media rush up to exclaim: "That's irrelevant. Why don't you talk about The Issues?" In the Bush-Dukakis race, the media anointed The Economy as the only worthwhile topic; anything else was only a smokescreen designed to "detract" from the "real issues." One would think that such a focus would gladden the heart of any economist, but if you thought so, you're not reckoning with the semantics experts in the Establishment media. For the Economy can only be approached in certain, narrow, allowable grooves. Any other approach is brusquely read out of court. The media focus, quite legitimately, on The Recession, but again, only in certain narrowly permissible ways. Because of the recession, Unemployment has soared (a "lack of jobs"); Affordable Housing has dwindled (the Homeless); Affordable Health Care is diminishing because of increased health costs, and, in addition to these particular sectors, deficits have soared to $400 billion a year. In short: there is a lack of jobs, health care, housing and other goodies, and it follows, either implicitly or explicitly, that the federal government must expand its spending by an enormous amount, as part of its alleged Responsibility to supply such goods and services, or to see to it that they are supplied. Anyone who may presume to rise up and say, "Whoa, it is not the responsibility of the federal government to supply these goodies," is, of course, accused by the ever-vigilant Respectable Media of Evading and not discussing The Issues. In media lingo, in short, "discussing" the issues means accepting the media's statist premises, and solemnly haggling over minute technicalities within those premises. If, for example, you say that national health insurance is tantamount to socialized medicine you are accused of using "scare words" and of not discussing The Issues. Anyone who thinks that socialism or collectivism is an important issue is quickly swept aside. But how then is the federal government to spend hundreds of billions more and yet Do Something about the deficit? Ahh, the cure-all, of course: huge increases in taxation. It is only a
myth that anyone who proposes tax cuts is lionized while those who urge tax increases are ostracized. While the general public may still feel a vestigial admiration for tax cuts, they are usually overwhelmed by the intellectual and media elites who trumpet the precise opposite message: that proposing big tax increases "faces The Issues," is courageous and responsible, and on and on. Narrow-gauge discussions also have the advantage of bringing in the ubiquitous Washington "policy wonks," the supposedly value-free "experts" who are ready to trot out computerized analyses of the alleged quantitative results of every proposed tax increase or of any other program. And so we have this unedifying spectacle: Candidate A proposes a tax increase; his opponent B charges that A's plan will cost middle-income taxpayers X-hundred billion dollars; A accuses B of "lying," while B does the same to A's different proposal for tax increases. Most irritating of all is the media's current penchant for making their alleged "correction," in which a paper or network's own policy wonk claims that the "facts are" that B's increase will cost taxpayers Y-hundred billion instead. The media's "correction" is most annoying because everyone realizes that each candidate and his supporters will put the best possible spin on his own programs and the worst on his opponents'; but the media's own bias masquerades as objective truth and expertise. For the point is that no one actually knows how much is going to be paid by which group under any of these programs. The numbers that are tossed around as gospel truth, as "facts," in an America that has always worshiped numbers, all depend on various fallacious assumptions. They all assume, for example, that quantitative relations between different variables in the economy will continue to be what they have been in the last several years. But the whole point is that these relations change and in unpredictable ways. How is it that not a single computerized economist or policy wonk predicted the current recession? That not a single one predicted its great length and depth? Precisely because this
recession, like all recessions, is quantitatively unique; if there hadn't been some sudden change in the various numbers, there wouldn't have been a recession, and we'd still be enjoying a seemingly untroubled boom. As former German banker Kurt Richebacher pointed out in his Currency and Credit Markets newsletter, in contrast to the 1920s and 1930s, economists don't think anymore; they just plug in obsolescent numbers, and then wonder why their forecasts all go blooey. Here is a suggested Discussion of The Issues that will never make the media hit parade: Yes, the deficit is a grave problem, but the way to cut it is never to increase taxes (certainly not during a recession!) but instead to slash government expenditures. In contrast to the conventional media wisdom, increasing taxes is not, except strictly arithmetically, equivalent to cutting expenditures. Increasing taxes or expenditures aggravates the dangerous parasitic burden of the unproductive public sector and its clients, upon the increasingly impoverished but productive private sector; while cutting taxes or expenditures serves to lighten the chains of the productive private sector. In the long run, as we have seen under communism, the parasitic sector destroys the private productive sector and harms even the parasites in the process. But it is ironic that left-liberals who affect to be so concerned about the state of "the environment" or of Mother Earth 5,000 years from now, should adopt such a short-sighted perspective on the economy that only immediate problems count, and who cares about savers, investors, and entrepreneurs? Where to cut the government budget? The simplest way is the best: just pass a law, overriding all existing ones, that no agency of the federal government is allowed to spend more, next year, that it did in some previous year—the earlier the year the better, but for openers how about the penultimate Carter year of 1979, when the federal government spent $504 billion? Just decree that no agency can spend more than whatever it spent in 1979; agencies that didn't exist in 1979 could just subsist from then on, if they so desire, on zero funding.
But of course, this proposal would be both too simple and too radical for the Establishment policy wonks. By definition, it cannot come under the official rubric of "discussing The Issues." Z
4 CREATIVE ECONOMIC SEMANTICS
f the federal government's economists have been good for nothing else in recent years, they have made great strides in what might be called "creative economic semantics." First they're defined the seemingly simple term "budget cut." In the old days, a "budget cut" was a reduction of next year's budget below this year's. In that old-fashioned sense, Dwight Eisenhower's first two years in office actually cut the budget substantially, though not dramatically, below the previous year. Now we have "budget cuts" which are not cuts, but rather substantial increases over the previous year's expenditures. "Cut" became subtly but crucially redefined as reducing something else. What the something else might be didn't seem to matter, so long as the focus was taken off actual dollar expenditures. Sometimes it was a cut "in the rate of increase," other times it was a cut in "real" spending, at still others it was a percentage of GNP, and at yet other times it was a cut in the sense of being below past projections for that year. The result of a series of such "cuts" has been to raise spending sharply and dramatically not only in old-fashioned terms, but even in all other categories. Government spending has gone up considerably any way you slice it. As a result, even the idea of a creatively semantic budget cut has not gone the way of the nickel fare and the Constitution of the United States. Another example of creative semantics was the "tax cut" of 1981–1982, a tax cut so allegedly fearsome that it had to be offset
First published in September 1984.
by outright tax increases late in 1982, in 1983, in 1984,and on and on into the future. Again in the old days, a cut in income taxes meant that the average person would find less of a slice taken out of his paycheck. But while the 1981–82 tax changes did that for some people, the average person found that the piddling cuts were more than offset by the continuing rise in the Social Security tax, and by "bracket creep"—a colorful term for the process by which inflation (generated by the federal government's expansion of the money supply) wafts everyone into higher money income (even though a price rise might leave them no better off) and therefore into a higher tax bracket. So that even though the official schedule of tax rates might remain the same, the average man is paying a higher chunk of his income. The much-vaunted and much-denounced "tax cut" turns out, in old-fashioned semantics, to be no cut at all but rather a substantial increase. In return for the dubious pleasure of this non-cut, the American public will have to suffer by paying through the nose for years to come in the form of "offsetting," though unfortunately all-too-genuine, tax increases. Of course, government economists have been doing their part as well to try to sugar-coat the pill of tax increases. They never refer to these changes as "increases." They have not been increases at all; they were "revenue enhancement" and "closing loopholes." The best comment on the concept of "loopholes" was that of Ludwig von Mises. Mises remarked that the very concept of "loopholes" implies that the government rightly owns all of the money you earn, and that it becomes necessary to correct the slipup of the government's not having gotten its hands on that money long since. Despite promises of a balanced budget by 1984, we found that several years of semantically massaged "budget cuts" and "tax cuts" as well as "enhancements" resulted in an enormous, seemingly permanent, and unprecedented deficit. Once again, creative semantics have come to the rescue. One route is to use time-honored methods to redefine the deficit out of existence.
The Keynesians used to redefine it by claiming that in something called a "full employment budget" there was no deficit, that is, that if one subtracts the spending necessary to achieve full employment, there would be no deficit, perhaps even a surplus. But while such a sleight-of-hand might work with a deficit of $20 billion, it is a puny way to wish away a gap of $200 billion. Still, the government's economists are trying. They have already redefined the "deficits" as a "real increase" in debt, that is, a deficit discounted by inflation. The more inflation generated by the government, then, the more it looks as if the deficit is washed away. On the very same semantic magic, the apologists for the disastrous runaway German inflation of 1923 claimed that there was no inflation at all, since in terms of gold, German prices were actually falling! And similarly, they claimed, that since in real terms the supply of German marks was falling, that the real trouble in Germany was that there was too little money being printed rather than too much. There is no general acceptance for the idea that, based on some legerdemain, the deficit doesn't really exist. But there is acceptance of the view that a tax increase constitutes a "down payment" on the deficit. Again, in the old days, a "down payment" on a debt meant that part of the debt was being paid off. Washington's creative economists have managed to redefine the term to mean a hoped-for reduction of next years's increase in the debt—a very different story indeed. Z
CHAOS THEORY: DESTROYING MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS FROM WITHIN?
he hottest new topic in mathematics, physics, and allied sciences is "chaos theory." It is radical in its implications,
First published in March 1988.
but no one can accuse its practitioners of being anti-mathematical, since its highly complex math, including advanced computer graphics, is on the cutting edge of mathematical theory. In a deep sense, chaos theory is a reaction against the effort, hype, and funding that have, for many decades, been poured into such fashionable topics as going ever deeper inside the nucleus of the atom, or ever further out in astronomical speculation. Chaos theory returns scientific focus, at long last, to the real "microscopic" world with which we are all familiar. It is fitting that chaos theory got its start in the humble but frustrating field of meteorology. Why does it seem impossible for all our hot-shot meteorologists, armed as they are with ever more efficient computers and ever greater masses of data, to predict the weather? Two decades ago, Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at MIT stumbled onto chaos theory by making the discovery that ever so tiny changes in climate could bring about enormous and volatile changes in weather. Calling it the Butterfly Effect, he pointed out that if a butterfly flapped its wings in Brazil, it could well produce a tornado in Texas. Since then, the discovery that small, unpredictable causes could have dramatic and turbulent effects has been expanded into other, seemingly unconnected, realms of science. The conclusion, for the weather and for many other aspects of the world, is that the weather, in principle, cannot be predicted successfully, no matter how much data is accumulated for our computers. This is not really "chaos" since the Butterfly Effect does have its own causal patterns, albeit very complex. (Many of these causal patterns follow what is known as "Feigenbaum's Number.") But even if these patterns become known, who in the world can predict the arrival of a flapping butterfly? The upshot of chaos theory is not that the real world is chaotic or in principle unpredictable or undetermined, but that in practice much of it is unpredictable. And in particular that mathematical tools such as the calculus, which assumes smooth surfaces and infinitesimally small steps, is deeply flawed in dealing
with much of the real world. (Thus, Benoit Mandelbroit's "fractals" indicate that smooth curves are inappropriate and misleading for modeling coastlines or geographic surfaces.) Chaos theory is even more challenging when applied to human events such as the workings of the stock market. Here the chaos theorists have directly challenged orthodox neoclassical theory of the stock market, which assumes that the expectations of the market are "rational," that is, are omniscient about the future. If all stock or commodity market prices perfectly discount and incorporate perfect knowledge of the future, then the patterns of stock-market prices must be purely accidental, meaningless, and random ("random walk"), since all the underlying basic knowledge is already known and incorporated into the price. The absurdity of believing that the market is omniscient about the future, or that it has perfect knowledge of all "probability distributions" of the future, is matched by the equal folly of assuming that all happenings on the real stock market are "random," that is, that no one stock price is related to any other price, past or future. And yet a crucial fact of human history is that all historical events are interconnected, that cause and effect patterns permeate human events, that very little is homogeneous, and that nothing is random. With their enormous prestige, the chaos theorists have done important work in denouncing these assumptions, and in rebuking any attempt to abstract statistically from the actual concrete events of the real world. Thus, the chaos theorists are opposed to the common statistical technique of "smoothing out" the data by taking twelve-month moving averages of monthly data—whether of prices, production, or employment. In attempting to eliminate jagged "random elements" and separate them out from alleged underlying patterns, orthodox statisticians have been unwittingly getting rid of the very real-world data that need to be examined. These are but a few of the subversive implications that chaos science offers for orthodox mathematical economics. For if
rational expectations theory violates the real world, then so too does general equilibrium, the use of the calculus in assuming infinitesimally small steps, perfect knowledge, and all the rest of the elaborate neoclassical apparatus. The neoclassicals have for a long while employed their knowledge of math and their use of advanced mathematical techniques as a bludgeon to discredit Austrians; now comes the most advanced mathematical theorists to replicate, unwittingly, some of the searching Austrian critiques of the unreality and distortions of orthodox neoclassical economics. In the current mathematical pecking order, fractals, nonlinear thermodynamics, the Feigenbaum number, and all the rest rank far higher than the old-fashioned techniques of the neo-classicals. This does not mean that all the philosophical claims for chaos theory must be swallowed whole—in particular, the assertions of some of the theorists that nature is undetermined, or even that atoms or molecules possess "free will." But Austrians can hail the chaos theorists in their invigorating assault on orthodox mathematical economics from within. Z
6 STATISTICS: DESTROYED FROM WITHIN?
s improbable as this may seem now, I was at one time in college a statistics major. After taking all the undergraduate courses in statistics, I enrolled in a graduate course in mathematical statistics at Columbia with the eminent Harold Hotelling, one of the founders of modern mathematical economics. After listening to several lectures of Hotelling, I experienced an epiphany: the sudden realization that the entire "science" of statistical inference rests on one crucial assumption, First published in February 1989.
and that that assumption is utterly groundless. I walked out of the Hotelling course, and out of the world of statistics, never to return. Statistics, of course, is far more than the mere collection of data. Statistical inference is the conclusions one can draw from that data. In particular, since—apart from the decennial U.S. census of population—we never know all the data, our conclusions must rest on very small samples drawn from the population. After taking our sample or samples, we have to find a way to make statements about the population as a whole. For example, suppose we wish to conclude something about the average height of the American male population. Since there is no way that we can mobilize every male American and measure everyone's height, we take samples of a small number, say 500 people, selected in various ways, from which we presume to say what the average American's height may be. In the science of statistics, the way we move from our known samples to the unknown population is to make one crucial assumption: that the samples will, in any and all cases, whether we are dealing with height or unemployment or who is going to vote for this or that candidate, be distributed around the population figure according to the so-called "normal curve." The normal curve is a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve familiar to all statistics textbooks. Because all samples are assumed to fall around the population figure according to this curve, the statistician feels justified in asserting, from his one or more limited samples, that the height of the American population, or the unemployment rate, or whatever, is definitely XYZ within a "confidence level" of 90 or 95 percent. In short, if, for example, a sample height for the average male is 5 feet 9 inches, 90 or 95 out of every 100 such samples will be within a certain definite range of 5 feet 9 inches. These precise figures are arrived at simply by assuming that all samples are distributed around the population according to this normal curve. It is because of the properties of the normal curve, for example, that the election pollsters could assert, with overwhelming
confidence, that Bush was favored by a certain percentage of voters, and Dukakis by another percentage, all within "three percentage points" or "five percentage points" of "error." It is the normal curve that permits statisticians not to claim absolute knowledge of all population figures precisely but instead to claim such knowledge within a few percentage points. Well, what is the evidence for this vital assumption of distribution around a normal curve? None whatever. It is a purely mystical act of faith. In my old statistics text, the only "evidence" for the universal truth of the normal curve was the statement that if good riflemen shoot to hit a bullseye, the shots will tend to be distributed around the target in something like a normal curve. On this incredibly flimsy basis rests an assumption vital to the validity of all statistical inference. Unfortunately, the social sciences tend to follow the same law that the late Dr. Robert Mendelsohn has shown is adopted in medicine: never drop any procedure, no matter how faulty, until a better one is offered in its place. And now it seems that the entire fallacious structure of inference built on the normal curve has been rendered obsolete by high-tech. Ten years ago, Stanford statistician Bradley Efron used highspeed computers to generate "artificial data sets" based on an original sample, and to make the millions of numerical calculations necessary to arrive at a population estimate without using the normal curve, or any other arbitrary, mathematical assumption of how samples are distributed about the unknown population figure. After a decade of discussion and tinkering, statisticians have agreed on methods of practical use of this "bootstrap." method, and it is now beginning to take over the profession. Stanford statistician Jerome H. Friedman, one of the pioneers of the new method, calls it "the most important new idea in statistics in the last 20 years, and probably the last 50." At this point, statisticians are finally willing to let the cat out of the bag. Friedman now concedes that "data don't always follow bell-shaped curves, and when they don't, you make a mistake" with the standard methods. In fact, he added that "the
data frequently are distributed quite differently than in bellshaped curves." So that's it; now we find that the normal curve Emperor has no clothes after all. The old mystical faith can now be abandoned; the Normal Curve god is dead at long last. Z
THE CONSEQUENCES OF HUMAN ACTION: INTENDED OR UNINTENDED?
ome economists are given to insisting that Austrian economics studies only the unintended consequences of human action, or, in the favorite phrase (from the 18th-century Scottish sociologist Adam Ferguson as filtered down to F.A. Hayek), "the consequences of human action, not human design." At first glance, there is some plausibility to this oft-repeated slogan. As Adam Smith pointed out, it is a good thing that we don't rely on the benevolence of the butcher or baker for our daily bread, but rather on their self-interested drive for income and profit. They may intend to achieve a profit, but the efficient production for consumer wants and the advancement of the prosperity of all is the unintended consequence of their actions. But this slogan can be shown to be faulty on further analysis. For example, how do we know what the intentions of the butcher, the baker, or indeed any businessman, are? We cannot look inside their heads and tell for sure. Suppose, for example, that the butcher and baker, out to maximize their profits, read free-market economics and see that maximizing profit also benefits their fellow-man and society as a whole. As they go about their business, they now intend the consequence of efficient satisfaction of consumer wants as well as their own monetary profit. So if, as some indicate, economic theory only studies unintended consequences of human action, First published in May 1987.
does the learning of some economic theory by businessmen invalidate that theory because now these consequences are consciously intended by the participants on the market? Furthermore, the learning of sound economic theory can actually change the actions of businessmen on the market. Many businessmen, influenced by anti-capitalist propaganda, have been consumed by guilt, and may consciously restrict their pursuit of profit in the mistaken idea that they are helping their fellow man. Reading and absorbing sound economic analysis may relieve them of guilt and lead them to seek the maximization of their own profit. In short, now that they are fully cognizant of economics, the intended consequences of their actions will lead to higher profits for themselves as well as greater prosperity for society. So what is so great about unintended consequences, and why may no intended consequences be studied as well? And doesn't the accumulation of knowledge in society change consequences from unintended to intended? Not only that: the Misesian discipline of praxeology explicitly states that individual men consciously pursue goals, and choose means to try to attain them. And if men pursue goals, surely it is only common sense to conclude that a good deal of the time they will attain them, in others words they will intend, and attain, the consequences of their actions. Mises's emphasis on conscious choice treats men and women as rational, conscious actors in the market and the world; the other tradition often falls into the trap of treating people as if they were robots or amoebae blindly responding to stimuli. Arcane matters of methodology often have surprising political consequences. Perhaps, then, it is not an accident that those who believe in unintended and not intended consequences, will also tend to whitewash the growth of government in the twentieth century. For if actions are largely always unintended, this means that government just grew like Topsy, and that no person or group ever willed the pernicious consequences of that growth. Stressing the Ferguson-Hayek formula cloaks the self-interested
actions of the power elite in seeking and obtaining special privileges from government, and thereby impelling its continuing growth. There are two ways to advance the message of Austrian economics. One is to fearlessly hold high the banner of Misesian theory to which the wise and honest can repair—a banner which requires calling a spade a spade and pointing out the special interests all too consciously at work behind the government's glittering facade of the "public interest" and the "general welfare." The other path is to seek acceptance and respectability by watering down the Misesian message beyond repair, and carefully avoiding anything remotely "controversial" in your offering. Even to the point of taking the "free" out of "free market." Such a path only entrenches big government. Z
8 THE INTEREST RATE QUESTION
he Marxists call it "impressionism": taking social or economic trends of the last few weeks or months and assuming that they will last forever. The problem is not realizing that there are underlying economic laws at work. Impressionism has always been rampant; and never more so than in public discussion of interest rates. For most of 1987, interest rates were inexorably high; for a short while after Black Monday, interest rates fell, and financial opinion turned around 180 degrees, and started talking as if interest rates were on a permanent downward trend. No group is more prone to this day-to-day blowin' with the wind than the financial press. This syndrome comes from lack
of understanding of economics and hence being reduced to reacting blindly to rapidly changing events. Sometimes this basic confusion is reflected within the same article. Thus, in the not-so-long ago days of double-digit inflation, the same article would predict that interest rates would fall because the Fed was buying securities in the open market, and also say that rates would be going up because the market would be expecting increased inflation. Nowadays, too, we read that fixed exchange rates are bad because interest rates will have to rise to keep foreign capital in the U.S., but also that falling exchange rates are bad because interest rates will have to rise for the same reason. If financial writers are mired in hopeless confusion, how can we expect the public to make any sense of what is going on? In truth, interest rates, like any important price, are complex phenomena that are determined by several factors, each of which can change in varying, or even contradictory, ways. As in the case of other prices, interest rates move inversely with the supply, but directly with the demand, for credit. If the Fed enters the open market to buy securities, it thereby increases the supply of credit, which will tend to lower interest rates; and since this same act will increase bank reserves by the same extent, the banks will now inflate money and credit out of thin air by a multiple of the initial jolt, nowadays about ten to one. So if the Fed buys $1 billion of securities, bank reserves will rise by the same amount, and bank loans and the money supply will then increase by $10 billion. The supply of credit has thereby increased further, and interest rates will fall some more. But it would be folly to conclude, impressionistically, that interest rates are destined to fall indefinitely. In the first place, the supply and demand for credit are themselves determined by deeper economic forces, in particular the amount of their income that people in the economy wish to save and invest, as opposed to the amount they decide to consume. The more they save, the lower the interest rate; the more they consume, the
higher. Increased bank loans may mimic an increase in genuine savings, yet they are very far from the same thing. Inflationary bank credit is artificial, created out of thin air; it does not reflect the underlying saving or consumption preferences of the public. Some earlier economists referred to this phenomenon as "forced" savings; more importantly, they are only temporary. As the increased money supply works its way through the system, prices and all values in money terms rise, and interest rates will then bounce back to something like their original level. Only a repeated injection of inflationary bank credit by the Fed will keep interest rates artificially low, and thereby keep the artificial and unsound economic boom going; and this is precisely the hallmark of the boom phase of the boom-bust business cycle. But something else happens, too. As prices rise, and as people begin to anticipate further price increases, an inflation premium is placed on interest rates. Creditors tack an inflation premium onto rates because they don't propose to continue being wiped out by a fall in the value of the dollar; and debtors will be willing to pay the premium because they too realize that they have been enjoying a windfall. And this is why, when the public comes to expect further inflation, Fed increases in reserves will raise, rather than lower, the rate of interest. And when the acceleration of inflationary credit finally stops, the higher interest rate puts a sharp end to the boom in the capital markets (stocks and bonds), and an inevitable recession liquidates the unsound investments of the inflationary boom. An extra twist to the interest rate problem is the international aspect. As a long-run tendency, capital moves from lowreturn investments (whether profit rates or interest rates) toward high-return investments until rates of return are equal. This is true within every country and also throughout the world. Internationally, capital will tend to flow from low-interest- to
high-interest-rate countries, raising interest rates in the former and lowering them in the latter. In the days of the international gold standard, the process was simple. Nowadays, under fiat money, the process continues, but results in a series of alleged crises. When governments try to fix exchange rates (as they did from the Louvre agreement of February 1987 until Black Monday), then interest rates cannot fall in the United States without losing capital or savings to foreign countries. In the current era of a huge balance of trade deficit in the U.S., the U.S. cannot maintain a fixed dollar if foreign capital flows outward; the pressure for the dollar to fall would then be enormous. Hence, after Black Monday, the Fed decided to allow the dollar to resume its market tendency to fall, so that the Fed could then inflate credit and lower interest rates. But it should be clear that that interest rate fall could only be ephemeral and strictly temporary, and indeed interest rates resumed their inexorable upward march. Price inflation is the consequence of the monetary inflation pumped in by the Federal Reserve for several years before the spring of 1987, and interest rates were therefore bound to rise as well. Moreover, the Fed, as in many other matters, is caught in a trap of its own making; for the long-run trend to equalize interest rates throughout the world is a drive to equalize not simply money, or nominal, returns, but real returns corrected for inflation. But if foreign creditors and investors begin to receive dollars worth less and less in value, they will require higher money interest rates to compensate—and we will be back again, very shortly, with a redoubled reason for interest rates to rise. In trying to explain the complexities of interest rates, inflation, money and banking, exchange rates and business cycles to my students, I leave them with this comforting thought: Don't blame me for all this, blame the government. Without the interference of government, the entire topic would be duck soup. Z
ARE SAVINGS TOO LOW?
ne strong recent trend among economists, businessmen, and politicians, has been to lament the amount of savings and investment in the United States as being far too low. It is pointed out that the American percentage of savings to national income is far lower than among the West Germans, or among our feared competitors, the Japanese. Recently, Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady sternly warned of the low savings and investment levels in the United States. This sort of argument should be considered on many levels. First, and least important, the statistics are usually manipulated to exaggerate the extent of the problem. Thus, the scariest figures (e.g., U.S. savings as only 1.5 percent of national income) only mention personal savings, and omit business savings; also, capital gains are almost always omitted as a source of savings and investment.
But these are minor matters. The most vital question is: even conceding that U.S. savings are 1.5 percent of national income and Japanese savings are 15 percent, what, if anything, is the proper amount or percentage of savings? Consumers voluntarily decide to divide their income into spending on consumer goods, as against saving and investment for future income. If Mr. Jones invests X percent of his income for future use, by what standard, either moral or economic, does some outside person come along and denounce him for being wrong or immoral for not investing X+l percent? Everyone knows that if they consume less now, and save and invest more, they will be able to earn a higher income at some point in the future. But which they choose depends on the rate of their time preferences: how much they prefer consuming now to consuming later. Since everyone makes this decision on the basis of his First published in November 1989.
own life, his particular situation, and his own value-scales, to denounce his decision requires some extraindividual criterion, some criterion outside the person with which to override his preferences. That criterion cannot be economic, since what is efficient and economic can only be decided within a framework of voluntary decisions made by individuals. For the criterion to be moral would be extraordinarily shaky, since moral truths, like economic laws, are not quantitative but qualitative. Moral laws, such as "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not steal," are qualitative; there is no moral law which says that "thou shalt not steal more than 62 percent of the time." So, if people are being exhorted to save more and consume less as a moral doctrine, the moralist is required to come up with some quantitative optimum, such as: when specifically, is saving too low, and when is it too high? Vague exhortations to save more make little moral or economic sense. But the lamenters do have an important point. For there are an enormous number of government measures which cripple and greatly lower savings, and add to consumption in society. In many ways, government steps in, employs many instruments of coercion, and skews the voluntary choices of society away from saving and investment and toward consumption. Our complainers about saving don't always say what, beyond exhortation, they think should be done about the situation. Left-liberals call for more governmental "investment" or higher taxes so as to reduce the government deficit, which they assert is "dissaving." But one thing which the government can legitimately do is simply get rid of its own coercive influence in favor of consumption and against saving and investment. In this way, the voluntary time preferences and choices of individuals would be liberated, instead of overridden, by government. The Bush administration began eliminating some of the coercive anti-saving measures that had been imposed by the socalled Tax Reform Act of 1986. One was the abolition of taxdeduction for IRAs, which wiped out an important category of
middle-class saving and investment; another was the steep increase in the capital gains tax, which is a confiscation of savings, and—to the extent that capital gains are not indexed for inflation—a direct confiscation of accumulated wealth. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. To say that only government deficits are "dis-saving" is to imply that higher taxes increase social savings and investment. Actually, while the national income statistics assume that all government spending except welfare payments are "investment," the truth is precisely the opposite. All business spending is investment because it goes toward increasing the production of goods that will eventually be sold to consumers. But government spending is simply consumer spending for the benefit of the income, and for the whims and values, of government's politicians and bureaucrats. Taxation and government spending siphon social resources away from productive consumers who earn the money they receive, and away from their private consumption and saving, and toward consumption expenditure by unproductive politicians, bureaucrats, and their followers and subsidies. Yes, there is certainly too little saving and investment in the United States, as a result of which the U.S. standard of living per person is scarcely higher than it was in the early 1970s. But the problem is not that individuals and families are somehow failing their responsibilities by consuming too much and saving too little, as most of the complainers contend. The problem is not in ourselves the American public, but in our overlords. All government taxation and spending diminishes saving and consumption by genuine producers, for the benefit of a parasitic burden of consumption spending by non-producers. Restoring tax deductions and repealing—not just lowering—the capital gains tax, would be most welcome, but they would only scratch the surface. What is really needed is a drastic reduction of all government taxation and spending, state, local, and federal, across the board. The lifting of that enormous parasitic burden would
bring about great increases in the standard of living of all productive Americans, in the short-run as well as in the future. Z
A WALK ON THE SUPPLY SIDE
stablishment historians of economic thought—they of the Smith-Marx-Marshall variety—have a compelling need to end their saga with a chapter on the latest Great Man, the latest savior and final culmination of economic science. The last consensus choice was, of course, John Maynard Keynes, but his General Theory is now a half-century old, and economists have for some time been looking around for a new candidate for that final chapter. For a while, Joseph Schumpeter had a brief run, but his problem was that his work was largely written before the General Theory. Milton Friedman and monetarism lasted a bit longer, but suffered from two grave defects: (1) the lack of anything resembling a great, integrative work; and (2) the fact that monetarism and Chicago School Economics is really only a gloss on theories that had been hammered out before the Keynesian Era by Irving Fisher and by Frank Knight and his colleagues at the University of Chicago. Was there nothing new to write about since Keynes? Since the mid-1970s, a school of thought has made its mark that at least gives the impression of something brand new. And since economists, like the Supreme Court, follow the election returns, "supply-side economics" has become noteworthy. Supply-side economics has been hampered among students of contemporary economics in lacking anything like a grand treatise, or even a single major leader, and there is scarcely unanimity among its practitioners. But it has been able to take
First published in October 1984.
shrewd advantage of highly placed converts in the media and easy access to politicians and think tanks. Already it has begun to make its way into last chapters of works on economic thought. A central theme of the supply-side school is that a sharp cut in marginal income-tax rates will increase incentives to work and save, and therefore investment and production. That way, few people could take exception. But there are other problems involved. For, at least in the land of the famous Laffer Curve, income tax cuts were treated as the panacea for deficits; drastic cuts would so increase stated revenue as allegedly to yield a balanced budget. Yet there was no evidence whatever for this claim, and indeed, the likelihood is quite the other way. It is true that if income-tax rates were 98 percent and were cut to 90 percent, there would probably be an increase in revenue; but at the far lower tax levels we have been at, there is no warrant for this assumption. In fact, historically, increases in tax rates have been followed by increases in revenue and vice versa. But there is a deeper problem with supply-side than the inflated claims of the Laffer Curve. Common to all supplysiders is nonchalance about total government spending and therefore deficits. The supply-siders do not care that tight government spending takes resources that would have gone into the private sector and diverts them to the public sector. They care only about taxes. Indeed, their attitude toward deficits approaches the old Keynesian "we only owe it to ourselves." Worse than that: the supply-siders want to maintain the current swollen levels of federal spending. As professed "populists," their basic argument is that the people want the current level of spending and the people should not be denied. Even more curious than the supply-sider attitude toward spending is their viewpoint on money. On the one hand, they say they are for hard money and an end to inflation by going back to the "gold standard." On the other hand, they have consistently attacked the Paul Volcker Federal Reserve, not for
being too inflationist, but for imposing "too tight" money and thereby "crippling economic growth." In short, these self-styled "conservative populists" begin to sound like old-fashioned populists in their devotion to inflation and cheap money. But how square that with their championing of the gold standard? In the answer to this question lies the key to the heart of the seeming contradictions of the new supply-side economics. For the "gold standard" they want provides only the illusion of a gold standard without the substance. The banks would not have to redeem in gold coin, and the Fed would have the right to change the definition of the gold dollar at will, as a device to fine-tune the economy. In short, what the supply-siders want is not the old hard-money gold standard, but the phony "gold standard" of the Bretton Woods era, which collapsed under the bows of inflation and money management by the Fed. The heart of supply-side doctrine is revealed in its best-selling philosophic manifesto, The Way the World Works, by Jude Wanniski. Wanniski's view is that the people, the masses, are always right, and have always been right through history. In economics, he claims, the masses want a massive welfare state, drastic income-tax cuts, and a balanced budget. How can these contradictory aims be achieved? By the legerdemain of the Laffer Curve. And in the monetary sphere, we might add, what the masses seem to want is inflation and cheap money along with a return to the gold standard. Hence, fueled by the axiom that the public is always right, the supply-siders propose to give the public what they want by giving them an inflationary, cheap-money Fed plus the illusion of stability through a phony gold standard. The supply-side aim is therefore "democratically" to give the public what they want, and in this case the best definition of "democracy" is that of H.L. Mencken: "Democracy is the view that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." Z
11 KEYNESIAN MYTHS
he Keynesians have been caught short again. In the early and the late 1970s, the wind was taken out of their sails by the arrival of inflationary recession, a phenomenon which they not only failed to predict, but whose very existence violates the fundamental tenets of the Keynesian system. Since then, the Keynesians have lost their old invincible arrogance, though they still constitute a large part of the economics profession. In the last few years, the Keynesians have been assuring us with more than a touch of their old hauteur, that inflation would not and could not arrive soon, despite the fact that "tightmoney" hero Paul Volcker had been consistently pouring in money at double-digit rates. Chiding hard-money advocates, the Keynesians declared that, despite the monetary inflation, American industry still suffered from "excess" or "idle" capacity, functioning at an overall rate of something like 80 percent. Thus, they pointed out, expanded monetary demand could not result in inflation. As we all know, despite Keynesian assurances that inflation could not reignite, it did despite the idle capacity, leaving them with something else to puzzle over. Inflation rose from approximately 1 percent in 1986 to 6 percent, interest rates the next year rose again, the falling dollar raised import prices, and gold prices went up. Once again, the hard-money economists and investment advisors have proved far sounder than the Establishment-blessed Keynesians. Along with that the best way to explain where the Keynesians went wrong is to turn against them their own common reply to their critics: that anti-Keynesians, who worry about the waste of inflation or government programs, are "assuming full
employment" of resources. Eliminate this assumption, they say, and Keynesianism becomes correct in the through-the-looking glass world of unemployment and idle resources. But the charge should be turned around, and the Keynesians should be asked: why should there be unemployment (of labor or of machinery) at all? Unemployment is not a given that descends from heaven. Of course, it often exists, but what can account for it? The Keynesians themselves create the problem by leaving out the price system. The hallmark of crackpot economics is an analysis that somehow leaves out prices, and talks only about such aggregates as income, spending, and employment. We know from "microeconomic" analysis that if there is a "surplus" of something on the market, if something cannot be sold, the only reason is that its price is somehow being kept too high. The way to cure a surplus or unemployment of anything, is to lower the asking price, whether it be wage rates for labor, prices of machinery or plant, or of the inventory of a retailer. In short, as Professor William H. Hutt pointed out brilliantly in the 1930s, when his message was lost amid the fervor of the Keynesian Revolution: idleness or unemployment of a resource can only occur because the owner of that resource is deliberately withholding it from the market and refusing to sell it at the offered price. In a profound sense, therefore, all unemployment and idleness is voluntary. Why should a resource owner deliberately withhold it from the market? Usually, because he is holding out for a higher price, or wage rate. In a free and unhampered market economy, the owners will find out their error soon enough, and when they get tired of making no returns from their labor or machinery or products, they will lower their asking price sufficiently to sell them. In the case of machinery and other capital goods, of course, the owners might have made a severe malinvestment, often due to artificial booms created by bank credit and central banks. In that case, the lower market clearing price for the machinery or plant might be so low as to not be worth the laborer's giving up
his leisure—but then the unemployment is purely voluntary and the worker holds out permanently for a higher wage. A worse problem is that, since the 1930s, government and its privileged unions have intervened massively in the labor market to keep wage rates above the market-clearing wage, thereby insuring ever higher unemployment among workers with the lowest skills and productivity. Government interference, in the form of minimum wage laws and compulsory unionism, creates compulsory unemployment, while welfare payments and unemployment "insurance" subsidize unemployment and make sure that it will be permanently high. We can have as much unemployment as we pay for. It follows from this analysis that monetary inflation and greater spending will not necessarily reduce unemployment or idle capacity. It will only do so if workers or machine owners are induced to think that they are getting a higher return and at least some of their holdout demands are being met. And this can only be accomplished if the price paid for the resource (the wage rate or the price of machinery) goes up. In other words, greater supply or use of capacity will only be called forth by wage and price increases, i.e., by price inflation. As usual, the Keynesians have the entire causal process bollixed up. And so, as the facts now poignantly demonstrate, we can and do have inflation along with idle resources. Z
KEYNESIANISM REDUX
ne of the ironic but unfortunately enduring legacies of eight years of Reaganism has been the resurrection of Keynesianism. From the late 1930s until the early 1970s, Keynesianism rode high in the economics profession and in the corridors of power in Washington, promising that, so long as First published in January 1989.
Keynesian economists continued at the helm, the blessings of modern macroeconomics would surely bring us permanent prosperity without inflation. Then something happened on the way to Eden: the mighty inflationary recession of 1973–74. Keynesian doctrine is, despite its algebraic and geometric jargon, breathtakingly simple at its core: recessions are caused by underspending in the economy, inflation is caused by overspending. Of the two major categories of spending, consumption is passive and determined, almost robotically, by income; hopes for the proper amount of spending, therefore, rest on investment, but private investors, while active and decidedly non-robotic, are erratic and volatile, unreliably dependent on fluctuations in what Keynes called their "animal spirits." Fortunately for all of us, there is another group in the economy that is just as active and decisive as investors, but who are also—if guided by Keynesian economists—scientific and rational, able to act in the interests of all: Big Daddy government. When investors and consumers underspend, government can and should step in and increase social spending via deficits, thereby lifting the economy out of recession. When private animal spirits get too wild, government is supposed to step in and reduce private spending by what the Keynesians revealingly call "sopping up excess purchasing power" (that's ours). In strict theory, by the way, the Keynesians could just as well have called for lowering government spending during inflationary booms rather than sopping up our spending. But the very idea of cutting government budgets (and I mean actual cut-cuts, not cuts in the rate of increase) is nowadays just as unthinkable, as, for example, adhering to a Jeffersonian strict construction of the Constitution of the United States, and for similar reasons. Originally, Keynesians vowed that they, too, were in favor of a "balanced budget," just as much as the fuddy-duddy reactionaries who opposed them. It's just that they were not, like the fuddy-duddies, tied to the year as an accounting period; they would balance the budget, too, but over the business cycle. Thus, if there are four years of recession followed by four years
of boom, the federal deficits during the recession would be compensated for by the surpluses piled up during the boom; over the eight years of cycle, it would all balance out. Evidently, the "cyclically balanced budget" was the first Keynesian concept to be poured down the Orwellian memory hole, as it became clear that there weren't going to be any surpluses, just smaller or larger deficits. A subtle but important corrective came into Keynesianism: larger deficits during recessions, smaller ones during booms. But the real slayer of Keynesianism came with the doubledigit inflationary recession of 1973–74, followed soon by the even more intense inflationary recessions of 1979–80 and 1981–82. For if the government was supposed to step on the spending accelerator during recessions, and step on the brakes during booms, what in blazes is it going to do if there is a steep recession (with unemployment and bankruptcies) and a sharp inflation at the same time? What can Keynesianism say? Step on both accelerator and brake at the same time? The stark fact of inflationary recession violates the fundamental assumptions of Keynesian theory and the crucial program of Keynesian policy. Since 1973–74, Keynesianism has been intellectually finished, dead from the neck up. But very often the corpse refuses to lie down, particularly one made up of an elite which would have to give up their power positions in the academy and in government. One crucial law of politics or sociology is: no one ever resigns. And so, the Keynesians have clung to their power positions as tightly as possible, never resigning, although a bit less addicted to grandiose promises. A bit chastened, they now only promise to do the best they can, and to keep the system going. Essentially, then, shorn of its intellectual groundwork, Keynesianism has become the pure economics of power, committed only to keeping the Establishment-system going, making marginal adjustments, babying things along through yet one more election, and hoping that by tinkering with the controls, shifting rapidly back and forth
between accelerator and brake, something will work, at least to preserve their cushy positions for a few more years. Amidst the intellectual confusion, however, a few dominant tendencies, legacies from their glory days, remain among Keynesians: (1) a penchant for continuing deficits, (2) a devotion to fiat paper money and at least moderate inflation, (3) adherence to increased government spending, and (4) an eternal fondness for higher taxes, to lower deficits a wee bit, but more importantly, to inflict some bracing pain on the greedy, selfish, and short-sighted American public. The Reagan administration managed to institutionalize these goodies, seemingly permanently on the American scene. Deficits are far greater and apparently forever; the difference now is that formerly free-market Reaganomists are out-Keynesianing their liberal forebears in coming up with ever more ingenious apologetics for huge deficits. The only dispute now is within the Keynesian camp, with the allegedly "conservative" supply-siders enthusiastically joining Keynesians in devotion to inflation and cheap money, and differing only on their call for moderate tax cuts as against tax increases. The triumph of Keynesianism within the Reagan administration stems from the rapid demise of the monetarists, the main competitors to the Keynesians within respectable academia. Having made a series of disastrously bad predictions, they who kept trumpeting that "science is prediction," the monetarists have retreated in confusion, trying desperately to figure out what went wrong and which of the many "M"s they should fasten on as being the money supply. The collapse of monetarism was symbolized by Keynesian James Baker's takeover as Secretary of the Treasury from monetarist-sympathizer Donald Regan. With Keynesians dominant during the second Reagan term, the transition to a Keynesian Bush team—Bush having always had strong Keynesian leanings—was so smooth as to be almost invisible. Perhaps it is understandable that an administration and a campaign that reduced important issues to sound bites and TV
images should also be responsible for the restoration to dominance of an intellectually bankrupt economic creed, the very same creed that brought us the political economics of every administration since the second term of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is no accident that the same administration that managed to combine the rhetoric of "getting government off our back" with the reality of enormously escalating Big Government, should also have brought back a failed and statist Keynesianism in the name of prosperity and free enterprise. Z
The Socialism of Welfare
ECONOMIC INCENTIVES AND WELFARE
ost people disagree with economists, who point out the important impact that monetary incentives can have on even seemingly "non-economic" behavior. When, for example, coffee prices rise due to a killing frost of the coffee crop in Brazil, or when New York subway fares go up, most people believe that the quantity purchased will not be affected, since people are "addicted" to coffee, and people "have to get to work" by subway. What they don't realize, and what economists are particularly equipped to point out, is that individual consumers vary in their behavior. Some, indeed, are hard core, and will only cut their purchases a little bit should the cost of a product or service rise. But others are "marginal" buyers, who will cut their coffee purchases, or shift to tea or cocoa. And subway rides consist, not only of "getting to work," but also short, "marginal" rides which can and will be cut down. Thus, subway fares are now 25 times what they were in World War II, and as a result, the number of annual subway rides have fallen by more than half. People are shocked, too, when economists assert that monetary incentives can affect even such seemingly totally non-economic activity as producing babies. Economists are accused of First published in October 1994. 53
being mechanistic and soulless, devoid of humanity, for even mentioning such a connection. And yet, while some people may have babies with little or no regard to economic incentive, I am willing to bet that if the government, for example, should offer a bounty of $100,000 for each new baby, considerably more babies would be produced. Liberals are particularly shocked that economists, or anyone else, could believe that a close connection exists between the level of welfare payments, and the number of welfare mothers with children. Babymaking, they declare, is solely the result of "love" (if that's the correct word), and not of any crass monetary considerations. And yet, if welfare payments are far higher than any sum that a single teenager can make on the market, who can deny the powerful extra tug from the prospects of tax-subsidized moolah without any need to work? The conservative organization Change-NY has recently issued a study of the economic incentives for going on, and staying on, welfare in New York. The "typical" welfare recipient is a single mother with two children. This typical welfare "client" receives, in city, state, and federal benefits, the whopping annual sum of $32,500, which includes approximately $3,000 in cash, $14,000 in Medicaid, $10,000 in housing assistance, and $5,000 in food assistance. Since these benefits are non-taxable, this sum is equivalent to a $45,000 annual salary before taxes. Furthermore, this incredibly high figure for welfare aid is "extremely conservative," says Change-NY, because it excludes the value of other benefits, including Head Start (also known as pre-school day care), job training (often consisting of such hard-nosed subjects as "conversational skills"), child care, and the Special Supplemental Food program for Women, Infants, and Children (or WIC). Surely, including all this would push up the annual benefit close to $50,000. This also presumes that the mother is not cheating by getting more welfare than she is entitled to, which is often the case. Not only is this far above any job available to our hypothetical teenaged single mother, it is even far higher than a typical
entry level job in the New York City government. Thus, the New York Post, (Aug. 2) noted the following starting salaries at various municipal jobs: $18,000 for an office aid; $23,000 for a sanitation worker; $27,000 for a teacher; $27,000 for a police officer or firefighter; $18,000 for a word processor—all of these with far more work skills than possessed by your typical welfare client. And all of these salaries, of course, are fully taxable. Given this enormous disparity in benefits, is it any wonder that 1.3 million mothers and children in New York are on welfare, and that welfare dependence is happily passed on from one generation of girls to the next? As Change-NY puts it, "why accept a job that requires 40 hours of work a week when you can remain at home and make the equivalent" of $45,000 a year? Economists, then, are particularly alert to the fact that, the more any product, service, or condition is subsidized, the more of it we are going to get. We can have as many people on welfare as we are willing to pay for. If the state of being a single mother with kids is the fastest route to getting on welfare, that social condition is going to multiply. Not, of course, that every woman will fall for the blandishments of welfare, but the more intense those subsidies and the greater the benefit compared to working, the more women and illegitimate children on welfare we are going to be stuck with. Moreover, the longer this system remains in place, the worse will be the erosion in society of the work ethic and of the reluctance to be on the dole that used to be dominant in the United States. Once that ethical shift takes place, the welfare system will only snowball. Change-NY wryly points out that it would be cheaper for the taxpayer to send welfare recipients to Harvard than to maintain the current system. In view of the decline of educational standards generally and Harvard's Political Correctness in particular, Harvard would probably be happy to enroll them. Z
14 WELFARE AS WE DON'T KNOW IT
he welfare system has become an open scandal, and has given rise to justified indignation throughout the middle and working classes. Unfortunately, as too often happens when the public has no articulate leadership, the focus of its wrath against welfare has become misplaced. The public's rage focuses on having to pay taxes to keep welfare receivers in idleness; but what people should zero in on is their having to pay these people taxes, period. The concentration on idleness vs. the "work ethic," however, has given the trickster Bill Clinton the loophole he always covets: seeming to pursue conservative goals while actually doing just the opposite. Unfortunately, the welfare "reform" scam seems to be working. The President's pledge to end "welfare as we know it," therefore, turns out not to be dumping welfare parasites off the backs of the taxpayers. On the contrary, the plan is to load even more taxpayer subsidies and privileges into their eager pockets. The welfarees will become even more parasitic and just as unproductive as before, but at least they will not be "idle." Big deal. The outline of the Clintonian plan is as follows: Welfarees will be given two years to "find a job." Since nothing prevents them from "finding a job" now except their own lack of interest, there is no reason for expecting much from job-finding. At that point, "reform" kicks in. The federal government will either pay private employers to hire these people or, if no employers can be found, will itself "employ" the welfarees in various "community service" jobs. The latter, of course, are unproductive boondoggles, jobs which no one will pay for in the private sector, what used to be called "leaf-raking" in the Federal Works Progress Administration of the 1930s New Deal. First published in April 1994.
Welfarees will now be paid at minimum wage scale by taxpayers to shuffle papers from one desk to another or to engage in some other unproductive or counter-productive activity. As for subsidizing private jobs, the employers' businesses will be hampered by unproductive or surly or incompetent workers. In the private jobs, furthermore, the taxpayers will wholly subsidize wages not only at minimum wage scale (which we can expect to keep rising), but also at whatever pay may be set between employer and government. The taxpayer picks up the full tab. But this is scarcely all. In addition to the actual job subsidies, Clinton proposes that the federal government also pay the following to the welfare parasites: free medical care for all (courtesy the Clinton health "reform"); plenty of food stamps for free food; free child care for the myriad of welfare children; free public housing; free transportation to and from their jobs; free child "nutrition" programs; and lavish "training programs" to train these people for productive labor. If these training programs are anything like current models, they will be lengthy and worthless, including "training" in "conversational skills." If a free and lavishly funded public school system can't seem to manage teaching these characters to read, why should anyone think government qualified to "train" them in any other skills? In addition to the huge cost of direct payments to the welfarees, an expensive government bureaucracy will have to be developed to supervise the training, job finding, and job supervision. In addition, welfare mothers with young children will be exempt from the workfare requirements altogether. Even the supporters of the Clinton welfare plan concede that the plan will greatly increase the welfare cost to the taxpayers. The Clintonians of course, as usual with government, try to underestimate the cost to get a foot in the door, but even moderate observers estimate the annual extra cost to be no less than $20 billion. And that's probably a gross underestimate. And while the White House claims that only 600,000 people will
need the workfare, internal Health and Human Services memoranda estimate the number at no less than 2.3 million, and that's from Clintonian sources. Of course, the Clintonian claim is that these huge increases are "only in the short-run"; in the long run, the alleged improvement in the moral climate is supposed to lower costs to the taxpayers. Sure. Forcing taxpayers to subsidize employers or to provide busywork for unproductive "jobs" is worse than keeping welfare recipients idle. There is no point to activity or work unless it is productive, and enacting a taxpayer subsidy is a sure way to keep the welfarees unproductive. Subsidizing the idle is immoral and counterproductive; paying people to work and creating jobs for them is also crazy, as well as being more expensive. But paying people to work is worse than that. For it removes low-income recipients of subsidy from the status of an exotic, marginal, and generally despised group, and brings the subsidized into the mainstream of the workforce. The change from welfare to workfare thereby accelerates the malignant socialist and egalitarian goal of coerced redistribution of income. It is, in other words, simply another part of the twentieth century's Long March toward socialism. Z
15 THE INFANT MORTALITY "CRISIS"
first heard of the Infant Mortality Question last summer, when I had the misfortune to spend an evening with an obnoxious leftist who claimed that, despite any other considerations, U.S. capitalism had failed and the Soviet Union had succeeded, because of the high "infant mortality" rate here. She must have been ahead of the left-wing learning curve, for since
First published in June 1991.
then the press has been filled with articles proclaiming the selfsame doctrine. First, on the Soviet Union, I learned from Soviet economist Dr. Yuri Maltsev that the Soviets had achieved low infant mortality rates by a simple but effective device, one that is considerably easier than medical advances, nutritional improvement, or behavioral reform for pregnant women. Namely: by holding up the statistical reporting of a death until the mortality is beyond "infant" status. No one, apparently, pays much attention to the death rate of post-infants. But what of the U.S. infant mortality record? Well, in 1915, 100 infants died for every 1,000 live births in the U.S. Since then, the mortality rate has fallen spectacularly: to 47 for every 1,000 in 1940, 20 by 1970, and down to 10 per 1,000 by 1988. A 90 percent drop in the infant mortality rate since 1915 does not seem to be a record calculated to induce an orgy of breastbeating and collective guilt among the American people. So why should Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, our official scourge as Secretary of Health and Human Services, denounce the U.S. record as "shameful and unconscionable?" And why should a proposal by President Bush for an additional federal prenatal care program of $171 million be denounced by some Congressmen as amounting only to a net increase of $121 million, since $50 million would be deducted from existing programs? Why is it assumed on all sides that more federal spending is necessary? The problem seems to be that many countries have lowered their infant mortality rates even faster, so that the U.S. now ranks 22nd in infant mortality; rates in Japan and in Scandinavia are less than half that in the U.S. As in economic statistics, it helps our understanding to disaggregate; and we then find that black infant mortality has long been far higher than white; specifically, the 1988 U.S. rate was 17.6 for blacks and 8.5 for whites. Apparently, the key to infant mortality is low birth-weight, and low birth-weight rates in the U.S. have long been far
greater for black than for white infants. The white rate has remained at about 7 percent of live births since 1950, while the black rate has hovered around 10 to 14 percent of births. Starting at 14 percent in 1969—the first year black birthrate figures were kept separately—black low-weight births fell after abortion was legalized, only to go back up since the mid-1980s to over 13 percent. So central is the birth-weight problem that Christine Layton of the Children's Defense Fund, a left-liberal "health advocacy group" (is anyone opposed to health?) in Washington, welcomed the recent news that infant mortality rates fell to 9.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 only grudgingly. She pointed out that this decline since 1988 is due only to new medical advances in drugs for treating lungs of premature babies; apparently this decline doesn't really count, since it will not "have the kind of lasting effect we need to see on the problems of being born too soon or too small." But how come the low birthrate problem among blacks has persisted for decades even though, with its usual energy in spending taxpayer money, the federal government has been tackling the problem since 1972 by its immensely popular WIC (Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children) program? WIC costs the federal government $2.5 billion a year, in addition to federal subsidies to states administering the program. In the left liberal worldview, every social problem can be cured by federal spending, and so the government assumed that low birth-weight among black babies was due to malnutrition, which was in turn due to poverty. WIC, therefore, has been providing poor American women with vast amounts of milk, cheese, eggs, cereal, and peanut butter. WIC has been supplying all this food to half of the eight million pregnant women, infants, mothers, and children eligible—family incomes must be below 185 percent of the official poverty line and the family must be officially judged to be at "nutritional risk."
So why is it that impoverished black mothers, despite the intake of all this federally sponsored nutrition, have not seen the low birth-weight or the mortality problem reduced over these two decades? Why has the only accomplishment of WIC been to provide massive subsidies to dairy and peanut farmers? (We set aside the rising obesity and cholesterol rates among poor blacks.) The answer is that, remarkably enough, nutrition, and therefore low incomes, is not the problem. It turns out, according to an article by prominent nutritionist and pediatrician Dr. George Graham of Johns Hopkins Medical School (Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1991), that the key cause of low birth-weight, and especially of very low birth-weight, in the U.S. is premature birth, and that malnutrition plays virtually no role in causing premature birth. In Third World countries, on the contrary, low birth-weight is caused by malnutrition and poverty, but premature birth in those countries is not a particular problem. Unlike Third World countries, low birth-weight, and therefore high mortality rates, in the U.S. are a problem of prematurity and not malnutrition. In fact, the infant mortality rate on the island of Jamaica, almost all of whose population is poor and black, is substantially lower than in Washington, D.C., whose blacks enjoy a far higher income than in Jamaica, and two-thirds of whom were beneficiaries of the WIC program. The cause of premature births, in fact, is not nutritional but behavioral, that is the behavior of the pregnant mother. In particular tobacco smoking, ingestion of cocaine and crack, previous abortions, and infections of the genital tract and of the membranes surrounding the fetus, which often are the consequence of sexual promiscuity. And there we have it. These are not facts that left-liberalism likes to hear, and obviously no federal mulcting of taxpayers is going to improve the situation. Left-liberals might try to evade the truth by charging that this is the old conservative tack of "blaming the victim." They're wrong. No one is blaming the babies. Z
16 THE HOMELESS AND THE HUNGRY
inter is here, and for the last few years this seasonal event has meant the sudden discovery of a brand-new category of the pitiable: the "homeless." A vast propaganda effort has discovered the homeless and adjured us to do something about it—inevitably to pour millions of tax-dollars into the problem. There is now even a union of homeless lobbying for federal aid. Not so long ago there was another, apparently entirely different category: the "hungry," for whom rock stars were making records and we were all clasping hands across America. And what has now happened to the Hungry? Have they all become well fed, and so rest content, while the Homeless are held up for our titillation? Or have they too organized a union of the Hungry? And what of next year? Are we to be confronted with a new category, the "unclothed," or perhaps the "ill-shod"? And how about the "thirsty"? Or the candy-deprived? How many more millions are standing in line, waiting to be trotted out for consideration? Do the Establishment liberals engaged in this operation really believe, by the way, that these are all ironclad separate categories? Do they envision, for example, a mass of hungry living in plush houses, or a legion of the homeless who are living it up every night at Lutece? Surely not; surely there are not a half-dozen or so different sets of the ill-served. Doesn't the Establishment realize that all these seemingly unconnected problems: housing, food, clothing, transportation, etc. are all wrapped up in One Big Problem: lack of money? If this were recognized, the problem would be
simplified, the causal connections would be far clearer, and the number of afflicted millions greatly reduced: to poverty, period. Why aren't these connections recognized, as even Franklin Roosevelt did in the famous passage of his second inaugural where he saw "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and illnourished?" Presumably, FDR saw considerable overlap between these three deprivations. I think the Establishment treats these problems separately for several reasons, none of them admirable. For one reason, it magnifies the hardship, making it appear like many sets of people suffering from grave economic ailments. Which means that more taxpayer money is supposed to be funneled into a far greater number of liberal social workers. But there is more. By stressing particular, specific problems, the inference comes that the taxpayer must quickly provide each of a number of goodies: food, housing, clothing, counseling, et al. in turn. And this means far greater subsidies to different sets of bureaucrats and special economic interests: e.g., construction companies, building trade unions, farmers, food distributors, clothing firms, etc. Food stamps, housing vouchers, public housing follow with seemingly crystal-clear logic. It is also far easier to sentimentalize the issues and get the public's juices worked up by sobbing about the homeless, the foodless, etc. and calling for specific provision of these wants— far easier than talking about the "moneyless" and calling upon the public merely to supply do-re-mi to the poor. Money does not have nearly the sentimental value of home and hearth and Christmas dinner. Not only that: but focusing on money is likely to lead the public to begin asking embarrassing questions. Such as: WHY are these people without money? And isn't there a danger that taxing A to supply B with money will greatly reduce the incentive for both A and B to continue working hard in order to acquire it ? Doesn't parasitism gravely weaken the incentives to work among both the producer and the parasite class?
Further, if the poor are without money because they don't feel like working, won't automatic taxpayer provision of a permanent supply of funds weaken their willingness to work all the more, and create an ever greater supply of the idle looking for handouts? Or, if the poor are without money because they are disabled, won't a permanent dole reduce their incentive to invest in their own vocational rehabilitation and training, so that they will once again be productive members of society? And, in general, isn't it far better for all concerned (except, of course, the social workers) to have limited private funds for charity instead of imposing an unlimited burden on the hapless taxpayer? Focusing on money, instead of searching for an ever-greater variety of people to be pitied and cosseted, would itself tend to clear the air and the mind and go a long way toward a solution of the problem. Z
17 RIOTING FOR RAGE, FUN, AND PROFIT
he little word "but" is the great weasel word of our time, enabling one to subscribe to standard pieties while getting one's real contrary message across. "Of course, I deplore communism, but . . ."; "Of course, I approve of the free market, but . . ." have been all too familiar refrains in recent decades. The standard reaction of our pundits, and across the entire respectable political spectrum, to the great Los Angeles et al. riots of April 29–May 2 went: "Of course, I can't condone violence, but . . . ." In every instance, the first clause is slid over rapidly and ritualistically, to get to the real diametrically opposed message after the "but" is disposed of. The point, of course, is precisely to condone violence, by rushing to get to the alleged "real structural causes" of riots and First published in July 1992.
the violence. While the "causes" of any human action are imprecise and complex, none of that is attended to, for everyone knows what the "solution" is supposed to be: to tax the American people, including the victims of the massive looting, burning, beating, killing rampage, to "assuage the rage of the inner cities" by paying off the rampaging "community" so handsomely that they supposedly won't do it again. Before we rush past the riots themselves, the whole point of government, of an institution with a monopoly, or preponderance, of violence, is to use it to defend persons and property against violent assault. That role is not as obvious as it may seem, since the Los Angeles, state, and federal forces most conspicuously did not perform that function. Sending in police and troops late and depriving them of bullets, cannot do the job. There is only one way to fulfill the vital police function, the only way that works: the public announcement—backed by willingness to enforce it—made by the late Mayor Richard Daley in the Chicago riots of the 1960s—ordering the police to shoot to kill any looters, rioters, arsonists, or muggers they might find. That very announcement was enough to induce the rioters to pocket their "rage" and go back to their peaceful pursuits. Who knows the hearts of men? Who knows all the causes, the motivations, of action? But one thing is clear: regardless of the murky "causes," would-be looters and muggers would get such a message loud and clear. But the federal government, and most state and local governments, decided to deal with the great riots of Watts and other inner cities of the 1960s in a very different way: the now accepted practice of a massive buyout, a vast system of bribes in the form of welfare, setasides, affirmative action, etc. The amount spent on such purposes by federal, state, and local governments since the Great Society of the 1960s totals the staggering sum of $7 trillion.
And what is the result? The plight of the inner cities is clearly worse than ever: more welfare, more crime, more dysfunction, more fatherless families, fewer kids being "educated" in any sense, more despair and degradation. And now, bigger riots than ever before. It should be clear, in the starkest terms, that throwing taxpayer money and privileges at the inner cities is starkly counterproductive. And yet: this is the only "solution" that liberals can ever come up with, and without any argument—as if this "solution" were self-evident. How long is this nonsense supposed to go on? If that is the absurd liberal solution, conservatives are not much better. Even liberals are praising—always a bad sign— Jack Kemp for being a "good" conservative who cares, and who is coming up with innovative solutions trumpeted by Kemp himself and his neoconservative fuglemen. These are supposed to be "non-welfare" solutions, but welfare is precisely what they are: "public housing "owned" by tenants, but only under massive subsidy and strict regulation—with no diminution of the public housing stock; "enterprise zones" which are not free enterprise zones at all, but simply zones for more welfare subsidy and privileges to the inner city. Various left-libertarians focus on removal of minimum wage laws and licensing requirements as the cure for the disaster of the inner cities. Well, repeal of minimum wages would certainly be helpful, but they are largely irrelevant to the riots: after all, minimum wage laws exist all across the country, in areas just as poor as the inner cities—such as Appalachia. How come there are no riots in Appalachia? The abolition of licensing laws would also be welcome, but just as irrelevant. Some claim the underlying cause is racial discrimination. And yet, the problem seems worse, rather than better, after three decades of aggressive civil rights measures. Moreover, the Koreans are undoubtedly at least equal victims of racial discrimination—and they also have the problem of English being their second, and often a distant second, language. So how is it that
Korean-Americans never riot, indeed that they were the major single group of victims of the Los Angeles riot? The Moynihan thesis of the cause of the problem is closer to the mark: the famous insight of three decades ago that the black family was increasingly fatherless, and that therefore such values as respect for person and property were in danger of disappearing. Three decades later, the black family is in far worse shape, and the white family isn't doing too well, either. But even if the Moynihan thesis is part of the problem, what can be done about it? Families cannot be forced together. A greater part of the cause of the rot is the moral and esthetic nihilism created by many decades of cultural liberalism. But what can be done about it? Surely, at best it would take many decades to take back the culture from liberalism and to instill sound doctrine, if it can be done at all. The rot cannot be stopped, or even slowed down, by such excruciatingly slow and problematic measures. Before we can set about curing a disease we must have some idea of what that disease is. Are we really sure that "rage" is the operative problem? For the most part, the young rioters caught on television mostly did not look angry at all. One memorable exchange took place as the TV camera caught a happy, grinning young lad hauling off a TV set from a looted store and putting it in his car. Asked the dimwit reporter: "Why are you taking that TV set?" The memorable answer: "Because it's free!" It is no accident, too, that the arsonists took care to loot thoroughly the 10,000 stores before they burned them to the ground. The crucial point is that whether the motivation or the goal is rage, kicks, or loot, the rioters, with a devotion to present gratification as against future concerns, engaged in the joys of beating, robbing, and burning, and of massive theft, because they saw they could get away with it. Devotion to the sanctity of person and property is not part of their value-system. That's why, in the short term, all we can do is shoot the looters and incarcerate the rioters. Z
18 THE SOCIAL SECURITY SWINDLE
enator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY) has performed a signal service for all Americans by calling into question, for the first time since the early 1980s, the soundness of the nation's beloved Social Security System. A decade ago, the public was beginning to learn of the imminent bankruptcy of Social Security, only to be sent back into their half-century slumber in 1983 by the bipartisan Greenspan commission, which "saved" Social Security by installing a whopping and ever-rising set of increases in the Social Security tax. Any government program, of course, can be bailed out by levying more taxes to pay the tab. Since the beginning of the Reagan administration, the much heralded "cuts" in the officially dubbed "income-tax" segment of our payroll taxes have been more than offset by the rise in the "Social-Security" portion. But since the public has been conditioned into thinking that the Social Security tax is somehow not a tax, the Reagan-Bush administrations have been able to get away with their pose as heroic champions of tax cuts and resisters against the tax raising inclinations of the evil Democrats. For the Social Security System is the biggest single racket in the entire panoply of welfare-state measures that have been fastened upon us by the New Deal and its successors. The American public has been conned into thinking that the Social Security tax is not a tax at all, but a benevolent national "insurance" scheme into which everyone pays premiums from the beginning of their working lives, finally "collecting" benefits when they get to be 65. The system is held to be analogous to a private insurance firm, which collects premiums over the years, invests them in productive ways that yield interest, and then later pays old-age annuities to the lucky beneficiaries.
First published in April 1990.
So much for the facade. The reality, however, is the exact opposite. The federal government taxes the youth and adult working population, takes the money, and spends it on the boondoggles that make up the annual federal budget. Then, when the long-taxed person gets to be 65, the government taxes someone else—that is, the still-working population, to pay the so-called benefits. Be assured, the executives of any private insurance company that tried this stunt would be spending the rest of their lives in much-merited retirement in the local hoosegow. The whole system is a vast Ponzi scheme, with the difference that Ponzi's notorious swindle at least rested solely on his ability to con his victims, whereas the government swindlers, of course, rely also on a vast apparatus of tax-coercion. But this covers only one dimension of the Social Security racket. The "benefits," of course, are puny compared to a genuine private annuity, which makes productive investments. The purchasers of a private annuity receive, at the age, say of 65, a principal sum which they can obtain and which can also earn them further interest. The person on Social Security gets only the annual benefits, void of any capital sum. How could he, when the Social Security "fund" doesn't exist? The notion that a fund really exists rests on a "creative" accounting fiction; yes, the fund does exist on paper, but the Social Security System actually grabs the money as it comes in and purchases bonds from the Treasury, which spends the money on its usual boondoggles. But that's not all. The Social Security System is a "welfare" program that levies high and continually increasing taxes (a) only on wages, and on no other investment or interest income; and (b) is steeply regressive, hitting lower wage earners far more heavily than people in the upper brackets. Thus, income earners up to $51,300 per year are forced to pay, at this moment, 7.65 percent of their income to Social Security; but there the tax stops, so that, for example a person who earns $200,000 a year
pays the same absolute amount ($3,924), which works out as only 2 percent of income. That's a welfare state!? Over the years, the government has vastly increased the tax bite in two ways: by increasing the percentage, and by raising the maximum income level at which the tax ceases. As a result, since the start of the Reagan administration, the rate has gone up from 5.80 percent to 7.65 percent, and the maximum tax from $1,502 to $3,924 per year. And that's only the beginning. The final aspect of the swindle was contributed by ReaganGreenspan & Co. in 1983. Observing the high and mounting federal deficits, our bipartisan rulers decided to raise taxes and pile up a huge "surplus" in the non-existent Social Security fund, thereby "lowering" the embarrassing deficit on paper, while continuing the same stratospheric deficit in reality. Thus, the projected federal deficit for fiscal 1990 is $206 billion; but the estimated $65 billion "surplus" in the Social Security account officially reduces the deficit to $141 billion, thereby appeasing the ghosts of Gramm-Rudman. But of course there is no surplus; the $65 billion are promptly spent on Treasury bonds, and the Treasury adds that to the stream of general expenditures on $20,000 coffeemakers, bailouts for S&L crooks, and the rest of its worthy causes. But Senator Moynihan, one of the authors of the current swindle as part of the Greenspan Commission, has blown at least part of the lid off the scam. At which point, the Republicans happily took up the traditional Democratic count that their opposition has set out, cruelly and heartlessly, to throw the nation's much revered elderly into the gutter. Senator Moynihan's proposal for a small rollback of the Social Security tax to 6.55 percent at least opens the entire matter for public debate. Moynihan's motives have been called into question, but after we recover from our shock at a politician possibly acting for political motives, we must realize that we owe him a considerable debt. The problem is that, while many writers and journalists understand the truth and tell it in print,
they generally do so in subdued and decorous tones, drenching the reader in reams of statistics. The public will never be roused to rise up and get rid of this monstrous system until they are told the truth in no uncertain terms: in other words, until a swindle is called a swindle. Z
19 ROOTS OF THE INSURANCE CRISIS
he latest large-scale assault upon property rights and the free market comes from the insurance industry and its associated incurrers of liability: particularly groups of manufacturers and the organized medical profession. They charge that runaway juries have been awarding skyrocketing increases in liability payments, thereby threatening to bankrupt the insurance industry as well as impose higher costs upon, or deprive of liability insurance, those industries and occupations that juries have adjudged to be guilty. In response, the insurance and allied industries have demanded legal caps, or maxima, on jury awards, as well as maximum limits on or even elimination of, legal fees, especially contingency fees paid to lawyers by plaintiffs out of their awarded damages. Before analyzing these measures, it must be pointed out that there may well be no crisis. Critics of the insurance industry have pointed out that insurance companies have refused to reveal the figures on verdicts and settlements from year to year, or to break them down by industry or occupation. Instead, the insurance industry has relied solely on colorful anecdotes about bizarre individual awards—something they would scarcely do in running their own business. Also, the critics have demonstrated that average insurance payments have not advanced, in the last 25 years, much beyond Previously unpublished.
the rate of inflation. So there may well be no insurance crisis at all, and the entire hysteria may be trumped-up to gain benefits for the insurance industry at the expense of victims of injury to person or property who are entitled to just compensation. But let us assume for the sake of argument that the insurance crisis is every bit as dramatic as the industry says it is. Why are the rest of us supposed to bail them out? Insurance companies, like other business firms, are entrepreneurial. As entrepreneurs, they take risks; when they do well and forecast correctly, they properly make profits; when they forecast badly, they make losses. That is the way it should be. They should be honored when they make profits, and suffer the consequences when they make losses. In the case of insurance, companies charge premiums so as to cover, with a profit, the liabilities they expect to pay. If they suffer losses because their entrepreneurship is poor, and payments are higher than premiums, they should expect no sympathy, let alone bailout, from the long-suffering consuming and taxpaying public. It is particularly outrageous that the insurance companies are trying to place maximum limits on jury awards and on legal fees. It is everyone's right as a free person to hire lawyers for whatever fee they both agree upon, and it is no one's right to interfere with private property and the freedom to make such contracts. Lawyers, after all, are our shield and buckler against unjust laws and torts committed against us, and we must not be deprived of the right to hire them. Furthermore, the much abused contingency fee is actually a marvelous instrument which enables the poorest among us to hire able lawyers. And the fact that the attorney depends for his fee on his "investment" in the case, gives him the incentive to fight all the harder on behalf of his clients. Outlawing contingency fees would leave attorneys only in service to the rich, and would deprive the average person of his day in court. Is that what the insurance industry really wants? As for jury awards, do the insurance industry and organized medicine really wish to destroy the Anglo-American jury system,
which for all its faults and inefficiencies, has long been a bulwark of our liberties against the State? And if they wish to destroy it, what would they replace it with—rule by government? As long as we keep the jury system as the arbitrator of civil and criminal cases, we must not hobble its dispensing of justice—especially by senseless quantitative caps that simply proclaim that justice may only be dispensed in small, but not adequate, amounts. None of this means that tort law itself is in no need of reform. The problem is not really quantitative but qualitative: who should be liable for what damages? In particular, we must put an end to the theory of "vicarious liability," i.e., that people or groups are liable, not because their actions incurred damages, but simply because they happened to be nearby and are conveniently wealthy, i.e., in the apt if inelegant legal phrase, they happily possess "deep pockets." Thus, if we bought a product from a retailer and the product is defective, it is the retailer that should be liable and not the manufacturer, since we did not make a contract with the manufacturer (unless he placed an explicit warranty upon the product). It is the retailer's business to sue the wholesaler, the latter the manufacturer, etc., provided the latter really did break his contract by providing a defective product. Similarly, if a corporate manager committed a wrong and damaged the person or property of others, there is no reason but "deep pockets" to make the stockholders pay, provided that the latter were innocent and did not order the manager to engage in these tortious actions. To the extent, then, that cries about an insurance crisis reflect an increased propensity by juries to sock it to "soul-less corporations," i.e., to the stockholders, then the remedy is to take that right away from them by changing tort law to make liable only those actually committing wrongful acts. Let liability, in short, be full and complete; but let it rest only upon those at fault, i.e., those actually damaging the persons and property of others. Z
20 GOVERNMENT MEDICAL "INSURANCE"
ne of Ludwig von Mises's keenest insights was on the cumulative tendency of government intervention. The government, in its wisdom, perceives a problem (and Lord knows, there are always problems!). The government then intervenes to "solve" that problem. But lo and behold! instead of solving the initial problem, the intervention creates two or three further problems, which the government feels it must intervene to heal, and so on toward socialism. No industry provides a more dramatic illustration of this malignant process than medical care. We stand at the seemingly inexorable brink of fully socialized medicine, or what is euphemistically called "national health insurance." Physician and hospital prices are high and are always rising rapidly, far beyond general inflation. As a result, the medically uninsured can scarcely pay at all, so that those who are not certifiable claimants for charity or Medicaid are bereft. Hence, the call for national health insurance. But why are rates high and increasing rapidly? The answer is the very existence of health care insurance, which was established or subsidized or promoted by the government to help ease the previous burden of medical care. Medicare, Blue Cross, etc., are also very peculiar forms of "insurance." If your house burns down and you have fire insurance, you receive (if you can pry the money loose from your friendly insurance company) a compensating fixed money benefit. For this privilege, you pay in advance a fixed annual premium. Only in our system of medical insurance, does the government or Blue Cross pay, not a fixed sum, but whatever the doctor or hospital chooses to charge.
First published in August 1990.
In economic terms, this means that the demand curve for physicians and hospitals can rise without limit. In short, in a form grotesquely different from Say's Law, the suppliers can literally create their own demand through unlimited third-party payments to pick up the tab. If demand curves rise virtually without limit, so too do the prices of the service. In order to stanch the flow of taxes or subsidies, in recent years the government and other third party insurers have felt obliged to restrict somewhat the flow of goodies: by increasing deductibles, or by putting caps on Medicare payments. All this has been met by howls of anguish from medical customers who have come to think of unlimited third-party payments as some sort of divine right, and from physicians and hospitals who charge the government with "socialistic price controls"—for trying to stem its own largesse to the health-care industry! In addition to artificial raising of the demand curve, there is another deep flaw in the medical insurance concept. Theft is theft, and fire is fire, so that fire or theft insurance is fairly clearcut the only problem being the "moral hazard" of insurees succumbing to the temptation of burning down their own unprofitable store or apartment house, or staging a fake theft, in order to collect the insurance. "Medical care," however, is a vague and slippery concept. There is no way by which it can be measured or gauged or even defined. A "visit to a physician" can range all the way from a careful and lengthy investigation and discussion, and thoughtful advice, to a two-minute run-through with the doctor doing not much else than advising two aspirin and having the nurse write out the bill. Moreover, there is no way to prevent a galloping moral hazard, as customers—their medical bills reduced to near-zero— decide to go to the doctor every week to have their blood pressure checked or their temperature taken. Hence, it is impossible, under third-party insurance, to prevent a gross decline in the quality of medical care, along with a severe shortage of the supply of such care in relation to the swelling demand. Everyone old
enough to remember the good-old-days of family physicians making house calls, spending a great deal of time with and getting to know the patient, and charging low fees to boot, is deeply and properly resentful of the current assembly-line care. But all too few understand the role of the much-beloved medical insurance itself in bringing about this sorry decline in quality, as well as the astronomical rise in prices. But the roots of the current medical crisis go back much further than the 1950s and medical insurance. Government intervention into medicine began much earlier, with a watershed in 1910 when the much celebrated Flexner Report changed the face of American medicine. Abraham Flexner, an unemployed former owner of a prep school in Kentucky, and sporting neither a medical degree nor any other advanced degree, was commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation to write a study of American medical education. Flexner's only qualification for this job was to be the brother of the powerful Dr. Simon Flexner, indeed a physician and head of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Flexner's report was virtually written in advance by high officials of the American Medical Association, and its advice was quickly taken by every state in the Union. The result: every medical school and hospital was subjected to licensing by the state, which would turn the power to appoint licensing boards over to the state AMA. The state was supposed to, and did, put out of business all medical schools that were proprietary and profit-making, that admitted blacks and women, and that did not specialize in orthodox, "allopathic" medicine: particularly homeopaths, who were then a substantial part of the medical profession, and a respectable alternative to orthodox allopathy. Thus through the Flexner Report, the AMA was able to use government to cartelize the medical profession: to push the supply curve drastically to the left (literally half the medical schools in the country were put out of business by post-Flexner
state governments), and thereby to raise medical and hospital prices and doctors' incomes. In all cases of cartels, the producers are able to replace consumers in their seats of power, and accordingly the medical establishment was now able to put competing therapies (e.g., homeopathy) out of business; to remove disliked competing groups from the supply of physicians (blacks, women, Jews); and to replace proprietary medical schools financed by student fees with university-based schools run by the faculty, and subsidized by foundations and wealthy donors. When managers such as trustees take over from owners financed by customers (students of patients), the managers become governed by the perks they can achieve rather than by service of consumers. Hence: a skewing of the entire medical profession away from patient care toward high-tech, high-capital investment in rare and glamorous diseases, which rebound far more to the prestige of the hospital and its medical staff than is actually useful for the patient-consumers. And so, our very real medical crisis has been the product of massive government intervention, state and federal, throughout the century; in particular, an artificial boosting of demand coupled with an artificial restriction of supply. The result has been accelerating high prices and deterioration of patient care. And next, socialized medicine could easily bring us to the vaunted medical status of the Soviet Union: everyone has the right to free medical care, but there is, in effect, no medicine and no care. Z
21 THE NEOCON WELFARE STATE
ver since its inception in the 1930s, the welfare state has proceeded in the following way. First, liberals discover
social and economic problems. Not a difficult task: the human race has always had such problems and will continue to, short of the Garden of Eden. Liberals, however, usually need scores of millions in foundation grants and taxpayer-financed commissions to come up with the startling revelations of disease, poverty, ignorance, homelessness, et al. Having identified "problems" to the accompaniment of much coordinated fanfare, the liberals proceed to invoke "solutions," to be supplied, of course, by the federal government, which we all know and love as the Great Problem-Solving Machine. Whatever the problem or its complexity, we all know that the Solution is always the same: a huge amount of taxpayer money to be trundled out by local, state, and especially the federal government, and spent on building up an ever-growing giant bureaucracy swarming with bureaucrats dedicated to spending their lives combatting the particular problem in view. The money is supplied, of course, by the taxpayer, and by a burgeoning debt to be financed either by inflation or by future taxpayers. From the beginning, each new creative Leap Forward in the welfare state is launched by liberals in the Democratic Party. That, since the 1930s, has been the Democrats' historical function. The Republicans' function, on the other hand, has been to complain about the welfare state and then, when in power, to fasten their yoke upon the public by not only retaining the Democratic "advances" but also by expanding them. The best that we have been able to hope for under Republican administrations is a slight slowing down of the rate of expansion of the welfare state, and a relative absence of new, "innovative" proposals. The result of each of the Great Leaps Forward of the welfare state (The New Deal–Fair Deal of the '30s and '40s, and the Great Society of the '60s), has clearly not been to "solve" the problems the welfare state has addressed. On the contrary, each of these problems is demonstrably far worse two or three
decades after the innovation and expansion. At the same time, the government Problem Solving Machine: taxes, deficits, spending, regulations, and bureaucracy, has gotten far bigger, stronger, and hungrier for taxpayer loot. Now, in the Nineties, we are at another crossroads. The results are now in on the Great Society and its Nixonian codicils. A massive and expensive attempt to stamp out poverty, inner-city problems, racism, and disease, has only resulted in all of these problems being far worse, along with a far-greater machinery for federal control, spending, and bureaucracy. Liberal Democrats, who now call themselves "moderates" because of the perceived failures of liberalism, have come up with the usual "solutions": redoubled and massive federal spending to "help" the inner cities, "rebuilding" the decaying infrastructure, helping to make declining industries "competitive," et al. But whereas Republican administrations in the 1950s and 1970s were in the hands of avowed "moderates" or "liberals," the Republican administration is now run, or at least guided by, conservatives. What is the "conservative" (read: neoconservative) Republican response to the welfare state and to the Democratic proposals for yet another great Leap Forward? The good news is that the neoconservative alternative is not just another "me-too" proposal for slightly less of what the Democratic liberals are proposing. The bad news, however, is that the proposed "conservative welfare state"—in the words of neocon godfather Irving Kristol—is a lot worse. For once, under the aegis of the neocons, the Republicans are coming up with genuinely innovative proposals. But that's the trouble: the result is far more power and more resources to the Leviathan State in Washington, all camouflaged in pseudoconservative rhetoric. Since the conservative public always tends to put more emphasis on rhetoric than on substance, this makes the looming Alternative Welfare State of the Republicans all the more dangerous.
The dimensions of the Neocon Welfare State in embryo may be seen in the Bush-endorsed proposals of Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, aided and guided by neocon educationists Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch. The education disaster in this country has been largely created by the massive federal funds and controls that have already fastened a gigantic educational bureaucracy on the American people, and have gone a long way toward taking control of our children out of the hands of parents and putting it into the maw of the State. The Neocon Welfare State would finish the job: expanding budgets, nationalizing teachers and curricula, and seizing total control of children on behalf of the State's malignant educational bureaucracy. The housing and urban dimensions of the Alternative Welfare State have been worked out by the neocon's favorite politician, HUD secretary Jack Kemp. While Kemp's vision was kept at arm's length by the Bush administration, the L.A. riots have brought it a virtual Republican endorsement, in the wake of President Bush's deficiency in the "vision thing," and of the liberals' chorus of adulation for Jack Kemp's "caring and compassion" for the inner cities. As Jeff Tucker has pointed out in the Free Market, Kemp's proposed "enterprise zones" and "empowerment" turn out to be still more of the welfare state. The "enterprise zone" concept, originally meant to be islands of genuine free enterprise in a statist morass, have been cunningly turned into yet more welfare, and affirmative-action-type subsidies. The Thatcherite idea of selling public housing to tenants has merely turned into another method of expanding public housing, of subsidizing inner cities, and of keeping the tenants dependent on the federal bureaucracy and on Big Massa in the White House. How would the greater Neocon Welfare State be financed? Neocons are the most enthusiastic fans of the federal deficit since the Left-Keynesians of the 1930s. We can expect, then, much bigger deficits, accompanied by a large and innovative battery of excuses. Statistics will be dredged up to the effect that the deficit
and the debt "really aren't so bad," compared, say, with some year during World War II, or, that on deep and murky philosophic grounds, they really don't exist. On taxes, we can probably trust neocons to keep marginal income tax rates on upper brackets down, as well as to cut capital gains taxes, but the sky's the limit on everything else. We can look forward to a lot more of the "loophole closing" that helped send the real estate market into a long and continuing tailspin after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. We can also look forward to increases in excise taxes, and perhaps a national sales or value-added tax. Harry Hopkins is supposed to have outlined the basic New Deal Strategy: "We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect." He might have added: control and control. Over the decades, the outer forms, the glittering trappings, have changed in order to entice new generations of suckers. But the essence of the ever-expanding Leviathan has remained the same. Z
22 BY THEIR FRUITS...
ne of the most horrifying features of the New Deal was its agricultural policy: in the name of "curing the depression," the federal government organized a giant cartel of America's farmers. In the middle of the worst depression in American history, the federal government forced farmers to plow under every third acre of wheat and to kill one-third of their little pigs, all to drive up food prices by forcing the supply of each product downward. Leftists blamed "American capitalism" for the government's forcing deep cuts in farm supply while urban Americans were starving; but the problem was not "capitalism," it was organized pressure groups—in this case agribusiness—using the First published in October 1992.
federal government as the organizer and mighty enforcer of farm cartel policy. And all this in the name of helping the "onethird of a nation" that Franklin D. Roosevelt saw "ill-nourished" as well as "ill-clad" and "ill-housed." Since 1933, New Deal farm policy has continued and expanded, pursuing its grisly logic at the expense of the nation's consumers, year in and year out, in Democrat or Republican regimes, in good times and in bad. But there is something about government brutally destroying food during recessions that rightfully raises one's hackles—if the media bother to deal with it at all. The latest outrage is now occurring in the central valleys of California, a state in deep recession. The particular problem is fruit, slightly "undersized" peaches and nectarines grown in California. Since the 1930s, the Secretary of Agriculture has been setting minimum size standards for peaches and nectarines. Any fruit even microscopically below the minimum size and weight set by the government is illegal and must be destroyed by the farmer, under pain of severe penalties. It's not that these slightly smaller peaches and nectarines are unsaleable to the consumer. On the contrary: most people, including trained fruit pickers, can't tell the difference visually, so they are forced to use expensive weighing and sorting machines. It is estimated that, during the 1992 growing season in California, fruit growers will be forced to destroy no less than 500 million pounds of this undersized fruit. Thus, Gerawan Farming, the largest peach, nectarine, and plum grower in the world, has been accused of violating federal law because, instead of destroying all of its small fruit, it dared to sell some to a wholesaler in Los Angeles, who in turn resold it to mom-and-pop grocery stores who catered to poorer consumers eager to buy the cheaper, if smaller fruit. The cheapness, of course, is the key. The Secretary of Agriculture does not dream up these vicious regulations out of his own noodle. By law, these minimum sizes are determined by farmers' committees growing the particular product. The
farmers are permitted to use the government to enforce cartels, in which larger and more expensive fruit is protected from smaller and cheaper competition. It's as if Cadillacs and Lincoln Town Cars were able to enforce minimum size car standards that would outlaw every smaller-size car on the market. Perhaps the most repellent aspect of this system is the rationale by the farm committee leaders that they are doing all of this in pursuit of the welfare of consumers. Thus, Tad Kozuki, member of the eight-man Nectarines Administrative Committee, opines that "smaller fruit isn't as appealing to the eye, so the committees tried to please the consumer, thinking the demand for our fruit would rise." To top this whopper about "pleasing the consumer," John Tos, chairman of the ten-man Peach Commodity Committee, solemnly states that "we eliminate those small sizes because of what the focus groups tell us," adding that these two committees are now spending $50,000 on a more detailed study into consumer fruit preferences. Save your money, fellas. I can predict the result every time: consumers will always prefer larger peaches to smaller ones, just as given the choice, they would prefer a Cadillac to a Geo. Given the choice of receiving a gift, that is, without having to pay for the difference. And price, of course, is the point of the whole deal. Smaller peaches will be cheaper, just as Geos will be cheaper, and consumers should be able to choose among these various grades, sizes, and prices. Eric Forman, deputy director of the Fruit and Vegetable Division of the Agricultural Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was a little more candid than the cartelist farmers. "Consumers are prepared to spend more money for larger fruit than smaller fruit," said Forman, "so why undermine the higher-profit item for the grower?" That is, why allow growers to "undermine" the high profit items by what is also called "competition," apparently a Concept that Dare Not Speak Its Name in agricultural circles.
Sound on the fruit question are consumer groups and the beleaguered Gerawan Farming. Scott Pattison, executive director of Consumer Alert, correctly declared that the whole policy is "outrageous." "Why are bureaucrats and growers telling us there's no market?" asked Pattison. "If consumers really won't buy the small fruit, then the growers will give up trying to ship them. But I think low-income mothers would welcome a smaller fruit that they could afford to buy and put in their kids' lunches." And Dan Gerawan, head of Gerawan Farming, held up a nectarine, and declared sardonically: "This is evil, illegal fruit." Gerawan added that the government "is sanctioning the destruction of fruit meant for the poor." Here is the essence of the "welfare state" in action: The government cartelizing and restricting competition, cutting production, raising prices, and particularly injuring low-income consumers, all with the aid of mendacious disinformation provided by technocrats hired by the government to administer the welfare state, all meanwhile bleating hypocritically about how the policy is all done for the sake of the consumers. Z
23 THE POLITICS OF FAMINE
he media focuses primarily on the horrifying shots of starving children, and secondarily on the charges and countercharges about which governments—the Western, the Ethiopian, or whatever—are responsible for relief not getting to the starving thousands on time. In the midst of the media blitz, the important and basic questions get lost in the shuffle. For example, why does Nature seem to frown only on socialist countries? If the problem is drought, why do the rains only elude countries that are socialist or heavily statist? Why does
the United States never suffer from poor climates, which threaten famine? The root of famine lies not in the gods or in the stars but in the actions of man. Climate is not the reason that Russia before Communism was a heavy exporter of grain, while now the Soviet Union is a grain importer. Nature is not responsible for the fact that, of all the countries of East Africa, the MarxistLeninist nations of Ethiopia and Mozambique are now the major sufferers from mass famine and starvation. Given causes yield given effects, and it is an ineluctable law of nature and of man that if agriculture is systematically crippled and exploited, food production will collapse, and famine will be the result. The root of the problem is the Third World, where (a) agriculture is overwhelmingly the most important industry, and (b) the people are not affluent enough, in any crisis, to purchase foods from abroad. Hence, to Third World people, agriculture is the most precious activity, and it becomes particularly important that it not be hobbled or discouraged in any way. Yet, wherever there is production, there are also parasitic classes living off the producers. The Third World in our century has been the favorite arena for applied Marxism, for revolutions, coups, or domination by Marxist intellectuals. Whenever such new ruling classes have taken over, and have imposed statist or full socialist rule, the class most looted, exploited, and oppressed have been the major productive class: the farmers or peasantry. Literally tens of millions of the most productive farmers were slaughtered by the Russian and Chinese Communist regimes, and the remainder were forced off their private lands and onto cooperative or state farms, where their productivity plummeted, and foods production gravely declined. And even in those countries where land was not directly nationalized, the new burgeoning State apparatus flourished on the backs of the peasantry, by levying heavy taxes and by forcing peasants to sell grain to the State at far below market price. The artificially cheap food was then used to subsidize food supplies
for the urban population which formed the major base of support for the new bureaucratic class. The standard paradigm in African and in Asian countries has been as follows: British, French, Portuguese, or whatever imperialism carved out artificial boundaries of what they dubbed "colonies" and established capital cities to administer and rule over the mass of peasantry. Then the new class of higher and lower bureaucrats lived off the peasants by taxing them and forcing them to sell their produce artificially cheaply to the State. When the imperial powers pulled out, they turned over these new nations to the tender mercies of Marxist intellectuals, generally trained in London, Paris, or Lisbon, who imposed socialism or far greater statism, thereby aggravating the problem enormously. Furthermore, a vicious spiral was set up, similar to the one that brought the Roman Empire to its knees. The oppressed and exploited peasantry, tired of being looted for the sake of the urban sector, decided to leave the farm and go sign up in the welfare state provided in the capital city. This makes the farmer's lot still worse, and hence more of them leave the farm, despite brutal measures trying to prevent them from leaving. The result of this spiral is famine. Thus, most African governments force farmers to sell all their crops to the State at only a half or even a third of market value. Ethiopia, as a Marxist-Leninist government, also forced the farmers onto highly inefficient state farms, and tried to keep them working there by brutal oppression. The answer to famine in Ethiopia or elsewhere is not international food relief. Since relief is invariably under the control of the recipient government, the food generally gets diverted from the farms to line the pockets of government officials to subsidize the already well-fed urban population. The answer to famine is to liberate the peasantry of the Third World from the brutality and exploitation of the State ruling class. The answers to famine are private property and free markets. Z
24 GOVERNMENT VS. NATURAL RESOURCES
t is a common myth that the near-disappearance of the whale and of various species of fish was caused by "capitalist greed," which, in a shortsighted grab for profits, despoiled the natural resources—the geese that laid the golden eggs—from which those profits used to flow. Hence, the call for government to step in and either seize the ownership of these resources, or at least to regulate strictly their use and development. It is private enterprise, however, not government, that we can rely on to take the long and not the short view. For example, if a private investor or business firm owns a natural resource, say a forest, it knows that every tree cut down and sold for short-run profits will have to be balanced by a decline in the capital value of the forest remaining. Every firm, then, must balance short-run returns as against the loss of capital assets. Therefore, private owners have every economic incentive to be farsighted, to replant trees for every tree cut down, to increase the productivity and to maintain the resource, etc. It is precisely government—or firms allowed to rent resources from government but not own them—whose every incentive is to be short-run. Since government bureaucrats control but do not own the resource "owned" by government, they have no incentive to maximize or even consider the long-run value of the resource. Their every incentive is to loot the resource as quickly as possible. And, so, it should not be surprising that every instance of "overuse" and destruction of a natural resource has been caused, not by private property rights in natural resources, but by government. Destruction of the grass cover in the West in the late nineteenth-century was caused by the Federal government's failure to recognize homesteading of land in large-enough technological units to be feasible. The 160-acre legal maximum for
First published in December 1986.
private homesteading imposed during the Civil War made sense for the wet agriculture of the East; but it made no sense in the dry area of the West, where no farm of less than one or two thousand acres was feasible. As a result, grassland and cattle ranches became land owned by the federal government but used by or leased to private firms. The private firms had no incentive to develop the land resource, since it could be invaded by other firms or revert to the government. In fact, their incentive was to use up the land resource quickly to destroy the grass cover, because they were prevented from owning it. Water, rivers, parts of oceans, have been in far worse shape than land, since private individuals and firms have been almost universally prevented from owning parts of that water, from owning schools of fish, etc. In short, since homesteading private property rights has generally not been permitted in parts of the ocean, the oceans and other water resources have remained in a primitive state, much as land had been in the days before private property in land was permitted and recognized. Then, land was only in a hunting-and-gathering stage, where people were permitted to own or transform the land itself. Only private ownership in the land itself can permit the emergence of agriculture— the transformation and cultivation of the land itself—bringing about an enormous growth in productivity and increase in everyone's standard of living. The world has accepted private agriculture, and the marvelous fruits of such ownership and cultivation. It is high time to expand the dominion of man to one of the last frontiers on earth: aquaculture. Already, private property rights are being developed in water and ocean resources, and we are just beginning to glimpse the wonders in store. More and more, in oceans and rivers, fish are being "farmed" instead of relying on random supply by nature. Whereas only 3 percent of all seafood produced in the United States in 1975 came from fish-farms, this proportion quadrupled to 12 percent by 1984.
In Buhl, Idaho, the Clear Spring Trout Company, a fishfarm, has become the single largest trout producer in the world, expanding its trout production from 10 million pounds per year in 1981 to 14 million pounds this year. Furthermore, Clear Springs is not content to follow nature blindly; as all farmers try to do, it improves on nature by breeding better and more productive trout. Thus, two years ago Clear Springs trout converted two pounds of food into one pound of edible flesh; Clear Springs scientists have developed trout that will convert only 1.3 pounds of food into one pound of flesh. And Clear Springs researchers are in the process of developing that long-desired paradise for consumers: a boneless trout. At this point, indeed, all rainbow trout sold commercially in the United States are produced in farms, as well as 40 percent of the nation's oysters, and 95 percent of commercial catfish. Aquaculture, the wave of the future, is already here to stay, not only in fishery but also in such activities as off-shore oil drilling and the mining of manganese nodules on the ocean floor. What aquaculture needs above all is the expansion of private property rights and ownership to all useful parts of the oceans and other water resources. Fortunately, the Reagan administration rejected the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would have permanently subjected the world's ocean resources to ownership and control by a worldgovernment body under the aegis of the United Nations. With that threat over, it is high time to seize the opportunity to allow the expansion of private property in one of its last frontiers. Z
ENVIRONMENTALISTS CLOBBER TEXAS
e all know how the environmentalists, seemingly determined at all costs to save the spotted owl, delivered a
crippling blow to the logging industry in the Northwest. But this slap at the economy may be trivial compared to what might happen to the lovely city of San Antonio, Texas, endangered by the deadly and despotic combination of the environmentalist movement and the federal judiciary. The sole source of water for the 900,000-resident city, as well as the large surrounding area, is the giant Edwards Aquifer, an underground river or lake (the question is controversial) that spans five counties. Competing for the water, along with San Antonio and the farms and ranches of the area, are two springs, the Comal and the Aquarena on the San Marcos River, which are becoming tourist attractions. In May 1991, the Sierra Club, along with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority which controls the two springs, filed a suit in federal court, invoking the Endangered Species Act. It seems that, in case of a drought, any cessation of water flow to the two springs would endanger four obscure species of vegetables or animals fed by the springs: the Texas blind salamander; Texas wild rice; and two tiny brands of fish: the fountain darter, and the San Marcos gambusia. On February 1, 1993, federal district judge Lucius Bunton, in Midland, Texas, handed down his ruling in favor of the Sierra Club; in case of drought, no matter the shortage of water hitting San Antonio, there will have to be enough water flowing from the aquifer to the two springs to preserve these four species. Judge Bunton admitted that, in a drought, San Antonio, to obey the ruling, might have to have its water pumped from the aquifer cut by as much as 60 percent. This would clobber both the citizens of San Antonio, and the farmers and ranchers of the area; man would have to suffer, because human beings are always last in line in the environmentalist universe, certainly far below wild rice and the fountain darter. San Antonio Mayor Nelson Wolff was properly incensed at the judge's ruling. "Think about a world where you are only allowed to take a bath twice a week," exclaimed the mayor. "Think about a world where you have to get a judge's permission to irrigate your crops." John W. Jones, president of the
Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, graphically complained that the judge's decision "puts the protection of Texas bugs before Texas babies." How did the federal courts horn into the act anyway? Apparently, if the Edwards Aquifer were ruled a "river," then it would come under the jurisdiction of the Texas Water Commission rather than of the federal courts. But last year, a federal judge in Austin ruled that the aquifer is a "lake," bringing it under federal control. Environmentalists oppose production and use of natural resources. Federal judges seek to expand federal power. And there is another outfit whose interest in the proceedings needs scrutinizing: the governmental Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. In addition to the tourist income it wishes to sustain, there is another, hidden and more abundant source of revenue that may be animating the Authority. This point was raised by Cliff Morton, chairman of the San Antonio Water System. Morton said that he believed that the Authority would, during a drought, direct the increased spring flow into a reservoir, and then sell to beleaguered San Antonio at a high price the water the city would have gotten far more cheaply from the aquifer. Is the Authority capable of such Machiavellian maneuvering? Mr. Morton thinks so. "That's what this is all about," he warned bitterly. "It's not about fountain darters." Wolff, Jones, and other protesters are calling upon Congress to relax the Draconian provisions of the Endangered Species Act, but there seems to be little chance of that in a Clinton-Gore administration. A longer-run solution, of course, is to privatize the entire system of water and water rights in this country. All resources, indeed all goods and services, are scarce, and they are all subject to competition for their use. That's why there is a system of private property and free market exchange. If all resources are privatized, they will be allocated to the most important uses
by means of a free-price system, as the bidders able to satisfy the consumer demands in the most efficient ways are able to out-compete less able bidders for these resources. Since rivers, aquifers, and water in general, have been largely socialized in this country, the result is a tangled and terribly inefficient web of irrational pricing, massive subsidies, overuse in some areas and underuse in others, and widespread controls and rationing. The entire water system is a mess, and only privatization and free markets can cure it. In the meanwhile, it would be nice to see the Endangered Species Act modified or even—horrors!—repealed. If the Sierra Club or other environmentalists are anxious to preserve critters of various shapes or sizes, vegetable, animal, or mineral, let them use their own funds and those of their bedazzled donors to buy some land or streams and preserve them. New York City has recently decided to abolish the good old word "zoo" and substitute the Politically Correct euphemism: Wildlife Preservation Park. Let the Sierra Club and kindred outfits preserve the species in these parks, instead of spending their funds to control the lives of the American people. Z
26 GOVERNMENT AND HURRICANE HUGO: A DEADLY COMBINATION
atural disasters, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, occur from time to time, and many victims of such disasters have an unfortunate tendency to seek out someone to blame. Or rather, to pay for their aid and rehabilitation. These days, Papa Government (a stand-in for the hapless taxpayer) is called on loudly to shell out. The latest incident followed the ravages of Hurricane Hugo, when many South First published in December 1989.
Carolinians turned their wrath from the mischievous hurricane to the federal government and its FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) for not sending far more aid more quickly. But why must taxpayers A and B be forced to pay for natural disasters that strike C? Why can't C—and his private insurance carriers—foot the bill? What is the ethical principle that insists that South Carolinians, whether insured or non-insured, poor or wealthy, must be subsidized at the expense of those of us, wealthy or poor, who don't live on the southern Atlantic Coast, a notorious hurricane spot in the autumn? Indeed, the witty actor who regularly impersonates President Bush on Saturday Night Live was perhaps more correct than he realized when he pontificated: "Hurricane Hugo—not my fault." But in that case, of course, the federal government should get out of the disaster aid business, and FEMA should be abolished forthwith. If the federal government is not the culprit as portrayed, however, other government forces have actually weighed in on Hugo's side, and have escalated the devastation that Hugo has wreaked. Consider the approach taken by local government. When Hurricane Hugo arrived, government imposed compulsory evacuation upon many of the coastal areas of South Carolina. Then, for nearly a week after Hugo struck the coast, the mayor of one of the hardest-hit towns in South Carolina, the Isle of Palms near Charleston, used force to prevent residents from returning to their homes to assess and try to repair the damage. How dare the mayor prevent people from returning to their own homes? When she finally relented, six days after Hugo, she continued to impose a 7:00 p.m. curfew in the town. The theory behind this outrage is that the local officials were "fearful for the homeowners' safety and worried that there would be looting." But the oppressed residents of the Isle of Palms had a different reaction. Most of them were angered; typical was Mrs. Pauline Bennett, who lamented that "if we could have gotten here sooner, we could have saved more."
But this was scarcely the only case of a "welfare state" intervening and making matters worse for the victims of Hugo. As a result of the devastation, the city of Charleston was of course short of many commodities. Responding to this sudden scarcity, the market acted quickly to clear supply and demand by raising prices accordingly: providing smooth, voluntary, and effective rationing of the suddenly scarce goods. The Charleston government, however, swiftly leaped in to prevent "gouging"— grotesquely passing emergency legislation making the charging of higher prices post-Hugo than pre-Hugo a crime, punishable by a maximum fine of $200 and 30 days in jail. Unerringly, the Charleston welfare state converted higher prices into a crippling shortage of scarce goods. Resources were distorted and misallocated, long lines developed as in Eastern Europe, all so that the people of Charleston could have the warm glow of knowing that if they could ever find the goods in short supply, they could pay for them at pre-Hugo bargain rates. Thus, the local authorities did the work of Hurricane Hugo—intensifying its destruction by preventing people from staying at or returning to their homes, and aggravating the shortages by rushing to impose maximum price controls. But that was not all. Perhaps the worst blow to the coastal residents was the intervention of those professional foes of humanity— the environmentalists. Last year, reacting to environmentalist complaints about development of beach property and worry about "beach erosion" (do beaches have "rights", too?), South Carolina passed a law severely restricting any new construction on the beachfront, or any replacement of damaged buildings. Enter Hurricane Hugo, which apparently provided a heaven-sent opportunity for the South Carolina Coastal Council to sweep the beachfronts clear of any human beings. Geology professor Michael Katuna, a Coastal Council consultant, saw only poetic justice, smugly declaring that "Homes just shouldn't be right on the beach where Mother Nature wants to bring a storm ashore."
And if Mother Nature wanted us to fly, She would have supplied us with wings? Other environmentalists went so far as to praise Hurricane Hugo. Professor Orrin H. Pilkey, geologist at Duke who is one of the main theoreticians of the beach-suppression movement, had attacked development on Pawleys Island, northeast of Charleston, and its rebuilding after destruction by Hurricane Hazel in 1954. "The area is an example of a high-risk zone that should never have been developed, and certainly not redeveloped after the storm." Pilkey now calls Hugo "a very timely hurricane," demonstrating that beachfronts must return to Nature. Gered Lennon, geologist with the Coastal Council, put it succinctly: "However disastrous the hurricane was, it may have had one healthy result. It hopefully will rein in some of the unwise development we have had along the coast." The Olympian attitude of the environmentalist rulers contrasted sharply with the views of the blown-out residents themselves. Mrs. Bennett expressed the views of the residents of the Isle of Palms. Determined to rebuild on the spot, she pointed out: "We have no choice. This is all we have. We have to stay here. Who is going to buy it?" Certainly not the South Carolina environmental elite. Tom Browne, of Folly Beach, S.C., found his house destroyed by Hurricane Hugo. "I don't know whether I'll be able to rebuild it or if the state would even let me," complained Browne. The law, he pointed out, is taking a property without compensation. "It's got to be unconstitutional." Precisely. Just before Hugo hit, David Lucas, a property owner on the Isle of Palms, was awarded $1.2 million in a South Carolina court after he sued the state over the law. The court ruled that the state could not deprive him of his right to build on the land he owned without due compensation. And the South Carolina environmentalists are not going to be able to force the state's taxpayers to pay the enormous compensation for not being allowed to rebuild all of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Hugo.
Skip Johnson, an environmental consultant in South Carolina, worries that "it's just going to be a real nightmare. People are going to want to rebuild and get on with their lives." The Coastal Council and its staff, Johnson lamented, "are going to have their hands full." Let's hope so. Z
27 THE WATER IS NOT RUNNING
ost people agree that government is generally less efficient than private enterprise, but it is little realized that the difference goes far beyond efficiency. For one thing, there is a crucial difference in attitude toward the consumer. Private business firms are constantly courting the consumer, always eager to increase the sales of their products. So insistent is that courtship that business advertising is often criticized by liberal aesthetes and intellectuals as strident and unmannerly. But government, unlike private enterprise, is not in the business of seeking profits or trying to avoid losses. Far from eager to court the consumer, government officials invariably regard consumers as an annoying intrusion and as "wasteful" users of "their" (government's) scarce resources. Governments are invariably at war with their consumers. This contempt and hostility toward consumers reaches its apogee in socialist states, where government's power is at its maximum. But a similar attitude appears in areas of government activity in all countries. Until a few decades ago, for example, water supplies to consumers in the United States were furnished by private companies. These were almost all socialized over time, so that government has come to monopolize water services. In New York City, which shifted to a monopoly of government water several decades ago, there was never, in previous
decades, any wailing about a "water shortage." But, recently, in a climate that is not conspicuously dry, a water shortage has reappeared every few years. In July 1985 water levels in the reservoirs supplying New York City were down to an unprecedented 55 percent of capacity, in contrast to the normal 94 percent. But surely, nature is not solely to blame, since neighboring New Jersey's water levels are still at a respectable 80 percent. It seems that the New York water bureaucrats must have carefully sought our nearby spots that particularly suffer from chronic drought. It also turns out that the New York pipelines were constructed too narrowly to increase water flow from wetter regions. More important is New York's typical bureaucratic response to this, as well as to other periodic water crises. Water, as usual with government, is priced in an economically irrational manner. Apartment buildings, for example, pay a fixed water fee per apartment to the government. Since tenants pay nothing for water, they have no incentive to use it economically; and since landlords pay a fixed fee, regardless of use, they too couldn't care less. Whereas private firms try to price their goods or services to achieve the highest profit—i.e, to supply consumer needs most fully and at least cost—government has no incentive to price for highest profit or to keep down costs. Quite the contrary. Government's incentive is to subsidize favored pressure groups or voting blocs; for government is pressured by its basic situation to price politically rather than economically. Since government services are almost never priced so as to clear the market, i.e., equate supply and demand, it tends to price far below the market, and therefore bring about an artificial "shortage." Since the shortage is manifest in people not being able to find the product, government's natural despotic bent leads it invariably to treat the shortage by turning to coercive restraints and rationing. Morally, government can then have its cake and eat it too: have the fun of pushing people around, while wrapping itself in
the cloak of solidarity and universal "sacrifice" in the face of the great new emergency. In short, when the supply of water drops, governments almost never respond the way a business firm would: raise the price in order to clear the market. Instead, the price stays low, and restraints are then placed on watering one's lawn, washing one's car, and even taking showers. In this way, everyone is exhorted to sacrifice, except that priorities of sacrifice are worked out and imposed by the government, which happily decides how much lawn watering, or showering, may be permitted on what days in the face of the great crisis. Several years ago, California water officials were loudly complaining about a water shortage and imposing local rationing, when suddenly an embarrassing event occurred: torrential rains all over the drought areas of the state. After lamely insisting that no one should be misled by the seeming end of the drought, the authorities finally had to end that line of attack, and then the title of the Emergency Office of Water Shortage was hastily changed to the Office of Flood Control. In New York, this summer, Mayor Edward Koch has already levied strict controls on water use, including a ban on washing cars, and imposition of a minimum of 78 degrees for air conditioners in commercial buildings, plus the turning off of the conditioners for two hours during each working day (virtually all of these air conditioners are water-cooled). This 78-degree rule is, of course, tantamount to no air-conditioning at all, and will wreak great hardship on office workers, as well as patrons of movies and restaurants. Air-conditioning has always been a favorite target for puritanical government officials; during the trumped-up "energy shortage" of the late 1970s, President Carter's executive order putting a floor of 78 degrees on every commercial air conditioner was enthusiastically enforced, even though the "energy saving" was negligible. As long as misery can be imposed on the consumer, why worry about the rationale? (What is now a timehonored custom in New York of reluctance to serve water to
restaurant patrons originated in a long-forgotten water "shortage" of decades ago.) There is no need for any of these totalitarian controls. If the government wants to conserve water and lessen its use, all it need do is raise the price. It doesn't have to order an end to this or that use, set priorities, or decide who should be allowed to drink more than three glasses a day. All it has to do is clear the market, and let people conserve each in his own way and at his own pace. In the longer run, what the government should do is privatize the water supply, and let water be supplied, like oil or PepsiCola, by private firms trying to make a profit and to satisfy and court consumers, and not to gain power by making them suffer. Z
Politics as Economic Violence
RETHINKING THE '80S
ince the first presidential election of the new decade coincided with the longest recession since World War II, both parties wrestled with the problem of interpreting the 1980s. For the Democrats the issue was clear: the recession was reaped the wages of sin sowed by the "decade of greed," greed stimulated by Reaganomic deregulation, tax cuts, and massive deficits, culminating in the unconscionable amounts of money made by archvillain Michael Milken. For Bush Republicans, the President was only unlucky: the current recession is worldwide (the same line unconvincingly offered by Herbert Hoover during his term in office), and has no causal relation to the Reagan boom. For the growing number of anti-Bush Republicans, the Reagan boom was wonderful and was only turned around by the Bush tax increases and massive new regulation upon American business. Unpacking all the fallacies and half-truths in these positions is a daunting task. In the first place, Americans were no more nor less "greedy" in the 1980s than they were before or since. Second, Michael Milken was no villain; his large monetary earnings reflected, as free-market analysis shows, his tremendous
First published in May 1992. 103
productivity in helping stockholders get out from under the Williams Act of 1967, which crippled takeover bids and thereby fastened the rule of inefficient, old-line corporate managers and financial interests upon the backs of the stockholders. To stop effective competition from brash newcomers from Texas and California, the Bush administration carried out the bidding of the Rockefeller-allied Old Guard from the Rust Belt to destroy Milken and stop this competitive threat to their control. Third, Ronald Reagan did not, despite the propaganda, "cut taxes"; instead, the 1981 cuts in upper-income taxes were more than offset, for the average American, by rises in the Social Security tax. The "boll weevil" conservative Democrats had insisted on indexing tax rates for inflation, but unfortunately, personal exemption totals were never indexed, and continue to wither away in real terms. Every year after 1981, the Reagan administration agreed to continuing tax increases, apparently to punish us all for the non-existent tax cut. The topper was the bipartisan Jacobinical Tax Reform Act of 1986, which lowered upper income rates some more, but again clobbered the middle class by wiping out a large number of tax deductions, in the name of "closing the loopholes." One of those "loopholes" was the real estate market, which lost most of its tax deductions for mortgages and tax shelters, and which helped put real estate a few years later into perhaps its deepest depression since the 1930s. Indeed, from 1980, before Reagan's advent, until 1991, federal government revenues increased by 103.1 percent. Whatever that is, that is not a "tax cut." It is a massive tax increase. But why then did deficits become far more massive? Because federal expenditures went up even faster, during this period, by 117.1 percent. In short, the problem is that both taxes and expenditures have been increasing at a frenetic pace, with expenditures going up faster: hence the deficit problem.
And while it is certainly true that George Bush greatly aggravated the recession by dramatically increasing taxes, deficits, and regulations on business, the Reagan administration cannot be let off the hook. In fact, the greatest if not the only strength of the Democrat analysis is that they, at least, recognize that the boom of the 1980s did lead ineluctably to the deep and long recession of the early 1990s. The weakest point of the anti-Bush Republicans is the view that the 1980s were a wonderful, unalloyed boom that stored up no economic ills for the future. But those ills were not due to greed, tax cuts, or any of the rest. The problem of the '80s was the monetary and banking system and the blame comes down squarely on the Federal Reserve masters of that system. In fact, as the German economist and former banker Kurt Richebacher has pointed out, the U.S. boom of the 1980s was uncannily similar to the boom of the 1920s. In both decades, inflationary bank credit generated by the Federal Reserve went mainly into real estate and, a bit later in the '80s into the stock market—in short, the boom came in titles to capital and in speculation, while price inflation was much lower in the "real economy," in particular in consumer goods. Indeed, wholesale and consumer price levels remained flat in the 1920s, misleading pre-monetarist economists such as Irving Fisher into proclaiming that inflation did not exist and that there was nothing to worry about. And while price inflation was not exactly flat during the 1980s, it was low enough for the Establishment to proclaim that the inflation problem (and the business cycle) had been licked forevermore. In the 1980s, price inflation was moderated by various external factors—such as hyperinflating Third World countries using cash dollars as their informal money, and foreigners financing American deficits and permitting the U.S. to buy cheap goods from abroad. The real estate hysteria during the 1980s fully matched that of the 1920s, and everyone adopted the unquestioned credo that housing prices are destined to rise forever. While real estate has finally gotten its comeuppance, and a more realistic attitude
prevails at last, the stock market continues to levitate in a dream world, again confusing observers, and allowing them to ignore the grim reality in the "real world" down below. The culprit then, is and was, not taxes or greed, but above all inflationary credit expansion generated by the Fed. And now that Greenspan is frantically trying to inflate to save Bush's bacon, we are storing up the seeds of another recession in a few years' time. The bank collapse, the S&L scandal, the real estate debacle, all can be laid at the door of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is invariably treated in the media as an all-wise monarch when he should really be sent to the showers and his throne sold for scrap. The arch-villains of the 1980s (and the '90s) are Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, but they will never be treated as such so long as they remain two of the most beloved figures in American public life. Z
29 BUSH AND DUKAKIS: IDEOLOGICALLY INSEPARABLE
eorge Wallace's famous adage that "there ain't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties" was never more true than in election year 1988. This maxim is particularly true if we concentrate, as we should, on the actual and proposed policies of the candidates rather than the rhetoric or their media imagery. Both Bush and Dukakis are centrists ("mainstreamers") devoted to the preservation and furtherance of the Establishment status quo. Set aside the cut-and-thrust of negative campaigning, and both men meet on that broad, fuzzy, and cozy ground where "moderate conservative" meets "moderate liberal."
First published in November 1988.
Lew Rockwell has demonstrated in the Free Market that Bush's and Dukakis's leading economic advisors are old buddies, and students of one another, who agree on virtually everything. (How different, indeed, can a "moderate conservative Keynesian" be from a "moderate liberal Keynesian"?) Neither candidate will do a single thing to cut government spending; neither one will cut the enormous deficit that both parties and all centrists have now come to accept as a fundamental part of the American way of life. Both candidates will, if elected, sharply increase our taxes. Both will search for creative semantics in deciding how to label a tax hike. Dukakis has promised a drastic escalation of enforcement as the first step in a tax program, and Bush will not be far behind (What is this but a tax increase?), although Bush, following the lead of the Reagan administration, may be expected to be more innovative in fancy linguistic substitutes. (The last eight years have already brought us: "increasing fees," "revenue enhancement," "plugging the loopholes," and "tax reform" in the name of "fairness.") Both Bush and Dukakis, as dedicated Keynesians, propose to solve the deficit problem by the fatuous suggestion that the economy will "grow out of it." "Growth," indeed, will be a keyword for both prospective presidents, and "growth," it should never be forgotten, is simply a code term for "inflation." As Keynesians, both candidates may be expected to expand the money supply mightily, and then strive, by fine-tuning and coercive policies, to try to control the resulting price inflation through manipulations by the Federal Reserve. Indeed, the Greenspan Fed has emulated its predecessors in monetary expansion; this year, the money supply (e.g., governmental counterfeiting) has been increasing at a rapid rate of 7 percent per year. Greenspan's inflationism, coupled with cautious dampening when things threaten to get out of hand, has delighted the Democrats in Congress, who report that they, and a Democratic president, would be delighted to work with a Greenspan Fed. (And, I am sure, vice versa.)
Either Bush or Dukakis can be relied upon to continue the expansion of government power and domination over the individual and the private sector. Thus, when "wild spender" Jimmy Carter became president, he found a federal government that was spending 28 percent of the private national product. After four years of Carter's wild spending, federal government spending was about the same: 28.3 percent of private product. Eight years of Ronald Reagan's "anti-government" and "get government off our back" policy has resulted in the federal government spending 29.9 percent of private product. We can certainly expect Bush and Dukakis to do no less. Neither is "deregulation" an issue when we realize that the major deregulatory reforms of the last ten years (CAB, ICC) were installed by the Carter administration, and when we understand that the Reagan administration has greatly added to the weight of regulation—particularly when we focus on the savage attack that it has conducted on the non-crime of "insider trading." Neither can we conjure up "protectionist" Democrats versus "free-trade" Republicans; the Reagan administration has been the most protectionist in American history, imposing "voluntary" as well as outright compulsory import quotas, and organizing a giant government-business computer chip cartel to battle the efficient Japanese. The farm program has become truly monstrous, as government intervention doubles and redoubles upon itself; whatever happens, whatever the climatic conditions—whether the crops are good and therefore there is a "glut" or whether there is a drought—ever more billions of taxpayer money are ladled out to the farmers so that they may produce less for the consumer. Bush will certainly do no less; and, furthermore, he promises to intensify federal government spending on "education" (i.e., the swollen and inefficient Department of Education that he and Reagan promised to abolish), and on "cleaning up the environment," which means further cost-raising regulations on American business. In short, we are seeing, more than ever
before, a bipartisan Keynesian consensus, an economic policy to match bipartisan policies in all other spheres of politics. But the single most dangerous aspect of the economics of the next four years has gone unnoticed. Since he replaced Donald Regan as Secretary of the Treasury, James R. Baker (a close friend of Bush and slated to be Secretary of State in a Republican administration) has been unfortunately effective in pushing the Keynesian agenda on the international economic front: that is, worldwide fiat money inflation coordinated by the world's central banks, ending in the old Keynesian goal; a world paper currency unit (whether named the "bancor" [Keynes], the "unita" [Harry Dexter White], or the "phoenix" [the Economist]) printed by a World Central Bank. The World Central Bank would then be able to inflate the phoenix, and pump in reserves to all countries, so that the national central banks could pyramid their liabilities on top of the World Bank. In that way, the entire world could experience an inflation controlled and coordinated by the World Central Bank, so that no one country would suffer from its inflationary policies by losing gold (as under a gold standard), losing dollars (as under Bretton Woods), or suffering from a drop in its exchange rate (as under Friedmanite monetarism). There would be no remaining checks on any country's inflation except the wisdom and the will of the World Central Bank. What this amounts to, of course, is economic world government, which, because of the necessity of coordination, would bring a virtual political world government in its wake. Because of his powerful international financial connections, Baker has been able to move rapidly toward this coordination, to bring European and even Japanese central bankers into line, and to help bring a new European currency unit and central bank, which would be an important prelude to a world paper currency. Whoever Dukakis would appoint to his Cabinet would not have the powerful financial connections, or the track record of the last four years, and so the only real difference I can see in a
Dukakis victory is that it would significantly slow down, and perhaps totally derail, the menacing drive toward Keynesian economic world government. Z
30 PEROT, THE CONSTITUTION, AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY
oss Perot's proposal for direct democracy through "electronic town meetings" is the most fascinating and innovative proposal for fundamental political change in many decades. It has been greeted with shock and horror by the entire intellectual-technocratic-media Establishment. Arrogant pollsters, who have made a handsome living via "scientific" sampling, faulty probability theory, and often loaded questions, bluster that direct mass voting by telephone or television would not really be as "representative" as their own little samples.
Of course they would say that; theirs is the first profession to be rendered as obsolete in the Perotvian world of the future as the horse and buggy today. The pollsters will not get away with that argument; for if they were right, the public has enough horse sense to realize that it would then be more "representative" and "democratic" to dispense with voting altogether. And let the pollsters choose. When we cut through the all-too-predictable shrieks of "demagogy" and "fascism," it would be nice if the opponents would favor us with some arguments against the proposal. What exactly is the argument against electronic direct democracy? The standard argument against direct democracy goes as follows: direct democracy was fine, and wonderful in colonial town
meetings, where every person could familiarize himself with the issues, go to the local town hall, and vote directly on those issues. But alas, and alack!, the country got larger and much too populous for direct voting; for technological reasons, therefore, the voter has had to forego himself going to a meeting and voting on the issues of the day; he necessarily had to entrust his vote to his "representative." Well, technology rolls on, and direct voting has, for a long while, since the age of telephone and television, much less of the computer and emerging "interactive" television, been technologically feasible. Why, then, before Ross Perot, has no one pointed this out and advocated high-tech, electronic democracy? And why, when Perot has pointed this out, do all the elites react in dread and consternation, as if to the face of Medusa, or as vampires react to the cross? Could it be that—for all their prattle about "democracy," for all their ritualistic denunciation of voter "apathy" and call for voter participation—that more participation is precisely what the elites don't want? Could it be that what the political class: politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectual and media apologists for the system, really want is more sheep voting merely to ratify the continuance and expansion of the current system, of the Demopublican and Republicrat parties, of phony choices between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber? For those critics who worry that somehow the American Constitution, that Constitution which has been a hollow shell and mockery for many decades, will suffer; the correct reply is the Perotvian: the vaunted "two-party" system, much less the Democratic and Republican parties, is not even mentioned, much less enshrined, in the Constitution. The only possible argument against direct democracy, now that the technological argument is obsolete, is that the public's choices would be wrong. But in that case: it would follow directly that the public shouldn't vote at all, since if the public is not to be allowed to vote on issues that affect their lives, why
should they be allowed to vote for the people who will make those very decisions: for the beloved President, the Congress, etc.? Perhaps this logic is the reason that the hysterical opponents of the electronic town hall confine themselves to smear terms; since to make this argument at all would condemn them to scorn and irrelevance. In other words: if the logic be unwrapped, it is the opponents of the Perot plan who are much more liable to the charge of "fascism" than are the Perot supporters. Furthermore, making such an argument ignores the vital point: that the decisions of the parasitic bipartisan political class that has run this country for decades have been so abysmal, and recognized to be so abysmal by the public, that almost any change from this miasma and gridlock would be an improvement. Hence—to cite a poll myself—the recent sentiment of 80 percent of the American public that radical change in the system is necessary, and hence the willingness to embrace Ross Perot as agent of such a change. And speaking of the Constitution, Perot has called for a Constitutional amendment that would prohibit Congress from raising taxes unless such a proposal were ratified by electronic direct voting. There are two points to be noted: first, for those of us strongly opposed to tax increases, we would be no worse off, and unquestionably better off, than we are now. And second, note the superiority of this tough proposal to the latest warmed-over Republicrat proposal of a "balanced budget" amendment to the Constitution: a proposal even phonier than Gramm-Rudman, a proposal doomed from the beginning to be nothing but an Establishment attempt to fool the public into thinking that something constructive is being done about the deficit. For the Establishment amendment would only mandate a budget balanced in prospect, not in fact; would allow Congress to set aside the balanced budget as it deems necessary; and would also permit the government to make expenditures "off budget" that would not count in the amendment.
The absurdity of a budget balance in-prospect may be seen in this example: suppose that you are a spendoholic, and that your wife and your creditors set up a watchdog committee to see that you balance your budget, but not in fact, only in advance estimates that you yourself make. Clearly, anyone can balance one's budget under those restrictions. And if we bear in mind that government always underestimates its future costs and expenses, the absurdity should become evident. With schemes like these, it is no wonder that the public is turning for candor, and for genuine choice, to the billionaire from East Texas. Z
31 THE FLAG FLAP
here are many curious aspects to the latest flag fracas. There is the absurdity of the proposed change in our basic constitutional framework by treating such minor specifics as a flag law. There is the proposal to outlaw "desecration" of the American flag. "Desecration" means "to divest of a sacred character or office." Is the American flag, battle emblem of the U.S. government, supposed to be "sacred"? Are we to make a religion of statolatry? What sort of grotesque religion is that? And what is "desecrate" supposed to mean? What specific acts are to be outlawed? Burning seems to be the big problem, although the quantity of flag-burning in the United States seems to be somewhere close to zero. In fact, most flag burning occurs when patriotic groups such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars solemnly burn their worn-out American flags in the prescribed manner. But if burning the flag is to be banned, are we to clap numerous American Legion or VFW people in the hoosegow? Oh, Previously unpublished.
you say that intent is the crucial point, and that you want to outlaw hippie types who burn U.S. flags with a sneer and a curse. But how are the police supposed to figure out intent, and make sure that the majesty of the law falls only upon hippie-sneerers, and spares reverent, saluting Legionnaires? But if the supporters of the proposed flag amendment are mired in absurdity, the arguments of the opponents are in almost as bad a shape. Civil libertarians have long placed their greatest stress on a sharp difference between "speech" and "action," and the claim that the First Amendment covers only speech and not actions (except, of course, for the definite action of printing and distribution of a pamphlet or book, which would come under the free press clause of the First Amendment). But, as the flag amendment advocates point out, what kind of "speech" is burning a flag? Isn't that most emphatically an action—and one that cannot come under the free press rubric? The fallback position of the civil libertarians, as per the majority decisions in the flag cases by Mr. Justice Brennan, is that flag burning is "symbolic" speech, and therefore, although an action, comes under the free speech protection. But "symbolic speech" is just about as inane as the "desecration" doctrine of the flag-law advocates. The speech/action distinction now disappears altogether, and every action can be excused and protected on the ground that it constitutes "symbolic speech." Suppose, for example, that I were a white racist, and decided to get me a gun and shoot a few blacks. But then I could say, that's OK because that's only "symbolic speech," and political symbolic speech at that, because I'm trying to make a political argument against our current pro-black legislation. Anyone who considers such an argument far-fetched should ponder a recent decision by a dotty leftist New York judge to the effect that it is "unconstitutional" for the New York subway authorities to toss beggars out of the subway stations. The jurist's argument held that begging is "symbolic speech," and expressive argument for more help to the poor. Fortunately, this
argument was overturned on appeal, but still "symbolic arguers" are everywhere in New York, clogging streets, airports, and bus terminals. There is no way, then, that flag laws can be declared unconstitutional as violations of the First Amendment. The problem with flag laws has nothing to do with free speech, and civil libertarians have gotten caught in their own trap because they do in fact try to separate speech and action, a separation that is artificial and cannot long be maintained. As in the case of all dilemmas caused by the free speech doctrine, the entire problem can be resolved by focusing, not on a high-sounding but untenable right to freedom of speech, but on the natural and integral right to private property and its freedom of use. As even famed First Amendment absolutist Justice Hugo Black pointed out, no one has the free-speech right to burst into your home and harangue you about politics. "The right to freedom of speech" really means the right to hire a hall and expound your views; the "right to freedom of press" (where, as we have seen, speech and action clearly cannot be separated) means the right to print a pamphlet and sell it. In short, free speech or free press rights are a subset, albeit an important one, of the rights of private property: the right to hire, to own, to sell. Keeping our eye on property rights, the entire flag question is resolved easily and instantly. Everyone has the right to buy or weave and therefore own a piece of cloth in the shape and design of an American flag (or in any other design) and to do with it what he will: fly it, burn it, defile it, bury it, put it in the closet, wear it, etc. Flag laws are unjustifiable laws in violation of the rights of private property. (Constitutionally, there are many clauses in the Constitution from which private property rights can be derived.) On the other hand, no one has the right to come up and burn your flag, or someone else's. That should be illegal, not because a flag is being burned, but because the arsonist is burning your
property without your permission. He is violating your property rights. Note the way in which the focus on property rights solves all recondite issues. Perhaps conservatives, who proclaim themselves defenders of property rights, will be moved to reconsider their support of its invasion. On the other hand, perhaps liberals, scorners of property rights, might be moved to consider that cleaving to them may be the only way, in the long run, to insure freedom of speech and press. Z
32 CLINTONOMICS: THE PROSPECT
ot the least irritating aspect of the ascension of Bill Clinton to the presidency is that his name ends in "n." As a result, "omics" fits neatly to the end of his name, and we are bound to be stuck with the appellation "Clintonomics" from now until the end of his term. In contrast, "Bushonomics" or "Perotnomics" wouldn't quite make it. The late nihilist economist Ludwig M. Lachmann liked to keep repeating that "the future is unknowable" as the key to his world-outlook. Not true. For we know with certainty that President Clinton will not, in his first set of proposals to Congress, introduce legislation to repeal the income tax or abolish the Federal Reserve. Other aspects of the Clinton presidency we do not know with quite the same degree of certainty; but we can offer credible insights into the outlines of Clintonian Democracy, based on his proposals, his advisers, and the concerns and interests they carry into office. We know for example that a new set of hungry young Democratic sharks has descended upon Washington, scrambling and knifing each other for position, perks and influence, displacing First published in January 1993.
the set of once-hungry, once-young Republican sharks that have been fattening upon the taxpayers since 1980. Those who can count themselves FOB (Friends of Bill) or, better yet, EFOB (Early Friends of Bill) can be expected to do well. Those who were friends, classmates, and fellow Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, such as left-liberal Harvard economist Robert Reich, will do very well. On the other hand, those of us who were EOB (Enemies of Bill) will not be living high off the hog in Washington. In general, we must batten down the hatches for another one of those periodic Great Leaps Forward into statism that have afflicted us since the New Deal (actually, since the Progressive Era). The cycle works as follows: Democrats engineer a leap forward of activist government, accompanied by "progressive," "moving America forward again" rhetoric. Then, after a decade or so, the Republicans come in armed with conservative, freemarket rhetoric, but in reality only slow down the rate of statist advance. After another decade or so, people become tired of the rhetoric (though not the reality) of the free market, and the time has come for another Leap Forward. The names of the players change, but the reality and the phoniness of the game remains the same, and no one seems to wake up to the shell game that is going on. The Reagan and Bush administrations, like the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford administrations before them, were run by right-wing Keynesians, which is why the same people seem to pop up in all of them (Burns, Volcker, Greenspan). Right-wing Keynesians advocate high deficits, high taxes, and manipulation of the budget and of monetary policy to try to achieve full employment without inflation. The result has been permanent inflation plus periodically steep recessions. Left-wing Keynesians, the hallmark of Democrat administrations, hold a similar macro view, except that they favor bigger inflations and higher taxes than their more conservative counterparts. The major difference comes in "micro-economic policy," where conservative Keynesians tend to favor the free market, at least in rhetoric, whereas left-Keynesians are more
frankly in favor of "industrial policy," "economic strategy," and an activist "partnership of government and business." The Clinton administration will bring the younger "activist" left-Keynesians to the fore, including the aforesaid Reich, Robert Shapiro of Washington's Progressive Policy Institute, and what might be called the "Wall Street Left," including the venerable Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres, Robert Rubin of Goldman, Sachs, and Roger Altman of the Blackstone Group. We can therefore expect a raft of government measures that will further cripple and distort the market economy. From leftwing groups will come "social" affirmative action-type and environmental regulations that will impose further costs and wreck productivity, particularly of smaller business. Reich and the Wall Street Left will micro-manage the economy into further ailments and disease, while, in the macro-sphere, we can expect higher taxes on the rich in order to "reduce the deficit" while, at the same time, higher government spending will raise the deficit further. We will receive endless assurances that the increased deficits will "only be temporary," to be eventually offset by increased production and a growing economy. There will be endless malarkey about monetary and fiscal stimulus by Clinton helping us to "grow out of our deficit." (Wanna bet?) There will be further attempts to redefine our deficit out of existence, calling government spending "investment," and insisting that we allocate most government expenses into a "capital budget" that will increase growth and productivity in the long run. All of this craftily overlooks the fact that while business investment must make a future profit, government "investment" need only receive hosannas from its paid and unpaid apologists in order to be pronounced "successful." There will also be a further malodorous attempt to excuse increased bureaucratic jobs and salaries, as well as more billions poured into "education," on the grounds of productive investment in "human capital" (the unfortunate concept of Nobel Laureate Gary Becker). Once again, the strictures against calling
government spending "investment" apply, plus the fact that outside of the economy of slavery, it is impossible to sell your "human capital," so that it cannot be used as an economic concept with a monetary value. Finally, we will probably see another leap forward into fully socialized medicine; already a host of people, including someone who was the head of "Republicans for Clinton," are insisting that "universal medical care is a right, not a privilege." These are ominous words indeed, because the last place that insisted on the "right" of free universal medical care was the Soviet Union, which wound up with medical care establishments without medicine and without care. The United States, heedless of the lesson of the collapse of Communism, is falling headlong into its own pit of socialism, except we won't be calling it "socialism," but rather a "caring, compassionate society enjoying the partnership of government and business." Z
33 CLINTONOMICS REVEALED
fter a campaign that stressed "the economy, stupid," a middle-class tax cut, and assurances by neoconservative pundits that Bill Clinton was a "moderate" and a "New Democrat," Clintonomics is at last being unveiled in the budget message of February 17 and in other intimations, such as "health care," of actions to come. And the news is that Bill and Hillary Clinton are only "moderates" in the sense that Brezhnev was more "moderate" than Stalin, or Göring than Himmler. Hold on to your seats, Mr. and Mrs. America: we're in for a very bumpy ride. Each recent administration has had a far worse "nomics" than its predecessor. Reaganomics was no bargain; it was a First published in May 1993.
melange of four clashing schools of economic thought, each professing outward loyalty to the Reagan result while trying hard to best their competitors. The four groups were the classical liberal or semi-Austrian wing, the smallest and least influential group that lasted less than a year of the first Reagan term; the Friedmanite monetarists; the supply-siders; and the conservative Keynesians. Bushonomics was solely dominated by the worst group of the four: the conservative Keynesians. (Briefly: the classical liberals wanted drastic expenditure and tax cuts; the supply-siders wanted only tax cuts; the monetarists confined their desires to a steady rate of money growth; and the conservative Keynesians, as is their wont, pursued both expenditure and tax increases.) But even conservative Keynesianism, though profoundly wrong, is at least a coherent and respectable school of economic thought, a foe worthy of intellectual combat. Such an accolade cannot be accorded to Clintonomics, which does not deserve the quasi-honorable label of "economics" at all. For Clintonomics is, Alice-in-Wonderland economics, schizoid economics, loony-tunes economics. Why schizoid? Consider: Much propaganda is made about the horrors of the deficit, of the necessity of "sacrificing" for the future, for our children, in order to help close the deficit. That is the excuse for the vanishing of the middle-class tax cut, to be replaced by a whopping tax increase on the middle class. And yet, at the very same time, there is supposed to be a massive spending increase. Why? For two reasons: to "jump start the economy," which is barely out of a recession, if not still mired in one; and second, to provide "investment" for an economy that has been stagnating for 20 years, and needs more saving and investment. The proposal is schizoid because it implicitly assumes that the economy, or the political economy, is separated into two hermetically sealed compartments, with neither influencing the other. On the one hand, tax increases help with the deficit, but have no unfortunate effects on the fragile, recession-bound
economy; while on the other, the stimulating spending increases apparently have no effect in worsening the deficit! Once we realize, however, that the economy is interconnected, and that one part influences the other, then the absurdity of Clintonomics becomes evident. For the huge increase in taxes will deliver a kick in the head to the economy: first, by crippling saving and investment by levying higher taxes on corporations and on upper income groups; and second, by imposing higher costs on business through the energy tax and other assorted "fees" that are really taxes in another guise. The higher costs on business will raise prices to consumers far beyond the moderate increases forecast in consumer utility bills. For higher energy costs will enter into every good produced by energy, and will particularly hit hard at manufacturing, such as the aluminum and chemical industries, and at transportation such as airlines. These are some of the very industries hit hardest by the recession. Note that the effect of increasing energy taxes is not only to raise consumer prices. For cost increases, despite popular myth, are not simply "passed on" easily to consumers in the form of higher prices. They will make American firms less competitive abroad, and they will lead to lower profits, reduced production, and increased unemployment, as well as higher prices. Furthermore, the huge increases in government spending proposed by Clinton will, of course, make the deficit worse. Apart from this, no tax increase in modern times has ever helped close the deficit. The Reagan tax increases of 1982 and after, and the infamous Bush tax increase of 1990, did not lower the deficit. The only practical way to lower the deficit is to cut government spending. Neither will the government spending "stimulus" aid the economy, nor the government "investment" alleviate the longterm stagnation caused by puny saving and investment. The American economy has a twofold problem: short-run, where we are either still in a recession or in a very fragile and timid recovery; and long-run, where we are suffering stagnation caused by
low saving and investment. The cure for the latter is more saving and investment; but, contrary to Keynesian nostrums, the cure for the former is precisely the same. The recession of 1990 was the inevitable result of the bank credit expansion (not the "Greed") of the 1980s, and the adjustment process of that recession can only be speeded up by two kinds of government policy: (a) not interfering in the healthy process of liquidating unsound investments by bailouts or by Keynesian "stimuli"; and (b) drastically cutting the government's own budget as well as its taxation. The supply-siders are right that tax cuts rather than tax increases are best both for getting out of recessions and for long-run growth; but they overlook the important point that government spending also cripples the economy, both in the short and long-run, for government spending is wasteful and parasitic upon productive private enterprise. The greater the burden on the private economy, the lower the genuine saving and investment for recovery and long-term growth. The Clinton regime tries to get around this problem by semantic trickery: by renaming government spending as "investment," just as it dares to relabel taxation as "contributions." But regardless of such deception, government spending is wasteful spending for the benefit of the unproductive "consumers" in politics and the bureaucracy. But what of the deficit? The Clintonians claim that the deficit is the biggest problem because government borrowing channels private savings out of productive investments. And yet the same Clintonians wish to lower interest payments by shifting from long-term to short-term debt, which will crowd out private investment far more frequently from the capital markets. In fact, the unproductive crowding out of saving comes not just from deficits but from all government spending; after all, taxes crowd out and even destroy private savings far more ruthlessly than mere borrowing. The problem is government taxation-and-spending.
Thus, Clintonomics is really Orwellian economics. It is selfcontradictory Orwellian "doublethink"; to the classic Orwellian "Freedom is Slavery" and "War is Peace," Clintonomics adds "government spending is investment" and "taxes are contributions." No school of economic thought, not even the Keynesian, advocates a big tax increase while the economy has not yet recovered from a recession; and yet Clintonomics does. But though Clintonomics be madness, "yet there is method in it." For shining through all the lies and contradictions and evasions, there is one red thread: government power increases at the expenses of the private marketplace. In short, Clintonomics is, in essence, a Great Leap Forward, American style, not toward Maoist communism but toward Democratic Socialism, toward Marxism without the Leninism. So far, the American public, snowed by the propaganda of Clinton's Permanent Campaign, seems to be willing to accept the "sacrifices" involved, cozy in the assurance that the rich guy down the block will be forced to sacrifice even more. In the long run, however, Americans will find soaking-the-rich to be cool comfort, indeed. Z
PRICE CONTROLS ARE BACK!
ad and discredited ideas, it seems, never die. Neither do they fade away. Instead, they keep turning up, like bad pennies or Godzilla in the old Japanese movies. Price controls, that is, the fixing of prices below the market level, have been tried since ancient Rome; in the French Revolution, in its notorious "Law of the Maximum" that was responsible for most of the victims of the guillotine; in the Soviet Union, ruthlessly trying to suppress black markets. In every age,
in every culture, price controls have never worked. They have always been a disaster. Why did Chiang-kai-Shek "lose" China? The main reason is never mentioned. Because he engaged in runaway inflation, and then tried to suppress the results through price controls. To enforce them, he wound up shooting merchants in the public squares of Shanghai to make an example of them. He thereby lost his last shreds of support to the insurgent Communist forces. A similar fate awaited the South Vietnamese regime, which began shooting merchants in the public squares of Saigon to enforce its price decrees. Price controls didn't work in World War I, when they began as "selective"; they didn't work in World War II, when they were comprehensive and the Office of Price Administration tried to enforce them with hundreds of thousands of enforcers. They didn't work when President Nixon imposed a wage-price freeze and variants of such a freeze from the summer of 1971 until the spring of 1973 or when President Carter tried to enforce a more selective version. The first thing I ever wrote was an unpublished memo for the New York Republican Club denouncing President Truman's price controls on meat. I was a young graduate student in economics at Columbia University, fresh from my M.A., and I wrote the piece for the Republican campaign of 1946. Price controls, I, and countless economists before and since, pointed out, never work; they don't check inflation, they only create shortages, rationing, declines in quality, black markets, and terrible economic distortions. Furthermore, they get worse as time goes on, as the economy adjusts out from under these pernicious controls. In 1946, all federal price controls had been lifted except on meat, and as a result, meat was in increasingly short supply. It got so bad that no meat could be found, and diabetics could not even find insulin, a meat-derived product. Radio disk jockeys implored their listeners to write to their Congressmen urging them to keep price controls on meat, for if not the price would
triple, quadruple, who knows, rise to infinity. (Ignored was the question: what's so great for the consumers about cheap meat that no one can find?) Finally, in summer, President Truman went on the air in a nationwide radio address. Summing up the dire meat crisis, he said, in effect, that he had seriously considered nationalizing the Chicago meatpackers in order to commandeer hoarded meat. But then he realized that the meat-packers had no meat either. Then, in a remarkable revelation that few commented on, he disclosed that he had given serious consideration to mobilizing the National Guard and the Army, and sending troops into Midwestern farms to seize all their chickens and livestock. But then, he reluctantly added, he had decided that such a course was "impractical." Impractical? A nice euphemism. Sending troops into the farms, Truman would have had a revolution on his hands. Every farmer would have been out there with a gun, defending his precious land and property from a despotic invader. Besides, it was a Congressional election year, and the Democrats were already in deep trouble in the farm states. As it was, the Old Right Republicans swept both houses of Congress that year in a landslide, and on the slogan: "controls, corruption, and Communism." It was the last principled stand of right-wing Republicanism, and, not coincidentally, its last political victory. Truman reluctantly concluded that there seemed to be only one course left to him: to abolish the price controls on meat, which he proceeded to do. In a couple of days there was plenty of meat for consumers and the diabetic alike. The meat crisis was over. Prices? They did not, of course, go up to infinity. They rose by something like 20 percent from the unrealistic control level. The most remarkable part of this affair went unremarked: that President Truman, apparently without knowing it, had conceded the crucial point: that the "shortage" was, pure and simple, an artificial creation of his own price controls. How else interpret the fact that even he admitted that the last, unfortunate
resort to end the crisis was to abolish the controls? And yet, no one drew this lesson and so no one initiated impeachment proceedings. Twenty-five years later, President Nixon imposed a pricewage freeze because inflation had reached what was then an "unacceptable" level of 4.5 percent a year. I went ballistic, denouncing the controls everywhere I could. That winter, I debated Presidential economic adviser Herbert Stein before the Metropolitan Republican Club of Washington, D.C. After I denounced price controls, Stein remarked that, in essence, the price controls were my fault, not his and President Nixon's. Stein knew as well as I did that price controls were disastrous and counterproductive, but I and others like me had not done a good enough job of educating the American public, and so the Nixon administration had been "forced" by public pressure to impose the controls anyway. Needless to say, I was not convinced about my guilt. Years later, in his memoirs, Stein wrote of the heady rush of power he felt at Camp David when planning to impose price controls on everyone. Poor Stein: another "victim" amidst the victimology of American culture! And now, Bill Clinton is in the White House, and price controls are back in a big way. The FCC has ordered a 15 percent rollback on two-thirds of the TV cable rates in this country, thereby re-regulating communications with a bang. The reasoning? Since being deregulated in 1987, cable rates have risen twice as fast as general inflation. Well: averages usually have roughly half of the data rising higher and roughly half lower; that's the nature of an average. Are we proposing to combat inflation by going after every price that rises higher than the average? That, indeed, is the major reasoning behind the looming Clintonian program for price controls on health care. Health care prices have risen faster than inflation. The threat of controls over health care has brought forth a chorus of protests from economists, and from former price controllers, who learned about price controls the hard way. Thus, C. Jackson
Grayson, who headed Nixon's price-wage control experiment from 1971 to 1973, warns: "price" controls will make things worse. Believe me, I've been there . . . . Controls have not worked in 40 centuries. They will not work now." Grayson warns that already 24 percent of U.S. health care is spent on administrative costs, largely imposed by government. Clintonian price control will cause regulations and bureaucrats to proliferate; it will raise medical costs, not lower them. Barry Bosworth, who headed price control efforts under Jimmy Carter, reacted similarly: "I can't believe they [the Clinton administration] are going to do it. I can't believe they are that stupid." He pointed out that health care, a field where there is rapid innovation in goods and services, is a particularly disastrous area to try to impose price controls. But none of these objections is going to work. The brash young Clintonians don't mind if price controls cause shortages of health care. In fact, they welcome the prospect, because then they can impose rationing; they can impose priorities, and tell everyone how much of what kind of medical care they can have. And besides, as Herb Stein found out, there's that deeply satisfying rush of power. We should know by now that reasoned arguments by economists or disillusioned ex-controllers are not going to stop them: only determined and militant opposition and resistance by the long-suffering public. Z
35 THE HEALTH PLAN'S DEVILISH PRINCIPLES
he standard media cliche about the Clinton health plan is that God, or the Devil, depending on your point of view, "is in the details." There is surprising agreement among both the supporters and all too many of the critics of the Clinton First published in December 1993.
health "reform." The supporters say that the general principles of the plan are wonderful, but that there are a few problems in the details: e.g., how much will it cost, how exactly will it be financed, will small business get a sufficient subsidy to offset its higher costs, and on into the night. The alleged critics of the Clinton Plan also hasten to assure us that they too accept the general principles, but that there are lots of problems in the details. Often the critics will present their own alternative plans, only slightly less complex than the Clinton scheme, accompanied by assertions that their plans are less coercive, less costly, and less socialistic than the Clinton effort. And since health care constitutes about one-seventh of the American output, there are enough details and variants to keep a host of policy wonks going for the rest of the their lives. But the details of the Clintonian Plan, however diabolic, are merely petty demons compared to the general principles, where Lucifer really lurks. By accepting the principles, and fighting over the details, the Loyal Opposition only succeeds in giving away the store, and doing so before the debate over the details can even get under way. Lost in an eye-glazing thicket of minutiae, the conservative critics of Clintonian reform, by being "responsible" and working within the paradigm set by The Enemy, are performing a vital service for the Clintonians in snuffing out any clear-cut opposition to Clinton's Great Leap Forward into health collectivism. Let us examine some of the Mephistophelean general principles in the Clintonian reform, seconded by the conservative critics. 1. GUARANTEED UNIVERSAL ACCESS. There has been a lot of talk recently about "universal access" to this or that good or service. Many "libertarian" or "free-market" proponents of education "reform," for example, advocate tax-supported voucher schemes to provide "access" to private schooling. But there is one simple entity, in any sort of free society, that provides "universal access" to every conceivable good or service, and not just to health or education or food. That entity
is not a voucher or a Clintonian ID card; it's called a "dollar." Dollars not only provide universal access to all goods and services, they provide it to each dollar-holder for each product only to the extent that the dollar-holder desires. Every other artificial accessor, be it voucher or health card or food stamp, is despotic and coercive, mulcts the taxpayer, is inefficient and egalitarian. 2. COERCIVE. "Guaranteed universal access" can only be provided by the robbery of taxation, and the essence of this extortion is not changed by calling these taxes "fees . . . premiums," or "contributions." A tax by any other named smells as rotten, and has similar consequences, even if only "employers" are forced to pay the higher "premiums." Furthermore, for anyone to be "guaranteed" access to anything, he has to be forced to participate, both in receiving its "benefits" and in paying for them. Hence, "guaranteed universal access" means coercing not only taxpayers, but everyone as participants and contributors. All the weeping and wailing about the 37 million "uninsured" glosses over the fact that most of these uninsured have a made a rational decision that they don't want to be "insured," that they are willing to take the chance of paying market prices should health care become necessary. But they will not be permitted to remain free of the "benefits" of insurance; their participation will become compulsory. We will all become health draftees. 3. EGALITARIAN. Universal means egalitarian. For the dread egalitarian theme of "fairness" enters immediately into the equation. Once government becomes the boss of all health, under the Clinton Plan or the Loyal Opposition, then it seems "unfair" for a rich man to enjoy better medical care than the lowest bum. This "fairness" ploy is considered self evident and never subject to criticism. Why is "the two-tier" health system (actually it has been multi-tier) any more "unfair" than the multi-tier system for clothing or food or transportation? So far at least, most people don't consider it unfair that some people can afford to dine at The Four Seasons and vacation at Martha's
Vineyard, whereas others have to rest content with McDonald's and staying home. Why is medical care any different? And yet, one of the major thrusts of the Clinton Plan is to reduce us all to "one-tier," egalitarian health care status. 4. COLLECTIVIST. To insure equality for one and all, medical care will be collectivist, under close supervision of the federal Health Care Board, with health provision and insurance dragooned by government into regional collectives and alliances. The private practice of medicine will be essentially driven out, so that these collectives and HMOs will be the only option for the consumer. Even though the Clintonians try to assure Americans that they can still "choose their own doctor," in practice this will be increasingly impossible. 5. PRICE CONTROLS. Since it is fairly well known that price controls have never worked, that they have always been a disaster, the Clinton administration always keen on semantic trickery, have stoutly denied that any price controls are contemplated. But the network of severe price controls will be all too evident and painful, even if they wear the mask of "premium caps . . . cost caps," or "spending control." They will have to be there, for it is the promise of "cost control" that permits the Clintonians to make the outrageous claim that taxes will hardly go up at all. (Except, of course, on employers.) Tight spending control will be enforced by the government, not merely on its own, but particularly on private spending. One of the most chilling aspects of the Clinton Plan is that any attempt by us consumers to get around these price controls, e.g., to pay higher than controlled prices to doctors in private practice, will be criminalized. Thus, the Clinton Plan states that "A provider may not charge or collect from the patient a fee in excess of the fee schedule adopted by an alliance," and criminal penalties will be imposed for "payment of bribes or gratuities" (i.e., "black market prices") to "influence the delivery of health service." In arguing for their plan, by the way, the Clintonians have added insult to injury by employing absurd nonsense in the
form of argument. Their main argument for the plan is that health care is "too costly," and that thesis rests on the fact that health care spending, over recent years, has risen considerably as a percentage of the GDP But a spending rise is scarcely the same as a cost increase; if it were, then I could easily argue that, since the percentage of GDP spent on computers has risen wildly in the past ten years, that "computer costs" are therefore excessive, and severe price controls, caps, and spending controls must be imposed promptly on consumer and business purchases of computers. 6. MEDICAL RATIONING. Severe price and spending controls means, of course, that medical care will have to be strictly rationed, especially since these controls and caps come at the same time that universal and equal care is being "guaranteed." Socialists, indeed, always love rationing, since it gives the bureaucrats power over the people and makes for coercive egalitarianism. And so this means that the government, and its medical bureaucrats and underlings, will decide who gets what service. Medical totalitarians, if not the rest of us, will be alive and well in America. 7. THE ANNOYING CONSUMER. We have to remember a crucial point about government as against business operations on the market. Businesses are always eager for consumers to buy their product or service. On the free market, the consumer is king or queen and the "providers" are always trying to make profits and gain customers by serving them well. But when government operates a service, the consumer is transmuted into a painin-the-neck, a "wasteful" user-up of scarce social resources. Whereas the free market is a peaceful cooperative place where everyone benefits and no one loses; when government supplies the product or service, every consumer is treated as using a resource only at the expense of his fellow-men. The "public service" arena, and not the free market, is the dog-eat-dog jungle. So there we have the Clintonian health future: government as totalitarian rationer of health care, grudgingly doling out
care on the lowest possible level equally to all, and treating each "client" as a wasteful pest. And if, God forbid, you have a serious health problem, or are elderly, or your treatment requires more scarce resources than the Health Care Board deems proper, well then Big Brother or Big Sister Rationer in Washington will decide, in the best interests of "society," of course, to give you the Kevorkian treatment. 8. THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD. There are many other ludicrous though almost universally accepted aspects of the Clinton Plan, from the gross perversion of the concept of "insurance" to the imbecilic view that an enormous expansion of government control will somehow eliminate the need for filling out health forms. But suffice it to stress the most vital point: the plan consists of one more Great Leap Forward into collectivism. The point was put very well, albeit admiringly, by David Lauter in the Los Angeles Times (September 23, 1993). Every once in a while, said Lauter, "the government collectively braces itself, takes a deep breath and leaps into a largely unknown future." The first American leap was the New Deal in the 1930s, leaping into Social Security and extensive federal regulation of the economy. The second leap was the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. And now, writes Lauter, "another new President has proposed a sweeping plan" and we have been hearing again "the noises of a political system warming up once again for the big jump." The only important point Mr. Lauter omits is leaping into what? Wittingly or unwittingly, his "leap" metaphor rings true, for it recalls the Great Leap Forward of Mao's worst surge into extreme Communism. The Clinton Health Plan is not "reform" and it doesn't meet a "crisis." Cut through the fake semantics, and what we have is another Great Leap Forward into socialism. While Russia and the former Communist states are struggling to get out of socialism and the disaster of their "guaranteed universal health care" (check their vital statistics), Clinton and his bizarre Brain Trust of aging leftist grad students are proposing to wreck our economy,
our freedom, and what has been, for all of the ills imposed by previous government intervention, the best medical system on earth. That is why the Clinton Health Plan must be fought against root and branch, why Satan is in the general principles, and why the Ludwig von Mises Institute, instead of offering its own 500page health plan, sticks to its principled "four-step" plan laid out by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Free Market, April 1993) of dismantling existing government intervention into health. Can we suggest nothing more "positive?" Sure: how about installing Doc Kevorkian as the Clinton family physician? Z
OUTLAWING JOBS: THE MINIMUM WAGE, ONCE MORE
here is no clearer demonstration of the essential identity of the two political parties than their position on the minimum wage. The Democrats proposed to raise the legal minimum wage from $3.35 an hour, to which it had been raised by the Reagan administration during its allegedly free-market salad days in 1981. The Republican counter was to allow a "subminimum" wage for teenagers, who, as marginal workers, are the ones who are indeed hardest hit by any legal minimum. This stand was quickly modified by the Republicans in Congress, who proceeded to argue for a teenage subminimum that would last only a piddling 90 days, after which the rate would rise to the higher Democratic minimum (of $4.55 an hour). It was left, ironically enough, for Senator Edward Kennedy to point out the ludicrous economic effect of this proposal: to induce employers to hire teenagers and then fire them after 89 days, to rehire others the day after. First published in December 1988.
Finally, and characteristically, George Bush got the Republicans out of this hole by throwing in the towel altogether, and plumping for a Democratic plan, period. We were left with the Democrats forthrightly proposing a big increase in the minimum wage, and the Republicans, after a series of illogical waffles, finally going along with the program. In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result. All demand curves are falling, and the demand for hiring labor is no exception. Hence, laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market (a minimum wage of 10 cents an hour would have little or no impact) must result in outlawing employment and hence causing unemployment. If the minimum wage is, in short, raised from $3.35 to $4.55 an hour, the consequence is to disemploy, permanently, those who would have been hired at rates in between these two rates. Since the demand curve for any sort of labor (as for any factor of production) is set by the perceived marginal productivity of that labor, this means that the people who will be disemployed and devastated by this prohibition will be precisely the "marginal" (lowest wage) workers, e.g., blacks and teenagers, the very workers whom the advocates of the minimum wage are claiming to foster and protect. The advocates of the minimum wage and its periodic boosting reply that all this is scare talk and that minimum wage rates do not and never have caused any unemployment. The proper riposte is to raise them one better; all right, if the minimum wage is such a wonderful anti-poverty measure, and can have no unemployment-raising effects, why are you such pikers? Why
you are helping the working poor by such piddling amounts? Why stop at $4.55 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $1.007 $10,007? It is obvious that the minimum wage advocates do not pursue their own logic, because if they push it to such heights, virtually the entire labor force will be disemployed. In short, you can have as much unemployment as you want, simply by pushing the legally minimum wage high enough. It is conventional among economists to be polite, to assume that economic fallacy is solely the result of intellectual error. But there are times when decorousness is seriously misleading, or, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, "when speaking one's mind becomes more than a duty; it becomes a positive pleasure." For if proponents of the higher minimum wage were simply wrongheaded people of good will, they would not stop at $3 or $4 an hour, but indeed would pursue their dimwit logic into the stratosphere. The fact is that they have always been shrewd enough to stop their minimum wage demands at the point where only marginal workers are affected, and where there is no danger of disemploying, for example, white adult male workers with union seniority. When we see that the most ardent advocates of the minimum wage law have been the AFL-CIO, and that the concrete effect of the minimum wage laws has been to cripple the lowwage competition of the marginal workers as against higherwage workers with union seniority, the true motivation of the agitation for the minimum wage becomes apparent. This is only one of a large number of cases where a seemingly purblind persistence in economic fallacy only serves as a mask for special privilege at the expense of those who are supposedly to be "helped." In the current agitation, inflation—supposedly brought to a halt by the Reagan administration—has eroded the impact of the last minimum wage hike in 1981, reducing the real impact of the minimum wage by 23 percent. Partially as a result, the unemployment rate has fallen from 11 percent in 1982 to under
6 percent in 1988. Possibly chagrined by this drop, the AFL-CIO and its allies are pushing to rectify this condition, and to boost the minimum wage rate by 34 percent. Once in a while, AFL-CIO economists and other knowledgeable liberals will drop their mask of economic fallacy and candidly admit that their actions will cause unemployment; they then proceed to justify themselves by claiming that it is more "dignified" for a worker to be on welfare than to work at a low wage. This of course, is the doctrine of many people on welfare themselves. It is truly a strange concept of "dignity" that has been fostered by the interlocking minimum wage-welfare system. Unfortunately, this system does not give those numerous workers who still prefer to be producers rather than parasites the privilege of making their own free choice. Z
37 THE UNION PROBLEM
abor unions are flexing their muscles again. Last year, a strike against the New York Daily News succeeded in inflicting such losses upon the company that it was forced to sell cheap to British tycoon Robert Maxwell, who was willing to accept union terms. Earlier, the bus drivers' union struck Greyhound and managed to win a long and bloody strike. How were the unions able to win these strikes, even though unions have been declining in numbers and popularity since the end of World War II? The answer is simple: in both cases, management hired replacement workers and tried to keep producing. In both cases, systematic violence was employed against the product and against the replacement workers.
In the Daily News strike, the Chicago Tribune Company, which owned the News, apparently did not realize that the New York drivers' union had traditionally been in the hands of thugs and goons; what the union apparently did was commit continuing violence against the newsstands—injuring the newsdealers and destroying their stands, until none would carry the News. The police, as is typical almost everywhere outside the South, were instructed to remain "neutral" in labor disputes, that is, look the other way when unions employ gangster tactics against employers and non-striking workers. In fact, the only copies of the News visible during the long strike were those sold directly to the homeless, who peddled them in subways. Apparently, the union felt that beating up or killing the homeless would not do much for its public relations image. In the Greyhound strike, snipers repeatedly shot at the buses, injuring drivers and passengers. In short, the use of violence is the key to the winning of strikes. Union history in America is filled with romanticized and overblown stories about violent strikes: the Pullman strike, the Homestead strike, and so on. Since labor historians have almost all been biased in favor of unions, they strongly imply that almost all the violence was committed by the employer's guards, wantonly beating up strikers or union organizers. The facts are quite the opposite. Almost all the violence was committed by union goon squads against the property of the employer, and in particular, against the replacement workers, invariably smeared and dehumanized with the ugly word "scabs." (Talk about demeaning language!) The reason unions are to blame is inherent in the situation. Employers don't want violence; all they want is peace and quiet, the unhampered and peaceful production and shipment of goods. Violence is disruptive, and is bound to injure the profits of the company. But the victory of unions depends on making it impossible for the company to continue in production, and therefore they must zero in on their direct competitors, the workers who are replacing them.
Pro-union apologists often insist that workers have a "right to strike." No one denies that. Few people—except for panicky instances where, for example, President Truman threatened to draft striking steel workers into the army and force them back into the factories—advocate forced labor. Everyone surely has the right to quit. But that's not the issue. The issue is whether the employer has the right to hire replacement workers and continue in production. Unions are now flexing their muscle politically as well, to pass legislation in Congress to prohibit employers from hiring permanent replacement workers, that is, from telling the strikers, in effect: "OK, you quit, so long!" Right now, employers are already severely restricted in this right: they cannot hire permanent replacement workers, that is, fire the strikers, in any strikes over "unfair labor" practices. What Congress should do is extend the right to fire to these "unfair labor" cases as well. In addition to their habitual use of violence, the entire theory of labor unions is deeply flawed. Their view is that the worker somehow "owns" his job, and that therefore it should be illegal for an employer to bid permanent farewell to striking workers. The "ownership of jobs" is of course a clear violation of the property right of the employer to fire or not hire anyone he wants. No one has a "right to a job" in the future; one only has the right to be paid for work contracted and already performed. No one should have the "right" to have his hand in the pocket of his employer forever; that is not a "right" but a systematic theft of other people's property. Even when the union does not commit violence directly, it should be clear that the much revered picket line, sanctified in song and story, is nothing but a thuggish attempt to intimidate workers or customers from crossing the line. The idea that picketing is simply a method of "free expression" is ludicrous: if you want to inform a town that there's a strike, you can have just one picket, or still less invasively, take out ads in the local media. But even if there is only one picket, the question then arises: on whose property does one have the right to picket, or
to convey information? Right now, the courts are confused or inconsistent on the question: do strikers have the right to picket on the property of the targeted employer? This is clearly an invasion of the property right of the employer, who is forced to accept a trespasser whose express purpose is to denounce him and injure his business. What of the question: does the union have the right to picket on the sidewalk in front of a plant or of a struck firm? So far, that right has been accepted readily by the courts. But the sidewalk is usually the responsibility of the owner of the building abutting it, who must maintain it, keep it unclogged, etc. In a sense, then, the building owner also "owns" the sidewalk, and therefore the general ban on picketing on private property should also apply here. The union problem in the United States boils down to two conditions in crying need of reform. One is the systematic violence used by striking unions. That can be remedied, on the local level, by instructing the cops to defend private property, including that of employers; and, on the federal level by repealing the infamous Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, which prohibits the federal courts from issuing injunctions against the use of violence in labor disputes. Before 1932, these injunctions were highly effective in blocking union violence. The act was passed on the basis of much-esteemed but phony research by Felix Frankfurter, who falsely claimed that the injunctions had been issued not against violence but against strikes per se. (For a masterful and definitive refutation of Frankfurter, which unfortunately came a half-century too late, see Sylvester Petro, "Unions and the Southern Courts—The Conspiracy and Tort Foundations of Labor Injunction," The North Carolina Law Review [March 1982]: 544–629.) The second vital step is to repeal the sainted "Wagner Act" (National Labor Relations Act) of 1935, which still remains, despite modifications, the fundamental law of labor unions in the United States, and in those states that have patterned themselves
after federal law. The Wagner Act is misleadingly referred to in economics texts as the bill that "guarantees labor the right to bargain collectively." Bunk. Labor unions have always had that right. What the Wagner Act did was to force employers to bargain collectively "in good faith" with any union which the federal National Labor Relations Board decides has been chosen in an NLRB election by a majority of the "bargaining unit"—a unit which is defined arbitrarily by the NLRB. Workers in the unit who voted for another union, or for no union at all, are forced by the law to be "represented" by that union. To establish this compulsory collective bargaining, employers are prevented from firing union organizers, are forced to supply unions with organizing space, and are forbidden to "discriminate" against union organizers. In other words, we have been suffering from compulsory collective bargaining since 1935. Unions will never meet on a "fair playing field" and we will never have a free economy until the Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia Acts are scrapped as a crucial part of the statism that began to grip this country in the New Deal, and has never been removed. Z
38 THE LEGACY OF CESAR CHAVEZ
e live, increasingly, in a Jacobin Age. Memory, embodied in birthdays, anniversaries, and other commemorations, is vitally important to an individual, a family, or a nation. These ceremonies are critical for the self-identity and the renewed dedication to that identity, of a person or of a people. It was insight into this truth that led the Jacobins, during the French Revolution, to sweep away all the old religious festivals, birthdays, and even calendar of the French people, and to substitute new and artificial names, days, and months for commemoration. First published in July 1993.
This Jacobinical process has been going on in the United States, albeit more gradually, in recent years. Festivals important for American self-identity and dedication have been purged or denigrated: e.g., Washington's Birthday has been denatured into an amorphous "President's Day" designed merely to insure one more holiday weekend. And in stark contrast to the great World Columbian Exposition in Chicago for the quadricentennial of the discovery of America, at its quincentenary in the fall of 1992, the discovery was universally reviled as a vicious genocidal act by a "dead white European male." Every week, it seems, the media come up with little-known substitute people or events whose anniversaries, or whose deaths, we are required to honor. The latest ersatz hero is Cesar Estrada Chavez, who died last April at the age of 66. For days, TV and the press were filled with the lionization of Chavez and his supposed achievements. President Clinton asserted that "the labor movement and all Americans have lost a great leader," and he called Chavez "an authentic hero to millions of people throughout the world." And we were reminded of Bobby Kennedy's claim, in 1968, that Chavez "is one of the heroic figures of our time." What had Chavez done to earn all these extravagant kudos? He had, for the first time, supposedly successfully organized low-paid and therefore "exploited" migrant farm workers, in California and other southwestern states, and thereby improved their lot. By living an austere lifestyle, and accepting only a small salary as founder and head of the United Farm Workers, he struck many gullible young left-liberals as a "saint." His admirers didn't realize that love of money is not the only emotion that motivates people; there is also the love of power. Indeed, the Chavez movement was an "in" cause for New Left idealists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Trained by the self-styled "professional radical" Saul Alinsky, Chavez successfully cultivated a quasi-political, quasi-religious aura for his union movement: including hymns, marches, fasts, and flags. He popularized such Spanish words as "La Causa" for his cause
and "Huelga!" for "strike," and made it veritable radical chic to boycott grapes in support of his five-year strike against the California grape growers. The Chavez farm worker encampments attracted almost as many short-term priests, nuns, and young liberal idealists as the sugar cane-cutting Venceremos Brigade in Cuba. In 1970, the boycott finally forced the grape growers to sign with UFW: five years later, Chavez reached his peak of seeming success when his newly-elected ally, Governor Jerry Brown, pushed through the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, for the first time, compelling collective bargaining in agriculture. Indeed, the new California act came perilously close to imposing a closed shop: its "good standing clause" permitted union leaders to deny work to any worker who challenged decisions of union leaders. Yet, despite the hosannahs of the nation's liberals, and the coercion supplied by the state of California, Cesar Chavez's entire life turned out to be a floperoo. Whereas he dreamed of his UFW organizing all of the nation's migrant farm workers, his union fell like a stone from a membership of 70,000 in the mid-1970s to only 5,000 today. In the UFW heartland, the Salinas Valley of California, the number of union contracts among vegetable growers has plummeted from 35 to only one at the present time. Only half of the meager union revenues now come from dues, the other half being supplied by nostalgic liberals. The UFW has had it. What went wrong? Some of Chavez's critics point to his love of personal power, which led to his purging a succession of organizers, and to kicking all savvy non-Hispanic officials out of his union. But the real problem is "the economy, stupid." In the long run, economics triumphs over symbolism, hoopla, and radical chic. Unions are only successful in a market economy where the union can control the supply of labor: that is, when workers are few in number, and highly skilled, so that they are not easily replaceable. Migrant farm workers, on the contrary, and
almost by definition, are in abundant, ever-increasing, evermoving, and therefore "uncontrollable" supply. And with their low skills and abundant numbers, they can be easily replaced. The low wage of migrant farm workers is not a sign that they are "exploited" (whatever that term may mean), but precisely that they are low-skilled and easily replaceable. And anyone who is inclined to weep about their "exploitation" should ask himself why in the world these workers emigrate seasonally from Mexico to the United States to take these jobs. The answer is that it's all relative: what are "low wages" and miserable living conditions for Americans, are high wages and palatial conditions for Mexicans—or, rather, for those unskilled Mexicans who choose to make the trek each season. In fact, it's a darned good thing for these migrant workers that their beloved union turned out to be a failure. For "success" of the union, imposed by the boycott and the coercion of the California legislature, would only have raised wage rates or improved conditions at the expense of massive unemployment of these workers, and forcing them to remain, in far more miserable conditions, in Mexico. Fortunately, not even that coercion could violate economic realities. As the pseudonymous free-market economist "Angus Black" admonished liberals at the time of the grape boycott: if you really want to improve the lot of grape workers, don't boycott grapes; on the contrary, eat as many grapes as you can stand, and tell your friends to do the same. This will raise the consumer demand for grapes, and increase both the employment and the wages of grape workers. But this lesson, of course, never sunk in. It was and still is easier for liberals to enjoy a pseudo-religious "sense of belonging" to a movement, and to "feel good about themselves" by getting a vicarious thrill of sanctification by not eating grapes, than actually to learn about economic realities and what will really help the supposed objects of their concern. The real legacy of Cesar Chavez is negative: forget the charisma and the hype and learn some economics. Z
rivatization is the "in" term, on local, state, and federal levels of government. Even functions that our civic textbooks tell us can only be performed by government, such as prisons, are being accomplished successfully, and far more efficiently, by private enterprise. For once, a fashionable concept contains a great deal of sense. Privatization is a great and important good in itself. Another name for it is "desocialization." Privatization is the reversal of the deadly socialist process that had been proceeding unchecked for almost a century. It has the great virtue of taking resources from the coercive sector, the sector of politicians and bureaucrats—in short, the non-producers—and turning them over to the voluntary sector of creators and producers. The more resources remain in the private, productive sector, the less a dead weight of parasitism will burden the producers and cripple the standard of living of consumers. In a narrower sense, the private sector will always be more efficient than the governmental because income in the private sector is only a function of efficient service to the consumers. The more efficient that service, the higher the income and profits. In the government sector, in contrast, income is unrelated to efficiency or service to the consumer. Income is extracted coercively from the taxpayers (or, by inflation, from the pockets of consumers). In the government sector, the consumer is not someone to be served and courted; he or she is an unwelcome "waster" of scarce resources owned or controlled by the bureaucracy. Anything and everything is fair game for privatization. Socialists used to argue that all they wish to do is to convert the entire economy to function like one huge Post Office. No
socialist would dare argue that today, so much of a disgrace is the monopolized governmental Postal Service. One standard argument is that the government "should only do what private firms or citizens cannot do." But what can't they do? Every good or service now supplied by government has, at one time or another, been successfully supplied by private enterprise. Another argument is that some activities are "too large" to be performed well by private enterprise. But the capital market is enormous, and has successfully financed far more expensive undertakings than most governmental activities. Besides the government has no capital of its own; everything it has, it has taxed away from private producers. Privatization is becoming politically popular now as a means of financing the huge federal deficit. It is certainly true that a deficit may be reduced not only by cutting expenditures and raising taxes, but also by selling assets to the private sector. Those economists who have tried to justify deficits by pointing to the growth of government assets backing those deficits can now be requested to put up or shut up: in other words, to start selling those assets as a way of bringing the deficits down. Fine. There is a huge amount of assets that have been hoarded, for decades, by the federal government. Most of the land of the Western states has been locked up by the federal government and held permanently out of use. In effect, the federal government has acted like a giant monopolist: permanently keeping out of use an enormous amount of valuable and productive assets: land, water, minerals, and forests. By locking up assets, the federal government has been reducing the productivity and the standard of living of every one of us. It has also been acting as a giant land and natural resource cartelist—artificially keeping up the prices of those resources by withholding their supply. Productivity would rise, and prices would fall, and the real income of all of us would greatly increase, if government assets were privatized and thereby allowed to enter the productive system.
Reduce the deficit by selling assets? Sure, let's go full steam. But let's not insist on too high a price for these assets. Sell, sell, at whatever prices the assets will bring. If the revenue is not enough to end the deficit, sell yet again. A few years ago, at an international gathering of free-market economists, Sir Keith Joseph, Minister of Industry and alleged free-market advocate in the Thatcher government, was asked why the government, despite lip-service to privatization, had taken no steps to privatize the steel industry, which had been nationalized by the Labor government. Sir Keith explained that the steel industry was losing money in government hands, and "therefore" could not command a price if put up for sale. At which point, one prominent free-market American economist leaped to his feet, and shouted, waving a dollar bill in the air, "I hereby bid one dollar for the British steel industry!" Indeed. There is no such thing as no price. Even a bankrupt industry would sell, readily, for its plant and equipment to be used by productive private firms. And so even a low price should not stop the federal government in its quest to balance the budget by privatization. Those dollars will mount up. Just give freedom and private enterprise a chance. Z
40 WHAT TO DO UNTIL PRIVATIZATION COMES
ree-market advocates are clear about what should be done about government services and operations: they should be privatized. While there is considerable confusion about how the process should be accomplished, the goal is crystal-clear. But apart from trying to speed up privatization, and also forcing that
process indirectly by slashing the budgets of government agencies, what is supposed to be done in the meantime? Here, freemarketeers have scarcely begun to think about the problem, and much of that thinking is impossibly muddled. In the first place, it is important to divide government operations into two parts: (a) where government is trying, albeit in a highly inefficient and botched manner, to provide private consumers and producers with goods and services; and (b) where government is being directly coercive against private citizens, and therefore being counter-productive. Both sets of operations are financed by the coercive taxing power, but at least Group A is providing desired services, whereas Group B is directly pernicious. On the activities in Group B, what we want is not privatization but abolition. Do we really want regulatory commissions and the enforcement of blue laws privatized? Do we want the activities of the taxmen conducted by a really efficient private corporation? Certainly not. Short of abolition, and working always toward reducing their budgets as much as we can, we want these outfits to be as inefficient as possible. It would be best for the public weal if all that the bureaucrats infesting the Federal Reserve, the SEC, etc. ever did in their working lives was to play tiddlywinks and watch color TV. But what of the activities in Group A: carrying the mail, building and maintaining roads, running public libraries, operating police and fire departments, and managing public schools, etc.? What is to be done with them? In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith, in his first widely-known work, The Affluent Society, noted private affluence living cheek-by-jowl with public squalor in the United States. He concluded that there was something very wrong with private capitalism, and that the public sector should be drastically expanded at the expense of the private sector. After four decades of such expansion, public squalor is infinitely worse, as all of us know, while private affluence is crumbling around the edges. Clearly, Galbraith's diagnosis and solution were 180-degrees wrong: the problem is the
public sector itself, and the solution is to privatize it (abolishing the counterproductive parts). But what should be done in the meantime? There are two possible theories. One, which is now predominant in our courts and among left-liberalism, and has been adopted by some libertarians, is that so long as any activity is public, the squalor must be maximized. For some murky reason, a public operation must be run as a slum and not in any way like a business, minimizing service to consumers on behalf of the unsupported "right" of "equal access" of everyone to those facilities. Among liberals and socialists, laissez-faire capitalism is routinely denounced as the "law of the jungle." But this "equalaccess" view deliberately brings the rule of the jungle into every area of government activity, thereby destroying the very purpose of the activity itself. For example: the government, owner of the public schools, does not have the regular right of any private school owner to kick out incorrigible students, to keep order in the class, or to teach what parents want to be taught. The government, in contrast to any private street or neighborhood owner, has no right to prevent bums from living on and soiling the street and harassing and threatening innocent citizens; instead, the bums have the right to free "speech" and a much broader term, free "expression," which they of course would not have in a truly private street, mall, or shopping center. Similarly, in a recent case in New Jersey, the court ruled that public libraries did not have the right to expel bums who were living in the library, were clearly not using the library for scholarly purposes, and were driving innocent citizens away by their stench and their lewd behavior. And finally, the City University of New York, once a fine institution with high academic standards, has been reduced to a hollow shell by the policy of "open admissions," by which, in effect, every moron living in New York City is entitled to a college education.
That the ACLU and left-liberalism eagerly promote this policy is understandable: their objective is to make the entire society the sort of squalid jungle they have already insured in the public sector, as well as in any area of the private sector they can find to be touched with a public purpose. But why do some libertarians support these "rights" with equal fervor? There seem to be only two ways to explain the embrace of this ideology by libertarians. Either they embrace the jungle with the same fervor as left-liberals, which makes them simply another variant of leftist; or they believe in the old maxim of the worse the better, to try to deliberately make government activities as horrible as possible so as to shock people into rapid privatization. If the latter is the reason, I can only say that the strategy is both deeply immoral and not likely to achieve success. It is deeply immoral for obvious reasons, and no arcane ethical theory is required to see it; the American public has been suffering from statism long enough, without libertarians heaping more logs onto the flames. And it is probably destined to fail, because such consequences are too vague and remote to count upon, and further because the public, as they catch on, will realize that the libertarians all along and in practice have been part of the problem and not part of the solution. Hence, libertarians who might be sound in the remote reaches of high theory, are so devoid of common sense and out of touch with the concerns of real people (who, for example, walk the streets, use the public libraries, and send their kids to public schools) that they unfortunately wind up discrediting both themselves (which is no great loss) and libertarian theory itself. What then is the second, and far preferable, theory of how to run government operations, within the goals for cutting the budget and ultimate privatization? Simply, to run it for the designed purpose (as a school, a thoroughfare, a library, etc.) as efficiently and in as businesslike a manner as possible. These operations will never do as well as when they are finally privatized; but in the meantime, that vast majority of us who live in
the real world will have our lives made more tolerable and satisfying. Z
41 POPULATION "CONTROL"
ost people exhibit a healthy lack of interest in the United Nations and its endless round of activities and conferences, considering them as boring busywork to sustain increasing hordes of tax-exempt bureaucrats, consultants, and pundits. All that is true. But there is danger in underestimating the malice of UN activities. For underlying all the tedious nonsense is a continuing and permanent drive for international government despotism to be exercised by faceless and arrogant bureaucrats accountable to no one. The Fabian collectivist drive for power by these people remains unrelenting. The latest exhibit, of course, is the recent Conference on Population, to be followed next year by an equally ominously entitled "Conference on Women." The television propaganda by the UN for this year's conference anticipates next year's as well, best encapsulated in one of the most idiotically true statements made by anyone in decades: "Raising the standard of living for women will raise the standard of living for everyone." Substitute "men" for "women" in this sentence, and the absurd banality of this statement becomes evident. The underlying major problem and fallacy with the Population Conference has been lost in the fury over the abortion question. In the process, few people question the underlying premise of the conference: the widely held proposition that the major cause of poverty throughout the world, and at the very least in the undeveloped countries, is an excess of population.
The solution, then, is the euphemistically named "population control," which in essence is the use of government power to encourage, or compel, restrictions on the growth, or on the numbers, of people in existence. Logically, of course, the antihuman-being fanatics (for what is "the population" but an array of humans?) should advocate the murder by government planners of large numbers of existing people, especially in the allegedly overpopulated developing world (or, to use older term, Third World) countries. But something seems to hold them back; perhaps the charge of "racism" that might ensue. Their concentration, then, is on restricting the number of future births. In the palmy days of anti-population sentiment, cresting in the ZPG (Zero Population Growth) movement, the call was for an end to all population growth everywhere, including the U.S. Models based on simple extrapolation warned that by some fairly close date in the future, population growth would be such that there would be no room to stand upon the earth. Indeed, the peak of ZPG hysteria in the U.S. came in the early 1970s, only to be put to rout when the census of 1970 was published, demonstrating that the ZPGers had actually achieved their goal and that the rate of population growth was already turning downward. Interestingly enough, it took only a moment for the same people to complain that lower rates of population growth mean an aging population, and who or what is going to support the increasing number of the aged? It was at that point that the joys of early and "dignified" death for the elderly began to make its appearance in the doctrines of left-liberalism. The standard call of the ZPGers was for a compulsory limit of two babies per woman, after which there would be government-forced sterilization or abortion for the offending female. (The Chinese communists, as is their wont, went the ZPGers one better by putting into force in the 1970s a compulsory limit of one baby per woman per lifetime.)
A grotesque example of a "free-market . . . expert" on efficiency slightly moderating totalitarianism was the proposal of the anti-population fanatic and distinguished economist, the late Kenneth E. Boulding. Boulding proposed the typical "reform" of an economist. Instead of forcing every woman to be sterilized after having two babies, the government would issue to each woman (at birth? at puberty?) two babyrights. She could have two babies, relinquishing a ticket after each birth, or, if she wanted to have three or more kids, she could buy the babyrights on a "free" market from a woman who only wanted to have one, or none. Pretty neat, eh? Well, if we start from the original ZPG plan, and we introduced the Boulding plan, wouldn't everyone be better off, and the requirements of "Pareto superiority" therefore obtain? While the population controllers seem to have given up for advanced countries, they are still big on population control for the Third World. It's true that if you look at these countries, you see a lot of people starving and in bad economic shape. But it is an elementary fallacy to attribute this correlation to numbers of the population as cause. In fact, population generally follows movement in standards of living; it doesn't cause them. Population rises when the demand for labor, and living standards rise, and vice versa. A rising population is generally a sign of, and goes along with, prosperity and economic development. Hong Kong, for example, has one of the densest populations in the world, and yet its standard of living is far higher than the rest of Asia, including, for example, the thinly populated Sinkiang province of China. England, Holland, and Western Europe generally have a very dense population, and yet enjoy a high living standard. Africa, on the other hand, most people fail to realize, is very thinly populated. And no wonder, since its level of capital investment is so low it will not support the existence of many people. Critics point to Rwanda and Burundi as being densely populated, but the point is they are the exceptions in Africa. The city of Rome at the height of its empire, had a very large
population; but during its collapse, its population greatly declined. The population decline was not a good thing for Rome. On the contrary, it was a sign of Rome's decay. The world, even the Third World, does not suffer from too many people, or from excessive population growth. (Indeed, the rate of world population growth, although not yet its absolute numbers, is already declining.) The Third World suffers from a lack of economic development due to its lack of rights of private property, its government-imposed production controls, and its acceptance of government foreign aid that squeezes out private investment. The result is too little productive savings, investment, entrepreneurship, and market opportunity. What they desperately need is not more UN controls, whether of population or of anything else, but for international and domestic government to let them alone. Population will adjust on its own. But, of course, economic freedom is the one thing that neither the UN nor any other bureaucratic outfit will bring them. Z
42 THE ECONOMICS OF GUN CONTROL
here is a continuing dispute about whether President Clinton is an Old "tax-and-spend" (read: socialistic) Democrat, or a New "centrist" Democrat. What a centrist New Democrat is supposed to be is vague, but the two examples of the New Democrat noted so far seem indistinguishable from the Old. The first proposal was Clinton's collectivist "national service" program, in which the taxpayers provide college educations for selected youth. In return, the youth volunteer for governmental or community boondoggle-jobs, which are somehow held up as morally superior to productive paying jobs in the private sector which actually benefit consumers.
The latest, and supposedly major piece of evidence for Mr. Clinton's "newness" is his emphasis on battling crime. But his crime control seems to consist in warring against every other entity except the real problem: criminals. Instead, there are drives to outlaw or severely restrict symbolic violence (toy guns, "violent" computer games, television cartoons, and other programs), and weapons which can be used either by criminals or innocent people in self-defense. So far, guns are the favorite target of the new prohibitionist tendency. May we next expect an assault on knives, rocks, clubs, and sticks? The latest gun control proposals from the Clinton administration provide an instructive, if unwitting, lesson in the economics of government intervention. Until this year, if you wanted to become a federally licensed gun dealer, you only needed to pay $10 a year. But the "Brady Bill" raised the federal license fee to $66 a year—a more than 500 percent increase at one blow. Even this is not enough for Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, who proposes to raise fees by no less than another tenfold, to $600 a year. One fascinating aspect of this drastic rise in license fees is that Bentsen actually proclaims and welcomes its effect as a device to cartelize the retail gun industry. Thus, Bentsen, in the non sequitur of the year, complains that there are 284,000 gun dealers in the country, "31 times more gun dealers than there are McDonald's restaurants." So what? What is the basis for this asinine comparison? Why not a comparison with the total number of all restaurants? Or all retail stores? More to the point, who is to decide what the optimum number of gun dealers, McDonald's, shoe stores, all other retail outlets, etc. is supposed to be? In a free-market economy, the consumers make such decisions. Who is Bentsen or any other government planner to tell us how many of any kind of business establishments there should be? And on what possible basis are they making these selections?
Bentsen goes on to proclaim that the reason for so many gun dealers is that the license is cheap. No doubt. If we charged a $10 million a year license fee for each and every retail establishment, we might be able to deprive American consumers of all retail outlets of any kind. Bentsen's proposal cheerily estimates that the enormous rise to $600 a year would eliminate 70–80 percent of existing gun dealers, who would be discouraged from renewing their licenses. The National Association of Federal Licensed Firearms Dealers reports that gun dealers are split on the increased license fee: large dealers, who could live with the increase, favor it precisely because their smaller competitors would be driven out of existence. Small dealers, who would be the ones driven out, are of course opposed to the scheme. Indeed, the Bentsen plan explicitly terms the larger dealers, who sell from retail shops, "true" or "legitimate" gun dealers; whereas the smaller dealers, who sell from their homes or cars, are somehow illegitimate and are supposed to be driven out of business. In addition to the fee increase, the Treasury wants to expand its pilot program in New York City, which it deems more successful. Here, City police and thuggish officers from the Treasury Department's notorious Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms "pay a visit" to anyone applying for federal gun permits, explain the laws, and ask in detail what kind of sales operations they have in mind. These intimidating "visits" resulted in the withdrawal or denial of 90 percent of the applications, in contrast to the usual 90 percent approval rate. There are several instructive lessons from this scheme and from the arguments in its favor. First, a license "fee" is a euphemism for a tax, pure and simple. Second, increased taxes discourage supply and drive firms out of business. The unspoken corollary, of course, is that the lower supply will raise prices and discourage consumer purchases.
Third, increased business taxes are not necessarily opposed by the taxed businesses, as is generally assumed. On the contrary, larger firms, especially those outcompeted by smaller competitors with lower overhead costs, will benefit from higher fixed costs imposed on the entire industry, since the smaller firms will not be able to pay these costs and will be driven out of business. Fourth, here we have an example of a major force behind increases in taxation and government regulation: the use of such intervention, especially by larger firms, to cartelize the industry. They want to cut supply, and the number of suppliers, and thereby raise prices and profits. In the gun control struggle, this measure is backed by a coalition of liberal anti-gun ideologues and big gun dealers—a perfect example of the major reason for continuing expansion of the welfare state: alliance between liberal ideologues and sectors of big business. The most preposterous argument for the fee increase was offered by Bentsen and particularly by Senator Bill Bradley (DNJ), who has been unaccountably hailed by some Beltway think-tanks as a champion of the free market. They said the raise is needed to cover the expenses of government licensing, which cost $28 million last year, while taking in only $3.5 million in fees. There is, of course, a far better way to save money for the taxpayers, the sudden subjects of Bentsen-Bradley solicitude: abolish gun-dealer licensing altogether. Z
VOUCHERS: WHAT WENT WRONG?
alifornia's Prop. 174 was the most ambitious school voucher plan to date. It was carefully planned well in advance, led by a veteran campaign manager, boosted by a nationwide propaganda effort of conservatives and libertarians, First published in January 1994.
and tried out in a state where it is widely recognized that the public school system has failed abysmally. And yet, on the November 2 ballot, Prop. 174 was clobbered by the voters, losing in every county, and going down to defeat by 70–30 percent. What went wrong? Proponents blame an overwhelming money advantage for the opposition, fueled by the teachers' unions. But public school teacher opposition was inevitable and discounted in advance. Besides, the property-tax-cutting Prop. 13 of 1978 in California was outspent by far more than the voucher scheme by the entire Establishment: big business as well as unions, and yet it swept the boards by more than 2-to-1. On the contrary, the lack of money in this case only reflected the lack of support at the polls. The school voucher advocates, like the feminist forces who tried to push through the ERA, met their defeat with bluster, and vowed to keep trying forever. But the feminists, despite their protestations, dropped their proposal like a hot potato once they realized that it was a loser. Perhaps the school voucher forces will likewise face reality and rethink their entire plan—and one hopes they will not bypass the voters and try to impose their scheme through executive or judicial fiat. For the big problem was the voucher scheme itself. The voucher forces began with the recognition that something was very wrong with the public school system. One problem with public schools inheres in every government operation: that being fueled by coercion rather than by the free market, the system will be grossly inefficient. But while inefficiency on a free market will fail the profit-and-loss test and force cutbacks, governmental inefficiency will only lead to accelerated waste. The tax system and lobbying by vested interests causes the system to grow like Topsy, or rather like a cancer on the civil society. Another grave problem with public schools, in contrast to other government functions, such as water or transportation, is that schools perform the vital function of educating the young. Governmental schooling is bound to be biased in favor of statism
and of inculcating obedience to the state apparatus and trendy political causes. The conservatives and libertarians who conceived the voucher scheme began by noting these grave flaws of the public school system. But in their eagerness for a quick fix, they overlooked several equally important problems. For there are two other deep flaws with the public school system: one, it constitutes a welfare scheme, by which taxpayers are forced to subsidize and educate other people's children, particularly the children of the poor. Second, an inherent ideal of the system is coercive egalitarian "democracy," whereby middle-class kids are forced to rub shoulders with children of the poor, many of whom are ineducable and some even criminal. Third, as a corollary, while all public schools are unneccessary and replaceable, some are in significantly worse shape than others. In particular, many public schools in the suburbs are homogeneous enough and able enough in their student body, and sufficiently under local parental control, to function well enough to satisfy parents in the district. As John J. Miller, a voucher advocate, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "Most suburbanites—the folks who make up the GOP's rank-and-file—are happy with their kids' school systems. Their children already earn good grades . . . and gain admission into reputable colleges and universities. Moreover, suburban affluence grants a measure of freedom in choosing where to live and thus provides at least some control over school selection. . . . The last thing these satisfied parents want is an education revolution." It behooves any revolutionaries, educational or other, to consider all problems and consequences before they start tearing up the social pea patch. The voucher revolutionaries, instead of curing problems caused by public schooling, would make matters immeasurably worse. Vouchers would greatly extend the welfare system so that middle-class taxpayers would pay for private as well as public
schooling for the poor. People without children, or parents who homeschool, would have to pay taxes for both public and private school. On the crucial principle that control always follows subsidy, the voucher scheme would extend government domination from the public schools to the as-yet more or less independent private schools. Especially in regard to the suburbs, the voucher scheme would wreck the fairly worthwhile existing suburban schools in order to subject them to a new form of egalitarian forced busing, in which inner-city kids would be foisted upon the suburban schools. A most unwelcome "education revolution." Moreover, by fatuously focussing on parental "choice," the voucher revolutionaries forget that expanding the "choices" of poor parents by giving them more taxpayer money also restricts the "choices" of the suburban parents and private-school parents from having the sort of education that they want for their kids. The focus should not be on abstract "choice," but on money earned. The more money you or your family earns, the more "choices" you necessarily have on how to spend that money. Furthermore, there is no need for "vouchers" for particular goods or services: for education vouchers, food stamps, housing vouchers, television vouchers, or what have you. By far the best "voucher," and the only voucher needed, is the dollar bill that you earn honestly, and don't grab from others, even if they are merely taxpayers. How in the world did conservatives and libertarians allow themselves to fall into this trap, where in the name of "political realism" they not only abandoned their principles of liberty and private property, but also found themselves expending effort and resources on a hopelessly losing cause? By taking their eye off the ball, off the central necessity for the rights of private property. Instead they ran after such seemingly "realistic" goals as helping the poor and pushing egalitarianism. Vouchers lost big because people wanted to protect their communities
against state depredations. The voucher advocates got precisely what they deserved. If the voucher fans are not irredeemably wedded to the welfare state and egalitarianism, how can they pursue a course that would be "positive" and realistic, and yet also cleave to their own professed principles of liberty and property rights? They could: (1) repeal regulations on private schools; (2) cut swollen public school budgets; (3) insure strictly local control of public schools by the parents and taxpayers of the respective neighborhoods; and (4) cut taxes so people can opt out of public schools. Let each locality make its own decisions on its schools and let the state and federal government get out completely. But this also means that the voucher policy wonks—most of whom reside in D.C., New York, and Los Angeles—should get out as well, and devote their considerable energies to fixing up the admittedly horrible public schools in their own urban backyards. Z
THE WHISKEY REBELLION: A MODEL FOR OUR TIME?
n recent years, Americans have been subjected to a concerted assault upon their national symbols, holidays, and anniversaries. Washington's Birthday has been forgotten, and Christopher Columbus has been denigrated as an evil Euro-White male, while new and obscure anniversary celebrations have been foisted upon us. New heroes have been manufactured to represent "oppressed groups" and paraded before us for our titillation. There is nothing wrong, however, with the process of uncovering important and buried facts about our past. In particular, First published in September 1994.
there is one widespread group of the oppressed that are still and increasingly denigrated and scorned: the hapless American taxpayer. This year is the bicentenary of an important American event: the rising up of American taxpayers to refuse payment of a hated tax: in this case, an excise tax on whiskey. The Whiskey Rebellion has long been known to historians, but recent studies have shown that its true nature and importance have been distorted by friend and foe alike. The Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion is that four counties of western Pennsylvania refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey that had been levied by proposal of the Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton in the spring of 1791, as part of his excise tax proposal for federal assumption of the public debts of the several states. Western Pennsylvanians failed to pay the tax, this view says, until protests, demonstrations, and some roughing up of tax collectors in western Pennsylvania caused President Washington to call up a 13,000-man army in the summer and fall of 1794 to suppress the insurrection. A localized but dramatic challenge to federal tax-levying authority had been met and defeated. The forces of federal law and order were safe. This Official View turns out to be dead wrong. In the first place, we must realize the depth of hatred of Americans for what was called "internal taxation" (in contrast to an "external tax" such as a tariff). Internal taxes meant that the hated tax man would be in your face and on your property, searching, examining your records and your life, and looting and destroying. The most hated tax imposed by the British had been the Stamp Tax of 1765, on all internal documents and transactions; if the British had kept this detested tax, the American Revolution would have occurred a decade earlier, and enjoyed far greater support than it eventually received. Americans, furthermore, had inherited hatred of the excise tax from the British opposition; for two centuries, excise taxes
in Britain, in particular the hated tax on cider, had provoked riots and demonstrations upholding the slogan, "liberty, property, and no excise!" To the average American, the federal government's assumption of the power to impose excise taxes did not look very different from the levies of the British crown. The main distortion of the Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion was its alleged confinement to four counties of western Pennsylvania. From recent research, we now know that no one paid the tax on whiskey throughout the American "backcountry"; that is, the frontier areas of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the entire state of Kentucky. President Washington and Secretary Hamilton chose to make a fuss about Western Pennsylvania precisely because in that region there was cadre of wealthy officials who were willing to collect taxes. Such a cadre did not even exist in the other areas of the American frontier; there was no fuss or violence against tax collectors in Kentucky and the rest of the backcountry because there was no one willing to be a tax collector. The whiskey tax was particularly hated in the back-country because whiskey production and distilling were widespread; whiskey was not only a home product for most farmers, it was often used as a money, as a medium of exchange for transactions. Furthermore, in keeping with Hamilton's program, the tax bore more heavily on the smaller distilleries. As a result, many large distilleries supported the tax as a means of crippling their smaller and more numerous competitors. Western Pennsylvania, then, was only the tip of the iceberg. The point is that, in all the other back-country areas, the whiskey tax was never paid. Opposition to the federal excise tax program was one of the causes of the emerging DemocratRepublican Party, and of the Jeffersonian "Revolution" of 1800. Indeed, one of the accomplishments of the first Jefferson term as president was to repeal the entire Federalist excise tax program. In Kentucky, whiskey tax delinquents only paid up when it was clear that the tax itself was going to be repealed.
Rather than the whiskey tax rebellion being localized and swiftly put down, the true story turns out to be very different. The entire American back-country was gripped by a non-violent, civil disobedient refusal to pay the hated tax on whiskey. No local juries could be found to convict tax delinquents. The Whiskey Rebellion was actually widespread and successful, for it eventually forced the federal government to repeal the excise tax. Except during the War of 1812, the federal government never again dared to impose an internal excise tax, until the North transformed the American Constitution by centralizing the nation during the War Between the States. One of the evil fruits of this war was the permanent federal "sin" tax on liquor and tobacco, to say nothing of the federal income tax, an abomination and a tyranny even more oppressive than an excise. Why didn't previous historians know about this widespread non-violent rebellion? Because both sides engaged in an "open conspiracy" to cover up the facts. Obviously, the rebels didn't want to call a lot of attention to their being in a state of illegality. Washington, Hamilton, and the Cabinet covered up the extent of the revolution because they didn't want to advertise the extent of their failure. They knew very well that if they tried to enforce, or send an army into, the rest of the back-country, they would have failed. Kentucky and perhaps the other areas would have seceded from the Union then and there. Both contemporary sides were happy to cover up the truth, and historians fell for the deception. The Whiskey Rebellion, then, considered properly, was a victory for liberty and property rather than for federal taxation. Perhaps this lesson will inspire a later generation of American taxpayers who are so harried and downtrodden as to make the whiskey or stamp taxes of old seem like Paradise. Note: Those interested in the Whiskey Rebellion should consult Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Steven R. Boyd, ed., The
Whiskey Rebellion (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985). Professor Slaughter notes that some of the opponents of the Hamilton excise in Congress charged that the tax would "let loose a swarm of harpies who, under the denominations of revenue offices, will range through the country, prying into every man's house and affairs, and like Macedonia phalanx bear down all before them." Soon, the opposition predicted, "the time will come when a shirt will not be washed without an excise." Z
45 EISNERIZING MANASSAS
any conservatives and free-marketeers believe that an inherent conflict exists between profits, free-markets, and "soulless capitalism," and money-making on the one hand, as against traditional values, devotion to older culture, and historical landmarks on the other. On the one hand, we have bumptious bourgeoisie devoted only to money; on the other, we have people who want to conserve a sense of the past. The latest ideological and political clash between capitalist growth and development, and old-fogy preservation, is the bitter conflict over the Manassas battlefield, sacred ground to all who hold in memory the terrible War Between the States. The Disney Corporation wants to build a 3,000 acre theme park just five miles from the Manassas battlefield. Disney, backed by the Virginia authorities and "conservative" Republican Governor George Allen, hails the new theme park as helping develop Virginia and "creating jobs," and also bringing the lessons of History to the millions of tourists. Virginia aristocrats, historians gathered together to preserve the American heritage, environmentalists, and paleoconservatives like Patrick Buchanan are ranged against the Disney theme park. First published in August 1994.
Doesn't this show that right-wing social democrats and leftlibertarians are right, and that paleoconservatives like Buchanan are only sand in the wheels of Economic Progress, that conservatism and free-market economics are incompatible? The answer is No. There are soulless free-market economists who only consider monetary profit, but Austrian School freemarketeers are definitely not among them. Economic "efficiency" and "economic growth" are not goods in themselves, nor do they exist for their own sake. The relevant questions always are: "efficiency" in pursuit of what, or whose values? "Growth" for what? There are two important points to be made about the Disney plan for Manassas. In the first place, whatever it is, it is in no sense free-market capitalism or free-market economic development. Disney is scarcely content to purchase the land and invest in the theme park. On the contrary, Disney is calling for the state of Virginia to fork over $163 million in taxpayer money for roads and other "infrastructure" for the Disney park. Hence, this proposal constitutes not free-market growth, but state-subsidized growth. The question then is: why should the taxpayers of Virginia subsidize the Disney Corporation to the tune of over $160 million? What we are seeing here is not free-market growth but subsidized, state-directed growth: the opposite of free markets. The second problem is the content of the park that Virginia taxpayers are expected to subsidize. When Walt Disney was alive, the Disney output was overwhelmingly and deliberately charming and wholesome, if oriented almost exclusively toward kiddies. Since the death of Disney, however, and its acquisition by the buccaneer Michael Eisner, Disney content has been vulgarized, shlockized, and gotten less and less wholesome. Moreover, since Manassas is an historical site and the Disney park will teach history, it is important to ask what the taxpayers of Virginia will be letting themselves in for. The type of history
they will subsidize, alas, is calculated to send a shudder down the spine of all patriotic Virginians. This history will no longer be in the old Disney tradition; bland, but pro-American in the best sense. It is going to be debased history, multicultural history, Politically Correct history. This sad truth is evident from the identity of the historian who has been chosen by Disney Corp. to be its major consultant on the history to be taught at the Manassas theme park. He is none other than the notorious Eric Foner, distinguished Marxist-Leninist historian at Columbia University, and the country's most famous Marxist historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Foner, as might be gathered, is fanatically anti-South and a vicious smearer of the Southern cause. It was Foner who committed the unforgivable deed of writing the smear of the late great Mel Bradford as a "racist" and fascist for daring to be critical of the centralizing despotism of Abraham Lincoln. Eric Foner is a member of the notorious Foner family of Marxist scholars and activists in New York City; one Foner was the head of the Communist-dominated Fur Workers Union; another the head of the Communist-dominated Drug and Hospital Workers Union; and two were Marxist-Leninist historians, one, Philip S. Foner, the author of a volume of a party-line history of American labor. Eisnerizing and Fonerizing Manassas has nothing to do, on any level, with free-market ideology or free-market economic development. This impudent statist-project designed to denigrate the South should be stopped: in the name of conservatism and of genuine free-markets. Once again, as in the case of the phony "free traders" pushing for Nafta and Gatt, it is important to look closely at what lies underneath the fair label of "free markets." Often, it's something else entirely. Z
Enterprise Under Attack
46 STOCKS, BONDS, AND RULE BY FOOLS
he economic acumen of Establishment politicians, economists, and the financial press, never very high at best, has plunged to new lows in recent years. The state of confusion, self-contradiction, and general feather-brainedness has never been so rampant. Almost any event can now be ascribed to any cause, or to the contradiction of the very cause assigned the previous week. If the Fed raises short-term interest rates, the same analyst can say at one point that this is sure to raise long-term rates very soon, while stating at another point that it is bound to lower long-term rates: each contradictory pronouncement being made with the same air of certitude and absolute authority. It is a wonder that the public doesn't dismiss the entire guild of economists and financial experts (let alone the politicians) as a bunch of fools and charlatans. In the past year and a half, the usual geyser of pseudo-economic humbug has accelerated into virtual gibberish by the fervent desire of the largely Clintonian Establishment to put a happy face on every possible morsel of economic news. Is unemployment up? But that's good, you see, because it means that inflation will be less of a menace, which means that interest rates will fall, which means that unemployment will soon be First published in June 1994. 169
falling. And besides, we don't call layoffs "unemployment" any more, we call it "downsizing," and that means the economy will get more productive, soon decreasing unemployment. In pre-Clinton economics, moreover, it was always considered—by all schools of economic thought—BAD to increase taxes during a recession. But Clinton's huge tax increase during a recession was an economic masterstroke, you see, because this will lower deficits, which in turn will lower interest rates, which in turn will bring us out of the recession. What, you say that interest rates have gone up, despite the Clintonian budget staking much of its forecasts on the assurance that interest rates will go down? But that's okay; because, you see, higher interest rates will check inflation, bringing interest rates down, so we were right all along! And so down means up, up means down, and round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows. Any sane assessment of the current economic situation is made still more problematic by the National Bureau of Economic Research's self-proclaimed "scientific" methodology of dating business cycles, which has been treated as Holy Writ by the economics profession for the past half-century. In this schema, there is exclusive concentration on finding the allegedly precise monthly date of the peak or trough of the business cycle, to the neglect of what is actually happening between these dates. Once a "trough" was officially proclaimed for some month in 1992, for example, every period since has to be an era of "recovery" by definition, even though the supposed recovery may be only one centimeter less feeble than the previous "recession." In any common sense view, however, the fact that we might be slightly better off now than at the depth of the recession scarcely makes the current period a "recovery." Let us now try to dispel two of the most common—and most egregious—economic fallacies of our current epoch. First is the Low Interest Rate Fetish. It all reminds me of the Cargo Cult that took root in areas of the South Pacific during World War II. The primitive natives there saw big iron birds come down
from the sky and emit U.S. soldiers replete with food, clothing, radios, and other goodies. After the war, the U.S. Army left the area, and the old flow of abundant goodies disappeared. Whereupon the natives, using high-tech methods of empirical correlation, concluded that if these giant birds could be induced to return, the eagerly-sought goodies would come back with them. The natives then constructed papier-mache replicas of birds that would flap their wings and try to "attract" the large iron birds back to their villages. In the same way, the British, the French and other countries saw, in the seventeenth century, that the Dutch were by far the most prosperous country in Europe. In casting around for the alleged cause of Dutch prosperity, the English concluded that the reason must be the lower interest rates that the Dutch enjoyed. Yet, many more plausible causal theories for Dutch prosperity could have been offered: fewer controls, freer markets, and lower taxes. Low interest rates were merely a symptom of that prosperity, not the cause. But many English theorists, enchanted to have found the alleged causal chain called for creating prosperity by forcing down the rate of interest by government action: either by pushing down the interest rate below the "natural" or free market rate, determined by the rate of time preference. But bringing down the interest rate by government coercion lowers it below the true, "time preference" rate, thereby causing vast dislocations and distortions on the market. The other point that should be made is the total amnesia of the financial press. In the old days, before World War II, one hallmark of a "recession" was the fact that prices were falling, as well as production and employment. And yet, in every recession since World War II, prices, especially consumer goods prices, have been rising. In short, in the permanent post-World War II inflation attendant on the shift from a gold standard to fiat paper money, we have suffered through several "inflationary recessions,"
where we get hit by both inflation and recession at the same time, suffering the worst of both worlds. And yet, while consumer prices, or the "cost of living," has not fallen for a halfcentury, the overriding fact of inflationary recession has been poured down the Orwellian "memory hole," and everyone duly heaves a sigh of relief when inflation accelerates because "at least we won't have a recession," or when unemployment increases that "at least there is no threat of inflation." And in the meanwhile inflation has become permanent. And yet everyone still acts as if the Keynesian hokum of the "inflation-unemployment tradeoff" (the so-called "Phillips curve") is a valid and self-evident insight. When will people realize that this "tradeoff" is about as correct as the forecast that the Soviet Union and the United States would have the same gross national product and standard of living by 1984. If we look, for example, at the benighted countries that suffer from the ravages of hyper-inflation (Russia, Brazil, Poland) they, at the same, time suffer from loss of production and unemployment; while, on the other hand, countries with almost zero inflation, such as Switzerland, also enjoy close to zero unemployment. Finally, to sum up our current macroeconomic situation: During the 1980s, the Federal Reserve embarked on a decade of inflationary bank credit expansion, an expansion fueled by credit inflation of the Savings & Loans. The fact that prices only rose moderately was just as irrelevant as a similar situation during the inflationary boom of the 1920s. At the end of the 1980s, as at the end of the 1920s, the American—and the world—economy paid a heavy price in a lengthy recession that burst the "bubble" of the inflationary boom, that liquidated unsound investments, lowered industrial commodity prices, and, in particular, ravaged the real estate market that had been the major focus of the boom in the United States. To try to get out of this recession, the Fed inflated bank reserves and pushed down short-term interest rates still further: with resulting bank credit expanding not so much the real
industrial economy, which stayed pretty much depressed, but generating instead an artificial boom in the stock and bond markets. The stock and bond price boom of the last year or two has clearly been so out of line with current earnings that one of two things had to happen: either a spectacular recovery in the real world of industry to warrant the higher stock prices; or a collapse of the swollen financial markets. For those of us skeptical about any magical economic recovery in the near future, and critical, too, of the feasibility of any permanent lowering by government manipulation of the rate of interest below the time-preference rate, a sharp stock and bond price decline was, and continues to be, in the cards. Z
47 THE SALOMON BROTHERS SCANDAL
inancial scandals are juicy, dramatic, and fun, especially when they bring down such arrogant and aggressive social lions as Salomon Brothers' head, John Gutfreund and his crew. And even more so when they elevate, as the rugged Nebraskan in the white hat riding in to Wall Street to try to save the day, Mr. Integrity, billionaire Warren Buffett (coincidentally, the son of my old friend, the staunch libertarian and pro-gold Congressman, the late Howard Buffett). But when we have stopped exhilarating in Mr. Gutfreund's grievous fall, we might ponder the matter a bit more deeply. In the first place, what did Salomon Brothers do that merits all the firings and the stripping of epaulets from the shoulders of the top Salomon executives? That they finagled a bit to get around rules on maximum share of government bond issues, doesn't seem to merit all this hysteria. Why should Salomon have cleaved solemnly to rules that make no sense whatever?
But Salomon might have cornered the market temporarily on some new Treasury issues? So what? Why shouldn't they make some money at the expense of competitors? The only thing clearly beyond the pale done by Salomon Brothers was to sign its customers' names to bond orders without their knowledge or consent. That, surely, was fraud and merits censure; but, again, it needs to be pointed out that such chicanery would not even have been considered were it not to evade the silly maximum purchase regulations imposed by the Treasury. If much too much is being made of Salomon's bit of hankypanky, does this mean that nothing is wrong on the government bond market? Quite the contrary. This fuss was made possible by a much more deeply-rooted scandal which no one has denounced: the fact that the U.S. Treasury has, for decades, conferred special privilege upon a handful of government bond dealers, whom it has picked out of the pack and designated as "primary dealers." Then, instead of selling its new bond issues at auction in the open market, the Treasury sells the great bulk of them to these primary dealers, who in turn resell them to the rest of the market. In the meanwhile, there is cozy and continuing conferring by the Treasury with these privileged big bond-dealers, who are grouped together in an influential lobbying cartel called the Public Securities Association (once named the Primary Dealers Association). The Treasury, of course, claims that it is more efficient to deal with these designated primary dealers, and it can thus finance its bond issues more cheaply. But surely the cozy closed partnership and the conflicts of interest it conjures up, more than makes up for the alleged benefit by bathing the entire proceedings in what looks very much like cartel privilege. The small group of large dealers benefits at the expense of their smaller competitors. Moreover, the problem in the government bond market is even deeper. Once a small and relatively insignificant part of the
capital market, the Treasury bond market now looms massively, casting its blight on all credit and capital. The total U.S. public debt now amounts to $3.61 trillion, of which no less than $117 billion of securities changes hands every day. But a flourishing government bond market means a market starved for private capital and credit; it means that increasingly, private savings are being siphoned away from productive investments and into the rathole of wasteful and counter-productive government expenditures. It is doubtful, therefore, whether we really want a smoothly running and efficient government bond market. On the contrary, a government bond market in difficulty is a market where less of our savings is poured down a rathole, and more is channeled into productive investment that will raise our living standards. We need, in fact, to do some long, hard thinking about the blight of government debt on our capital markets. Wouldn't it be better if such debt were to disappear altogether? One beneficial reform would be to return to the route of Britain in the nineteenth century, where much government debt was due not in six months, or five years, or 20 years, but was permanent debt, or "consols," that never came due at all. The permanent consol paid perpetual interest, and was never contracted to pay its principal. If the British government wanted to reduce the public debt, it could use its fiscal surplus to buy back and cancel some of the consols. Replacing our current debt with consols would mean that the government would not have to keep coming back to the bond market, redeem principal, and refloat the debt; the crowding out of private credit and investment would be far smaller. Of course, the government would then have to pay higher interest since the principal would never be redeemed; but that would be a small price to pay for lifting so much of the debt burden from the capital markets. Alternatively, and more radically, we could even ponder the old drastic Jeffersonian solution: simply repudiating the debt, and writing it off the books. Undoubtedly, repudiation would be
a severe blow to American bondholders; on the other hand, think of the burden that would be lifted from U.S. taxpayers! Think of the spur to savings and productive investment! It might be replied, however, that, upon such a stark declaration of bad faith and bankruptcy, no one would lend money to the Treasury for a long time thereafter. But wouldn't this be a blessing? Surely a world where people refuse, for one reason or another, to trust or invest in the operations of government, would be a world happily inoculated against the temptations of statism. Congress, in its wisdom, is trying to decide whether the Salomon Brothers scandal merits more severe regulation of the bond market. It should look first, however, to removing government privilege, from that market, such as the primary dealers' cartel and the vast scope of the government bond market. As in other parts of the economy, and as in the Communist countries seeking freedom, the best course for government, far from coining new plans and regulations, would be to get itself out of the way, as quickly as possible. Once again, the best way for government to benefit the economy is to disappear. Z
48 NINE MYTHS ABOUT THE CRASH
ver since Black, or Meltdown, Monday October 19, 1987, the public has been deluged with irrelevant and contradictory explanations and advice from politicians, economists, financiers, and assorted pundits. Let's try to sort out and rebut some of the nonsense about the nature, causes, and remedies for the crash.
First published in January 1988.
Myth 1: It was not a crash, but a "correction." Rubbish. The market was in a virtual crash state since it started turning down sharply from its all-time peak at the end of August. Meltdown Monday simply put the seal on a contraction process that had gone on since early September. Myth 2: The crash occurred because stock prices had been "overvalued," and now the overvaluation has been cured. This adds a philosophical fallacy to Myth 1. To say that stock prices fell because they had been overvalued is equivalent to the age-old fallacy of "explaining" why opium puts people to sleep by saying that it "has dormitive power." A definition has been magically transmuted into a "cause." By definition, if stock prices fall, this means that they had been previously overvalued. So what? This "explanation" tells you nothing about why they were overvalued or whether or not they are "over" or "under" valued now, or what in the world is going to happen next. Myth 3: The crash came about because of computer trading, which in association with stock index futures, has made the stock market more volatile. Therefore either computer trading or stock index futures or both, should be restricted/outlawed. This is a variant of the scapegoat term "computer error" employed to get "people errors" off the hook. It is also a variant of the old Luddite fallacy of blaming modern technology for human error and taking a crowbar to wreck the new machines. People trade, and people program computers. Empirically, moreover, the "tape" was hours behind the action on Black Monday, and so computers played a minimal role. Stock index futures are an excellent new way for investors to hedge against stock price changes, and should be welcomed instead of fastened on—by its competitors in the old-line exchanges—to be tagged as the fall guy for the crash. Blaming futures or computer trading is like shooting the messenger—the markets that brings bad financial news. The acme of this reaction was the threat—and sometimes the reality—of forcibly shutting down
the exchanges in a pitiful and futile attempt to hold back the news by destroying it. The Hong Kong exchange closed down for a week to try to stem the crash and, when it reopened, found that the ensuing crash was far worse as a result. Myth 4: A major cause of the crash was the big trade deficit in the U.S. Nonsense. There is nothing wrong with a trade deficit. In fact, there is no payment deficit at all. If U.S. imports are greater than exports, they must be paid for somehow, and the way they are paid is that foreigners invest in dollars, so that there is a capital inflow into the U.S. In that way, a big trade deficit results in a zero payment deficit. Foreigners had been investing heavily in dollars—in Treasury deficits, in real estate, factories, etc.—for several years, and that's a good thing, since it enables Americans to enjoy a highervalued dollar (and consequently cheaper imports) than would otherwise be the case. But, say the advocates of Myth 4, the terrible thing is that the U.S. has, in recent years, become a debtor instead of a creditor nation. So what's wrong with that? The United States was in the same way a debtor nation from the beginning of the republic until World War I, and this was accompanied by the largest rate of economic and industrial growth and of rising living standards, in the history of mankind. Myth 5: The budget deficit is a major cause of the crash, and we must work hard to reduce that deficit, either by cutting government spending or by raising taxes or both. The budget deficit is most unfortunate, and causes economic problems, but the stock market crash was not one of them. Just because something is bad policy doesn't mean that all economic ills are caused by it. Basically, the budget deficit is as irrelevant to the crash, as the even larger deficit was irrelevant to the pre-September 1987 stock market boom. Raising taxes is now the favorite crash remedy of both liberal and conservative
Keynesians. Here, one of the few good points in the original, or "classical," Keynesian view has been curiously forgotten. How in the world can one cure a crash (or the coming recession), by raising taxes? Raising taxes will clearly level a damaging blow to an economy already reeling from the crash. Increasing taxes to cure a crash was one of the major policies of the unlamented program of Herbert Hoover. Are we longing for a replay? The idea that a tax increase would "reassure" the market is straight out of Cloud Cuckoo-land. Myth 6: The budget should be cut, but not by much, because much lower government spending would precipitate a recession. Unfortunately, the way things are, we don't have to worry about a big cut in government spending. Such a cut would be marvelous, not only for its own sake, but because a slash in the budget would reduce the unproductive boondoggles of government spending, and therefore tip the social proportion of saving to consumption toward more saving and investment. More saving and investment in relation to consumption is an Austrian remedy for easing a recession, and reducing the amount of corrective liquidation that the recession has to perform, in order to correct the malinvestments of the boom caused by the inflationary expansion of bank credit. Myth 7: What we need to offset the crash and stave off a recession is lots of monetary inflation (called by the euphemistic term "liquidity") and lower interest rates. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan did exactly the right thing by pumping in reserves right after the crash, and announcing that the Fed would assure plenty of liquidity for banks and for the entire market and the whole economy. (A position taken by every single variant of the conventional economic wisdom, from Keynesians to "free marketeers.") In this way, Greenspan and the federal government have proposed to cure the disease—the crash and future recession—by pouring into the economy more of the very virus (inflationary
credit expansion) that caused the disease in the first place. Only in Cloud Cuckoo-land, to repeat, is the cure for inflation, more inflation. To put it simply: the reason for the crash was the credit boom generated by the double-digit monetary expansion engineered by the Fed in the last several years. For a few years, as always happens in Phase I of an inflation, prices went up less than the monetary inflation. This, the typical euphoric phase of inflation, was the "Reagan miracle" of cheap and abundant money, accompanied by moderate price increases. By 1986, the main factors that had offset the monetary inflation and kept prices relatively low (the unusually high dollar and the OPEC collapse) had worked their way through the price system and disappeared. The next inevitable step was the return and acceleration of price inflation; inflation rose from about 1 percent in 1986 to about 5 percent in 1987. As a result, with the market sensitive to and expecting eventual reacceleration of inflation, interest rates began to rise sharply in 1987. Once interest rates rose (which had little or nothing to do with the budget deficit), a stock market crash was inevitable. The previous stock market boom had been built on the shaky foundation of the low interest rates from 1982 on. Myth 8: The crash was precipitated by the Fed's unwise tight money policy from April 1987 onward, after which the money supply was flat until the crash. There is a point here, but a totally distorted one. A flat money supply for six months probably made a coming recession inevitable, and added to the stock market crash. But that tight money was a good thing nevertheless. No other school of economic thought but the Austrian understands that once an inflationary bank credit boom has been launched, a corrective recession is inevitable, and that the sooner it comes, the better. The sooner a recession comes, the fewer the unsound investments that the recession has to liquidate, and the sooner the recession will be over. The important point about a recession is for the government not to interfere, not to inflate, not
to regulate, and to allow the recession to work its curative way as quickly as possible. Interfering with the recession, either by inflating or regulating, can only prolong the recession and make it worse, as in the 1930s. And yet the pundits, the economists of all schools, the politicians of both parties, rush heedless into the agreed-upon policies of: Inflate and Regulate. Myth 9: Before the crash, the main danger was inflation, and the Fed was right to tighten credit. But since the crash, we have to shift gears, because recession is the major enemy, and therefore the Fed has to inflate, at least until price inflation accelerates rapidly. This entire analysis, permeating the media and the Establishment, assumes that the great fact and the great lesson of the 1970s, and of the last two big recessions, never happened: i.e., inflationary recession. The 1970s have gone down the Orwellian memory hole, and the Establishment is back, once again, spouting the Keynesian Phillips Curve, perhaps the greatest single and most absurd error in modern economics. The Phillips Curve assumes that the choice is always either more recession and unemployment, or more inflation. In reality, the Phillips Curve, if one wishes to speak in those terms, is in reverse: the choice is either more inflation and bigger recession, or none of either. The looming danger is another inflationary recession, and the Greenspan reaction indicates that it will be a whopper. Z
MICHAEL R. MILKEN VS. THE POWER ELITE
uick: what do the following world-famous men have in common: John Kenneth Galbraith, Donald J. Trump, and David Rockefeller? What values could possibly be shared by the
socialist economist who got rich by writing best-selling volumes denouncing affluence; the billionaire wheeler-dealer; and the fabulous head of the financially and politically powerful Rockefeller World Empire? Would you believe: hatred of making money and of "capitalist greed?" Yes, at least when it comes to making money by one particular man, the Wall Street bond specialist Michael R. Milken. In an article in which the August New York Times was moved to drop its cherished veil of objectivity and shout in its headline, "Wages Even Wall St. Can't Stomach" (April 3, 1989), these three gentlemen each weighed in against the $550 million earned by Mr. Milken in 1987. Galbraith, of course, was Galbraith, denouncing the "process of financial aberration" under modern American capitalism. More interesting were billionaires Trump and Rockefeller. Speaking from his own lofty financial perch, Donald Trump unctuously declared of Milken's salary, "you can be happy on a lot less money," going on to express his "amazement" that his former employers, the Wall Street firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert "would allow someone to benefit that greatly." Well, it should be easy enough to clear up Mr. Trump's alleged befuddlement. We would use economic jargon and say that the payment was justified by Mr. Milken's "marginal value product" to the firm, or simply say that Milken was clearly worth it, otherwise Drexel Burnham would not have happily continued the arrangement from 1975 until this year. In fact, Mr. Milken was worth it because he has been an extraordinarily creative financial innovator. During the 1960s, the existing corporate power elite, often running their corporations inefficiently—an elite virtually headed by David Rockefeller—saw their positions threatened by takeover bids, in which outside financial interests bid for stockholder support against their own inept managerial elites. The exiting corporate elites turned—as usual—for aid and bailout to the federal government, which obligingly passed the Williams Act (named for the New Jersey Senator who was later
sent to jail in the Abscam affair) in 1967. Before the Williams Act, takeover bids could occur quickly and silently, with little hassle. The 1967 Act, however, gravely crippled takeover bids by decreeing that if a financial group amassed more than 5 percent of the stock of a corporation, it would have to stop, publicly announce its intent to arrange a takeover bid, and then wait for a certain time period before it could proceed on its plans. What Milken did was to resurrect and make flourish the takeover bid concept through the issue of high-yield bonds (the "leveraged buy-out"). The new takeover process enraged the Rockefeller-type corporate elite, and enriched both Mr. Milken and his employers, who had the sound business sense to hire Milken on commission, and to keep the commission going despite the wrath of the Establishment. In the process Drexel Burnham grew from a small, third-tier investment firm to one of the giants of Wall Street. The Establishment was bitter for many reasons. The big banks who were tied in with the existing, inefficient corporate elites, found that the upstart takeover groups could make an end run around the banks by floating high-yield bonds on the open market. The competition also proved inconvenient for firms who issue and trade in blue-chip, but low-yield, bonds; these firms soon persuaded their allies in the Establishment media to sneeringly refer to their high-yield competition as "junk" bonds. People like Michael Milken perform a vitally important economic function for the economy and for consumers, in addition to profiting themselves. One would think that economists and writers allegedly in favor of the free market would readily grasp this fact. In this case, such entrepreneurs aid the process of shifting the ownership and control of capital from inefficient to more efficient and productive hands—a process which is great for everyone, except, of course, for the inefficient Old Guard elites whose proclaimed devotion to the free markets does not
stop them from using the coercion of the federal government to try to resist or crush their efficient competitors. We should also examine the evident hypocrisy of left-liberals like Galbraith, who, ever since the 1932 book by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, have been weeping crocodile tears over the plight of the poor stockholders, who have been deprived of control of their corporation by a powerful managerial elite, responsible neither to consumers nor stockholders. These liberals have long maintained that if only this stockholder-controlled capitalism could be restored, they would no longer favor socialism or stringent government control of business and the economy. The Berle-Means thesis was always absurdly overwrought, but to the extent it was correct, one would think that left-liberals would have welcomed takeover bids, leveraged buyouts, and Michael Milken with cheers and huzzahs. For here, at last, was an easy way for stockholders to take the control of their corporations into their own hands, and kick out inefficient or corrupt management that reduced their profits. Did liberals in fact welcome the new financial system ushered in by Milken and others? As we all know, quite the contrary; they furiously denounced these upstarts as exemplars of terrible "capitalist greed." David Rockefeller's quotation about Milken is remarkably revealing: "Such an extraordinary income inevitably raises questions as to whether there isn't something unbalanced in the way our financial system is working." How does Rockefeller have the brass to denounce high incomes? Ludwig von Mises solved the question years ago by pointing out that men of great inherited wealth, men who get their income from capital or capital gains, have favored the progressive income tax, because they don't want new competitors rising up who make their money on personal wage or salary incomes. People like Rockefeller or Trump are not appalled, quite obviously, at high incomes per se; what appalls them is making money the old-fashioned way, i.e.,
by high personal wages or salaries. In other words, through labor income. And yes, Mr. Rockefeller, this whole Milken affair, in fact, the entire reign of terror that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been conducting for the last several years in Wall Street, raises a lot of questions about the workings of our political as well as our financial system. It raises grave questions about the imbalance of political power enjoyed by our existing financial and corporate elites, power that can persuade the coercive arm of the federal government to repress, cripple, and even jail people whose only "crime" is to make money by facilitating the transfer of capital from less to more efficient hands. When creative and productive businessmen are harassed and jailed while rapists, muggers, and murderers go free, there is something very wrong indeed. Z
50 PANIC ON WALL STREET
here is a veritable Reign of Terror rampant in the United States—and everyone's cheering. "They should lock those guys up and throw away the key. Nothing is bad enough for them," says the man-in-the-street. Distinguished men are literally being dragged from their plush offices in manacles. Indictments are being handed down en masse, and punishments, including jail terms, are severe. The most notorious of these men (a) was forced to wire up and inform on his colleagues; (b) was fined $100 million; (c) was barred from his occupation for life; and (d) faces a possibility of five years in prison. The press, almost to a man, deplored the excessive lightness of this treatment.
Who are these vicious criminals? Mass murderers? Rapists? Soviet spies? Terrorists bombing restaurants or kidnaping innocent people? No, far worse than these, apparently. These dangerous, sinister men have committed the high crime of "insider trading." As one knowledgeable lawyer explained to the New York Times: "Put yourself in the role of a young investment banker who sees one of your mentors led away by Federal marshals. It will have a very powerful effect on you and perhaps make you realize that insider trading is just as serious as armed robbery as far as the government is concerned." This attorney's statement is grotesque enough, but it actually understates the case. Armed robbers are usually coddled by our judicial system. Columnists and social workers worry about their deprived backgrounds as youths, the friction between their parents, their lack of supervised playgrounds as children, and all the rest. And they are let off with a few months' probation to rob or mug again. But no one worries about the broken homes that may have spawned investment bankers and inside traders, and no social workers are there to hold their hands. They receive the full might of the law, and are sent straight to jail without stopping at "Go." A major difference between the "crime" of insider trading and the other crimes is that insider trading is a "crime" with no victims. What is this dread inside trading? Very simply, it is using superior knowledge to make profits on stock (or other) markets. A terrible thing? But this, after all, is what entrepreneurship and the free-enterprise system is all about. We live in a world of risk and uncertainty, and in that world, the more able and knowledgeable entrepreneurs make profits, while ignorant entrepreneurs suffer losses and eventually get out of business altogether. This is what happens, not only in the financial markets, but in business in general. The assumption of risk by businessmen, seeking profits and hoping to avoid losses, is a voluntary assumption by businessmen themselves. Not only is this process the essence of the free market, but the market, by rewarding
able and farsighted men and "punishing" the ignorant and short-sighted, places capital resources into the hands of the most knowledgeable and efficient, and thereby improves the workings of the entire economic system. And yet there are no victims of inside trading as there are in robbery or murder. Suppose that A holds 1,000 shares of XYZ Co. stock, and wants to sell those shares. B has "inside knowledge" that XYZ will soon merge with Arbus Corp., with expected increase in value per share. B steps in and buys the 1,000 shares for $50 apiece; B, let us say, is right, the merger is soon announced, and the XYZ shares rise to $75 apiece. B sells and makes $25 per share, or $25,000 profit. B has profited from his inside knowledge. But has A been victimized? Certainly not, because if there had been no inside knowledge at all, A would still have sold his shares for $50. The only difference is that someone else, say C, would have bought the shares, and made the $25,000 profit. The difference, of course, is that B would have made the profits as a knowledgeable investor, whereas C would have been simply lucky. But isn't it better for the economy to have capital resources owned by the knowledgeable and far-sighted rather than merely by the lucky? And, further, the point is that A hasn't been deprived of a dime by B's inside knowledge. There is, in short, nothing wrong and everything right with inside trading. If anything, inside traders should be hailed as heroes of the free market instead of being apprehended in chains. But, you say, it is "unfair" for some men to know more than others, and actually to profit by that knowledge. But what kind of a world-view dubs it "unfair" for some men to know more than others? It is the world-view of the egalitarian, who believes that any kind of superiority of one person over another—in ability, or knowledge, or income, or wealth—is somehow "unfair." But men are not ants or bees or robots; each individual is unique and different from others, and ability, talent, and wealth will therefore differ. That is the glory of the human race, to be
admired and protected rather than destroyed, for in such destruction will perish human freedom and civilization itself. There is another critical aspect to the current Reign of Terror over Wall Street. Freedom of speech, and the right of privacy, particularly cherished possessions of man, have disappeared. Wall Streeters are literally afraid to talk to one another, because muttering over a martini that "Hey, Jim, it looks like XYZ will merge," or even, "Arbus is coming out soon with a hot new product," might well mean indictment, heavy fines, and jail terms. And where are the intrepid guardians of the First Amendment in all this? But of course, it is literally impossible to stamp out insider trading, or Wall Streeters talking to another, just as even the Soviet Union, with all its awesome powers of enforcement, has been unable to stamp out dissent or "black (free) market" currency trading. But what the outlawry of insider trading (or of "currency smuggling," the latest investment banker offense to be indicted) does is to give the federal government a hunting license to go after any person or firm who may be out of power in the financial-political struggles among our power elites. (Just as outlawing food would give a hunting license to get after people out of power who are caught eating.) It is surely no accident that the indictments have been centered in groups of investment bankers who are now out of power. Specifically, the realities are that, since last November, firms such as Drexel Burnham Lambert; Kidder Peabody; and Goldman Sachs; have been under savage assault by the federal government. It is no accident that these are precisely the firms who have been financing takeover bids, which have benefited stockholders at the expense of inefficient, old-line corporate managerial elites. The federal crackdown on these and allied firms is the old-line corporate way of striking back. And looking on, the American public, blinded by envy of the intelligent and the wealthy, and by destructive egalitarian notions of "fairness," cheer to the rafters. Z
51 GOVERNMENT-BUSINESS "PARTNERSHIPS"
he "partnership of government and business" is a new term for an old, old condition. We often fail to realize that the point of much of Big Government is precisely to set up such "partnerships," for the benefit of both government and business, or rather, of certain business firms and groups that happen to be in political favor. We all know, for example, that "mercantilism," the economic system of Western Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, was a system of Big Government, of high taxes, large bureaucracy, and massive controls of trade and industry. But what we tend to ignore is that the point of many of these controls was to tax and restrict consumers and most merchants and manufacturers in order to grant monopolies, cartels, and subsidies to favored groups. The king of England, for example, might confer upon John Jones a monopoly of the production of sale of all playing cards, or of salt, in the kingdom. This would mean that anyone else trying to produce cards or salt in competition with Jones would be an outlaw, that is, in effect, would be shot in order to preserve Jones's monopoly. Jones either received this grant of monopoly because he was a particular favorite or, say, a cousin, of the king, or because he paid for a certain number of years for the monopoly grant by giving the king what was in effect the discounted sum of expected future returns from that privilege. Kings in that early modern period, as in the case of all governments in any and all times, were chronically short of money, and the sale of monopoly privilege was a favorite form of raising funds. A common form of sale of privilege, especially hated by the public, was "tax farming." Here, the king would, in effect, First published in September 1990.
"privatize" the collection of taxes by selling, "farming out," the right to collect taxes in the kingdom for a given number of years. Think about it: how would we like it if, for example, the federal government abandoned the IRS, and sold, or farmed out, the right to collect income taxes for a certain number of years to, say, IBM or General Dynamics? Do we want taxes to be collected with the efficiency of private enterprise? Considering that IBM or General Dynamics would have paid handsomely in advance for the privilege, these firms would have the economic incentive to be ruthless in collecting taxes. Can you imagine how much we would hate these corporations? We then have an idea of how much the general public hated the tax farmers, who did not even enjoy the mystique of sovereignty or kingship in the minds of the masses. In our enthusiasms for privatization, by the way, we should stop and think whether we would want certain government functions to be privatized, and conducted efficiently. Would it really have been better, for example, if the Nazis had farmed out Auschwitz or Belsen to Krupp or I.G. Farben? The United States began as a far freer country than any in Europe; for we began in rebellion against the controls, monopoly privileges, and taxes of mercantilist Britain. Unfortunately, we started catching up to Europe during the Civil War. During that terrible fratricidal conflict, the Lincoln administration, seeing that the Democratic party in Congress was decimated by the secession of the Southern states, seized the opportunity to push the program of statism and Big Government that the Republican Party, and its predecessor, the Whigs, had long cherished. For we must realize that the Democratic party, throughout the nineteenth century, was the party of laissez-faire, the party of separation of the government, and especially the federal government, from the economy and from virtually everything else. The Whig-Republican party was the party of the "American System," of the partnership of government and business. Under cover of the Civil War, then, the Lincoln administration pushed through the following radical economic changes: a
high protective tariff on imports; high federal excise taxes on liquor and tobacco (which they regarded as "sin taxes"); massive subsidies to newly established transcontinental railroads, in money per mile of construction and in enormous grants of land— all this fueled by a system of naked corruption; federal income tax; the abolition of the gold standard and the issue of irredeemable fiat money ("greenbacks") to pay for the war effort; and a quasi-nationalization of the previous relatively free banking system, in the form of the National Banking System established in acts of 1863 and 1864. In this way, the system of minimal government, free trade, no excise taxes, a gold standard, and more or less free banking of the 1840s and 1850s was replaced by its opposite. And these changes were largely permanent. The tariffs and excise taxes remained; the orgy of subsidies to uneconomic and overbuilt transcontinental railroads was ended only with their collapse in the Panic of 1873, but the effects lingered on in the secular decline of the railroads during the twentieth century. It took a Supreme Court decision to declare the income tax unconstitutional (later reversed by the 16th Amendment); it took fourteen years after the end of the war to return to the gold standard. And we were never able to shed the National Banking System, in which a few "national banks" chartered by the federal government were the only banks permitted to issue notes. All the private, state-chartered banks, had to keep deposits with the national banks permitting them to pyramid inflationary credit on top of those national banks. The national banks kept their reserves in government bonds, which they inflated on top of. The chief architect of this system was Jay Cooke, long-time financial patron of the corrupt career of Republican Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase. When Chase became Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln, he promptly appointed his patron Cooke monopoly underwriter of all government bonds issued during the war. Cooke, who became a multimillionaire investment banker from this monopoly grant and became dubbed "the Tycoon," added greatly to his boodle by lobbying for the
National Banking Act, which provided a built-in market for his bonds, since the national banks could inflate credit by multiple amounts on top of the bonds. The National Banking Act, by design, was a halfway house to central banking, and by the time of the Progressive Era after the turn of the twentieth century, the failings of the system enabled the Establishment to push through the Federal Reserve System as part of the general system of neomercantilism, cartelization, and partnership of government and industry, imposed in that period. The Progressive Era, from 1900 through World War I, reimposed the income tax, federal, state, and local government regulations and cartels, central banking, and finally a totally collectivist "partnership" economy during the war. The stage was set for the statist system we know all too well. The Bush administration carried on the old Republican tradition: still raising taxes, inflating, pushing a system of fiat paper money, expanding controls over and through the Federal Reserve System, and maneuvering to extend inflationary and regulatory controls still further over international currencies and goods. The northeastern Republican Establishment is still cartelizing, controlling, regulating, handing out contracts to business favorites, and bailing out beloved crooks and losers. It is still playing the old "partnership" game—and still, of course, at our expense. Z
52 AIRPORT CONGESTION: A CASE OF MARKET FAILURE?
he press touted it as yet another chapter in the unending success story of "government-business cooperation." The
traditional tale is that a glaring problem arises, caused by the unchecked and selfish actions of capitalist greed. And that then a wise and far-sighted government agency, seeing deeply and having only the public interest at heart, steps in and corrects the failure, its sage regulations gently but firmly bending private actions to the common good. The latest chapter began in the summer of 1984, when it came to light that the public was suffering under a 73 percent increase in the number of delayed flights compared to the previous year. To the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) and other agencies of government, the villain of the piece was clear. Its own imposed quotas on the number of flights at the nation's airports had been lifted at the beginning of the year, and, in response to this deregulation, the short-sighted airlines, each pursuing its own profits, over-scheduled their flights in the highly remunerative peak hours of the day. The congestion and delays occurred at these hours, largely at the biggest and most used airports. The FAA soon made it clear that it was prepared to impose detailed, minute-by-minute maximum limits on takeoffs and landings at each airport, and threatened to do so if the airlines themselves did not come up with an acceptable plan. Under this bludgeoning, the airlines came up with a "voluntary" plan that was duly approved at the end of October, a plan that imposed maximum quotas of flights at the peak hours. Government-business cooperation had supposedly triumphed once more. The real saga, however, is considerably less cheering. From the beginning of the airline industry until 1978, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) imposed a coerced cartelization on the industry, parcelling out routes to favored airlines, and severely limiting competition, and keeping fares far above the free-market price. Largely due to the efforts of CAB chairman and economist Alfred E. Kahn, the Airline Deregulation Act was passed in 1978, deregulating routes, flights, and prices, and abolishing the CAB at the end of 1984.
What has really happened is that the FAA, previously limited to safety regulation and the nationalization of air traffic control services, has since then moved in to take up the torch of cartelization lost by the CAB. When President Reagan fired the air-traffic controllers during the PATCO strike in 1981, a littleheralded consequence was that the FAA stepped in to impose coerced maximum flights at the various airports, all in the name of rationing scarce air-traffic control services. An end of the PATCO crisis led the FAA to remove the controls in early 1984, but now here they are more than back again as a result of the congestion. Furthermore, the quotas are now in force at the six top airports. Leading the parade in calling for the controls was Eastern Airlines, whose services using Kennedy and LaGuardia airports have, in recent years, been outcompeted by scrappy new People's Express, whose operations have vaulted Newark Airport from a virtual ghost airport to one of the top six (along with LaGuardia, Kennedy, Denver, Atlanta, and O'Hare at Chicago). In imposing the "voluntary" quotas, it does not seem accidental that the peak hour flights at Newark Airport were drastically reduced (from 100 to 68), while the LaGuardia and Kennedy peak hour flights were actually increased. But, in any case, was the peak hour congestion a case of market failure? Whenever economists see a shortage, they are trained to look immediately for the maximum price control below the free-market price. And sure enough, this is what has happened. We must realize that all commercial airports in this country are government-owned and operated—all by local governments except Dulles and National which are owned by the federal government. And governments are not interested, as is private enterprise, in rational pricing, that is, in a pricing that achieves the greatest profits. Other political considerations invariably take over. And so every airport charges fees for its "slots" (landing and takeoff spots on its runways) far below the market-clearing price that would be achieved under private ownership. Hence congestion occurs at valuable peak hours, with private corporate jets taking up space from which they
would obviously be out-competed by the large commercial airliners. The only genuine solution to airport congestion is to allow market-clearing pricing, with far higher slot fees at peak than at non-peak hours. And this would accomplish the task while encouraging rather than crippling competition by the compulsory rationing of underpriced slots imposed by the FAA. But such rational pricing will only be achieved when airports are privatized—taken out of the inefficient and political control of government. There is also another important area to be privatized. Airtraffic control services are a compulsory monopoly of the federal government, under the aegis of the FAA. Even though the FAA promised to be back to pre-strike air-traffic control capacity by 1983, it still employs 19 percent fewer air-traffic controllers than before the strike, all trying to handle 6 percent greater traffic. Once again, the genuine solution is to privatize air-traffic control. There is no real reason why pilots, aircraft companies, and all other aspects of the airline industry can be private, but that somehow air control must always remain a nationalized service. Upon the privatization of air control, it will be possible to send the FAA to join the CAB in the forgotten scrap heap of history. Z
THE SPECTER OF AIRLINE RE-REGULATION
mpiricism without theory is a shaky reed on which to build a case for freedom. If a regulated airline system did not "work," and a deregulated system seemed for a time to work well, what happens when the winds of data happen to blow the other way? In recent months, crowding, delays, a few dramatic First published in November 1987.
accidents, and a spate of bankruptcies and mergers among the airlines have given heart to the statists and vested interests who were never reconciled to deregulation. And so the hue and cry for re-regulation of airlines has spread like wildfire. Airline deregulation began during the Carter regime and was completed under Reagan, so much so that the governing Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was not simply cut back, or restricted, but actually and flatly abolished. The CAB, from its inception, had cartelized the airline industry by fixing rates far above the free-market level and rationed supply by gravely restricting entry into the field and by allocating choice routes to one or two favored companies. A few airlines were privileged by government, fares were raised artificially, and competitors either were prevented from entering the industry or literally put out of business by the CAB's refusal to allow them to continue in operation. One fascinating aspect of deregulation was the failure of experts to predict the actual operations of the free market. No transportation economist predicted the swift rise of the huband-spoke system. But the general workings of the market conformed to the insights of free-market economics: competition intensified, fares declined, the number of customers increased, and a variety of almost bewildering discounts and deals pervaded the airline market. Almost weekly, new airlines entered the field, old and inefficient lines went bankrupt, and mergers occurred as the airline market moved swiftly toward efficient service of consumer needs after decades of stultifying government cartelization So why, then, the wave of agitation for re-regulation? (Setting aside the desire of former or would-be cartelists to rejoin the world of special privilege.) In the first place, many people forgot that while competition is marvelous for consumers and for efficiency, it provides no rose garden for the bureaucratic and the inefficient. After decades of cartelization, it was inevitable that inefficient airlines, or those who could not adapt
successfully to the winds of competition, would have to go under, and a good thing, too. The shakeout and the mergers have also revived an ancient fallacy carefully cultivated by would-be cartelists. There is already a mounting hysteria that the number of airlines is now declining, and that we are therefore "returning" to the "monopoly" or quasi-monopoly days of the CAB. Is not a new CAB needed to "enforce competition"? But this ignores the crucial difference between monopoly or large-scale firms created and bolstered by government privilege, as against such firms that have earned their position and are able to maintain it under free competition. The government-maintained firms are necessarily inefficient and a burden on progress; freely-competitive "monopoly" firms exist by virtue of being more efficient, providing better service at lower rates, than their existing or potential competitors. Even if the absurd fantasy transpired that only one U.S., presumably not worldwide airline, emerged from free competition, it would still be vital to avoid any governmental interference with such a free-market firm. Note, in short, what the pro-cartelists are saying: they are saying that it is vital for the government to impose a coercive, inefficient monopoly now to avoid the shadowy possibility of an efficient, freely-competitive monopoly at some future date. Looked at this way, we can see that the call for re-regulation and cartelization makes no sense whatever except from the viewpoint of the cartelists. Quite the contrary; it is now important to extend deregulation to the European sphere and end the international cartel of IATA, which has crippled intra-European travel and kept airline fares outrageously high. What of the other unwelcome consequences of deregulation: crowded planes, delays, accidents? In the first place, as is typical, competition has led to lower fares and therefore brought airline travel into the mass market far more than before. So this means that those of us who used to fly on planes half or quarter-filled with business travelers now have to face
flights on totally filled planes stocked with students, ethnics carrying all their possessions in paper bags, and squalling babies. But if deregulation has ended the gracious days of yore by making air travel more affordable, those of us who wish to restore that epoch will simply have to pay for the gracious amenities by traveling first class or chartering our own planes. Delays, accidents, and near-accidents are another story completely. They are only "caused" by deregulation in the sense that air travel has been stimulated by free competition. The increased activity has run up against bottlenecks caused not by freedom but by government, and these unfortunate remnants of government have been causing and intensifying the problems. There are two major difficulties. One is the fact that there are no privately-owned and operated commercial airports in this country; all such airports are owned by municipal governments (except the worst run, Dulles and National, owned and run by the federal government). Government runs airports in the same way it runs everything else—badly. Specifically, there is no incentive for government to price its services rationally. In consequence, government airports price their major service, landing on and taking off of runways, way below the market price. The result is overcrowding, shortages of runway space at prime time, and a rationing policy by the airports to provide a first-come first-served policy which virtually insures circling and aggravating delays. A privately owned airport would price runways rationally in order to maximize its income by raising prices, especially at peak hours, and allowing airlines to purchase guaranteed time slots and push the far less revenue-productive private planes out of the runways in prime time. But government airports have failed to do so, and continue subsidizing runway prices, in deference to the politically powerful lobby of private plane owners. The second big obstacle to the smooth use of the airways is the fact that the important service of air-traffic control has been nationalized by the federal government in its FAA (Federal
Aviation Administration). As usual, government provision of a labor service is far less efficient and sensitive to consumer needs than private firms would be. President Reagan's feat in deunionizing the air-traffic controllers early in his administration has made people overlook the far more important fact that this vital service has remained in government hands, and poses, therefore, a growing threat to the safety of every air traveller. As in every other case of government control and regulation, therefore, the cure for freedom is still more freedom. Halfway measures of deregulation are never enough. We must have the insight and the courage to go the whole way: in the airline case, to privatize commercial airports and the occupation of air traffic control. Z
54 COMPETITION AT WORK: XEROX AT 25
ittle over 25 years ago a revolutionary event occurred in the world of business and in American society generally. It was a revolution accomplished without bloodshed and without anyone being executed. The Xerox 914, the world's first fully-automated plain-paper copier, was exhibited to the press in New York City. Before then copiers existed, but they were clumsy and complex, they took a long time, and the final product was a fuzzy mess imprinted on special, unattractive pink paper. The advent of Xerox ushered in the photocopying age, and was successful to such an extent that within a decade the word "xerox" was in danger of slipping out of trademark and becoming a generic term in the public domain. Many people, and even some economists, believe that large, highly capitalized firms can always outcompete small ones.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In the pre-Xerox age, the photography industry was dominated, at least in the United States, by one giant, Eastman Kodak. And yet it was not Kodak or any other giant business or massive research facility that invented or even developed the Xerox process. It was invented, instead, by one man, Chester Carlson, a New York City patent attorney, who did the initial experiments in the kitchen of his apartment home in 1938. Carlson then looked around for a firm that would develop a commercial product from his invention. He first thought of Eastman Kodak, but Kodak told him it would never work, that it was too complex, would be too costly to develop, and, most remarkably of all, would have only a small potential market! The same answer was given to Carlson by 21 other large firms such as IBM. They were the "experts"; how could they all be wrong? Finally, one small firm in Rochester took a gamble on the Xerox project. Haloid Co., a photographic paper manufacturer with annual sales of less than $7 million, bought the rights to the process from Carlson in 1947, and spent $20 million and 12 years before the mighty Xerox 914 came on the market in the fateful fall of 1959. Horace Becket, who was chief engineer on the Xerox 914, explains that "technically, it did not look like a winner. . . . That which we did, a big company could not have afforded to do. We really shot the dice, because it didn't make any difference." Small business can outcompete, and outinnovate, the giants. Haloid Co., then Haloid Xerox Co., and finally Xerox, became one of the great business and stock-market success stories of the 1960s. By the early 1970s, it had captured almost all of the new, huge photocopier market, and its 1983 revenues totaled $8.5 billion. But by the mid 1970s, Xerox, too, was getting big, bureaucratic, and sluggish, and Japan invaded the photocopy market with the successful Savin copier. As competition by new originally small firms accelerated, Xerox's share of the market fell to 75 percent in 1975, 47 percent in 1980, and less than 40 percent in 1982. As one investment analyst commented, "They had an aging product line. They were caught off guard."
In the world of business, no firm, even the giants, can stand still for long. In trouble, Xerox fought back with its new and improved 10 Series of "Marathon" copiers, and in 1983 the company increased its share of the photocopy market for the first time since 1970; and its record considerably improved in 1984. So, Happy Birthday Xerox! The Xerox success story is a monument to what a brilliant and determined lone inventor can accomplish. It is a living testimony of how a small firm can innovate and outcompete giant firms, and of how a small firm, become a giant, can rethink and retool in order to keep up with a host of new competitors. But above all, the Xerox story is a tribute to what free competition and free enterprise can accomplish, in short, what people can do if they are allowed to think and work and invest and employ their energies in freedom. Human progress and human freedom go hand in hand. Z
55 THE WAR ON THE CAR
ne of the fascinating features of the current political scene is its bitter, and nearly unprecedented, polarization. On the one hand, there has been welling up in recent months a palpable, intense, and very extensive popular grass-roots movement of deep-seated loathing for President Clinton the man, for his ideology and for his politics, for all those associated with Clinton, and for the Leviathan government in Washington. This movement is remarkably broad-based, stretching from rural citizens to customarily moderate intellectuals and professors. The movement is reflected in all indicators, from personal conversations to grass-roots activity, to public opinion polls.
The bizarre new element is that usually, in response to such an intense popular movement, the other side, in this case, the Clinton administration, would pull in its horns and tack to the wind. Instead, they are barreling ahead, heedlessly, and thereby helping to create, more and more, a virtual social crisis and what the Marxists would call a "revolutionary situation." Response of the Clinton administration has been to try to suppress, literally, the freedom of speech of its opponents. Two prominent recent examples: the Clinton bill to expand the definition of lobbying (which would mean coerced registration and other onerous regulations) to include virtually all grass-roots political activity. Fortunately, this "lobbying reform" bill was killed by "obstructionists" in the Senate after passing the House. Second, was the federal Housing and Urban Development's systematic legal action to crack down on the freedom of political speech and assembly of those opposing public housing developments for the "homeless" in their neighborhoods. It turns out that this elemental political activity of free men and women was "discriminatory," and therefore "illegal," and HUD legal harassment of these citizens was only pulled back under the glare of severe public criticism. And even then, HUD never admitted that it was wrong. The latest Clintonian march toward totalitarianism has not yet been unleashed. It seems that the White House has established an advisory panel known as the "White House Car Talks" committee, slated to submit its recommendations for action in September. The need for "car talks" is supposed to be the menace of the automobile as polluter. The fact that the demonized chemical element, lead, has already been eliminated from gasoline, or that federal mandates have repeatedly made auto engines more "fuel efficient" at the expense of car safety, cuts no ice with these people. It is impossible to appease an aggressive movement bent on full-scale collectivism: gains or concessions simply encourage them and whet their appetite for escalating their demands. And so to the car
talkers, automobile pollution remains as severe a menace as ever. The Car Talks panel consists of the usual suspects: Clintonian officials, environmentalists, sympathetic economists, and a few stooges from the automobile industry. Some of the innovative ideas under discussion, in addition to higher taxes on "gasguzzling" cars and trucks (query: does any car ever sip daintily instead of "guzzle?"): •
establishing a higher minimum age for drivers' licenses;
forcing drivers over a maximum age to give up their licenses;
placing maximum limits on how many cars any family will be allowed to own;
enforcing alternative driving days for car commuters.
In short, the coercive rationing of automobiles, by forcing some groups to stop driving altogether, and by forcing others to stop using the cars they are still graciously allowed to possess. If that isn't totalitarianism, what exactly would qualify? If the American public is enraged about "gun-grabbers," and they indeed are, wait until they realize that Leviathan is coming to grab their cars! Now, of course, the White House aide who discussed these ideas with the press admitted that some of the "wilder ideas" will get killed in committee. Is that all we can rely on to preserve our liberty? Meanwhile, as usual, the only public criticism of these ruminations has come from the Left, griping that the Car Talkers are not acting fast enough. Dan Becker, of the Sierra Club, complains that "each second this yammering goes on in the White house," hundreds of gallons of pollution are being sent into the air. Who knows? Maybe Dr. David Kessler, apparently the
permanent head of the Food and Drug Administration, can issue a finding that the fuel emissions are "toxic," and the administration can then ban all cars overnight. We should realize that the war against the car did not begin with the discovery of pollution. Hatred of the private automobile has been endemic among left-liberals for decades. It first surfaced in the disproportionate hysteria over what seemed to be a minor esthetic complaint: tailfins on Cadillacs in the 1950s. The amount of ink and energy expended on attacking the horrors of tailfins was prodigious. But it soon emerged that the left-liberal complaint against automobiles had little to do either with tailfins or pollution. What they hate, with a purple passion, is the private car as a deeply individualistic, comfortable, and even luxurious mode of transportation. In contrast to the railroad, the automobile liberated Americans from the collectivist tyranny of mass transit: of being forced to rub elbows with a "cross-section of democracy" on bus or train, of being dominated by fixed timetables and fixed terminals. Instead, the private automobile made each individual "King of the Road"; he could ride wherever and whenever he wanted, with no compulsion to clear it with his neighbors or his "community." And furthermore, the driver and car-owner could perform all these miracles in comfort and luxury, in an ambiance far more pleasurable than in jostling his fellow "democrats" for hours at a time. And so the systemic war on private automobiles began and moved into high gear. If they couldn't get our cars straight away, they could, in the name of "fuel efficiency . . . pollution," the joys of physical exercise, or even esthetics, persuade and coerce us into using cars that were costlier, smaller, lighter, and therefore less safe, and less luxurious and even less comfortable. If they grudgingly and temporarily allowed us to keep our cars, they could punish us by making the ride more difficult. But
now, the Clintonians, in a multi-faceted drive toward collectivism from health to gun-grabbing to assaults on free speech, and on the rights of smokers have demonstrated that they never give up. Unlike previous administrations, they are tireless, implacable, and overlook nothing. Yesterday, the slogan: "If you let them come for our cigarettes or for our guns, next they will come for our cars," would have seemed like absurd hyperbole. Now, that prospect is becoming all too much a sober portrayal of political reality. Z
Fiscal Mysteries Revealed
56 ARE WE UNDERTAXED?
very day that passes brings further evidence, in the marvelous phrase of Bill Kauffman in Chronicles, of "the enormous gulf between those who live in America and those who run it." We who live in America are firmly convinced that we are taxed far too much, that government spending and taxation are eating out our substance to support a growing parasitic army of crooks and moochers, and that the accelerating burden of government has caused our economy to stagnate over the last two decades. The ruling elites who run America, including the sophisticated technocratic economists who lend a patina of "science" to their rule, see the American problem, of course, in a very different way. This economist elite, whose task it is to apologize for Leviathan rule, and to take highly-placed jobs directing that elite rule is, if nothing else, cool and calm about their own counter-theme: "the trouble with America is that it is undertaxed." To the cries of understandable outrage that greet this claim, the elite is sophisticated and "scientific." It is typical of us cloddish types to be narrow and "selfish," greedily trying to keep some of our own money from the depredations of the taxman. For they, the elite, are wise and all-seeing; in contrast to us First published in April 1992. 209
narrow and selfish resisters, they have only the common good, the general welfare, and the public weal at heart. To point out that their version of the common good coincides suspiciously with the narrow and selfish interests of the selfsame technocratic economic elite, is to lay ourselves open to one of the worst cuss phrases in our contemporary lexicon: "conspiracy theorist of history." Leading the most recent parade of "many" (if not all) economists calling for long-range tax increases are Nobel Laureate Robert M. Solow of MIT, Benjamin Friedman of Harvard, and Charles L. Schultze, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Carter. ("Economists See Long-Run Need to Raise Taxes," New York Times, Jan. 27, 1992.) One familiar ploy used by the nation's serried ranks of economists is to point to other countries in Europe and elsewhere, whose percentage of national product absorbed in taxes is greater than in the U.S. Well, bully. On that reasoning, why not point to the glorious economic successes of the Soviet Union, whose government output absorbed and constituted all of the nation's resources? On a closer look, the Solow, et al. claim is a replay of the old Galbraith thesis, publicized in his best-selling, The Affluent Society (1958), which looked around at America and saw the private sector prosperous and thriving, while the public sector, or the "socialized" sector, lay in squalor and disarray. Assuming that the prosperity and efficiency of a sector depends only upon the resources spent, Galbraith concluded that "too much" was being spent on the private sector, and "too little" on public. Hence, Galbraith called for a massive transfer of resources from the private to the public sector. And after 24 years of following such a transfer program, of taxing the private sector ever more to feed the swollen public sector, what has been the result? What has been the consequence of following Galbraithian doctrine? Patently: aggravated squalor of the public sector, accompanied by a noticeable fraying of the edges in the private sector. The answer of Solow, Galbraith and others is that we still haven't done enough: that
the government must tax and spend ever more. If we keep doing so, we can look forward to the economic situation of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the end result. The crucial fallacy at the root of this nonsense is the idea that government spending really is saving and investing, indeed a superior form of saving and investing to the private sector. Solow and company agree with free-market economists that a rise in the standard of living can only come about via increased saving and investment, but their idea of such saving is collectivist and can only be effected through government spending. Thus, in the New York Times paraphrase, Professor Solow has the nerve to conclude that "if Americans are seeking to insure that their children live better than they do, they must learn to consume less, meaning live less well, and to save and invest more." Unfortunately, due to higher taxes, they are already living less well, but this sacrifice will scarcely help their future state or their children's. Solow's conception is very much like Stalin's, in which the State sweats the consumers, taxes them and keeps down their living standards, all for the sake of a future pie-in-the-sky that never comes true. In contrast, in a free-market economy of private savings and investment, no one is forced to sacrifice, for those who are able and eager to save and invest do so, and the others can consume to their hearts' content. The crucial fallacy, then, of this economic elite, is to designate virtually every bit of government spending with the honorific label "investment." But on the contrary, government spending is not "investment" at all; it is simply money spent for the edification or the power of the unproductive ruling elite in the government. All government spending, far from deserving the term "investment," is in reality consumption spending by politicians and bureaucrats. Any increase in the government budget is therefore a push toward more consumption and less saving and investment; and the reverse is true for any cut in the budget.
There is nothing noble, or public-interest-oriented, or "unselfish" about the call of Solow and other Establishment economists for more government and higher taxes. Quite the contrary. And what of the original Galbraithian claim about private prosperity and public squalor, a gap that is even more glaring now than it was in the 1950s? The observation is true enough, but the conclusion is wrongheaded. If the public sector is the big problem, may not the answer lie in the contrasting nature of the two sectors? May not the answer be to get rid of, or at the very least to shrink drastically, the failed public sector? In short, privatize the public sector, and the noteworthy squalor would rapidly disappear. And if anyone should prove skeptical, let's try it for a while. Let's privatize the government for, say, ten years, and see what happens; we can even call it a "Great Social Experiment," performed in the best interests of "value-free science." Any takers? Z
57 THE RETURN OF THE TAX CREDIT
odern liberalism works in a simple but effective manner: liberals Find Problems. This is not a difficult task, considering that the world abounds with problems waiting to be discovered. At the heart of these problems is the fact that we do not live in the Garden of Eden: that there is a scarcity of resources available for us to achieve all of our desired goals. Thus: there is the Problem of X number (to be discovered by sociological research) of people over 65 with hangnails; and the Problem that there are over 200 million Americans who cannot afford the BMW of their dreams. Having Found the Problem,
First published in July 1988.
the liberal researcher examines it and worries about it until it becomes a full-fledged Crisis. A typical procedure: the liberal finds two or three cases of people with beri-beri. On television, we are treated to graphic portrayals of suffering beri-beri victims, and we are flooded with direct-mail appeals to help conquer the dread beri-beri outbreak. After ten years, and billions of federal tax dollars poured into beri-beri research, beri-beri treatment centers, beri-beri maintenance doses, and whatever, a survey of the results of the great struggle demonstrates the potentially disquieting fact that there is more beri-beri around than ever before. The idea that federal funding for beri-beri has been a waste of time and money and perhaps even counterproductive is quickly dismissed. Instead, the liberal draws the lesson that beri-beri is even more of a menace than he had thought, and that there must be a prompt across-the-board tripling of federal funding. And, moreover, he points out that we now enjoy the advantage in the struggle of having in place 200,000 highly trained beri-beri professionals, ready to devote the rest of their lives, on suitably lavish federal grants, to the great Cause. Since voicing the idea that perhaps it is not the government's place to go around Solving Social Problems had subjected them to the withering charge of "insensitivity" and "lack of compassion," some conservatives latched onto a shrewd end-run strategy. "Yes, yes," they agreed, "we too are convinced of the urgency of your Social Crisis, and we thank you for calling it to our attention. But we believe that the way to solve the problem is not through increased government spending and higher taxes, but by allowing private persons and groups to spend money solving the problem, to be financed by tax credits." In short, the social crisis would be solved by allowing people to keep more of their own money, provided they spend it on: aiding hangnail research, BMWs, or combatting beri-beri. While the fundamental philosophical problem was sidestepped, at least people were allowed to spend their money themselves, and taxes would fall instead of increase. It is true that people
were still not being allowed to keep their money, period, but at least the tax credit was a welcome step away from government and toward private action and operation. In 1986, however, everything changed. Conservatives joined liberals in scorning the tax credit as a "subsidy" (as if allowing people to spend their own money is the same thing as giving them some of other people's money!) and in rejecting the tax credit approach as a "loophole," a breach in the noble ideal of a monolithic uniformity of taxation. Instead of trying to get people's taxes as low as possible, reducing taxes where they could, conservatives now adopted the ideal of a monolithic, "fair," imposition of an equal pain on everyone in society. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was supposed to bring sweet simplicity to our tax forms, and to bring about fairness without changing total revenue. But when Americans finally got through wending their way through the thickets of their tax forms, they found everything so complex that even the IRS couldn't understand what was going on and most of them found that their tax payments had gone up. And there were no tax credits to bring them solace. But there is hope. The Liberal Crisis of 1988, displacing the Homeless of the previous year and the Hungry of the year before, is the fact that upper-middle class, two-wage-earner families, the very backbone of the liberal constituency, can't afford the child care services to which they would like to become accustomed. Hence, the call, heeded on all sides, for many billions of federal taxpayer dollars, by which relatively low-income, single-wage-earner families would be forced to subsidize wealthier families with working mothers. Truly the Welfare State in action! In despair, and not prepared to say either (a) that this problem is none of the government's business, or (b) that child care would be both cheaper and more abundant if government regulations requiring minimum cubic feet of space, licensed RNs on the premises, etc. were abolished, the conservatives, in their desperation, came up with our old, forgotten taxpayers' friend:
the tax credit. That credit would apply, not only toward professional child care, but also for mothers choosing to tend their children at home. Let us hope that the tax credit will return in full force. And then we can revive the lost tactic, not of "closing the loopholes," but of ever-widening them, opening them so widely for all indeed, that everyone will be able to drive a Mack truck through them, until that wondrous day when the entire federal revenue system will be one gigantic loophole. Z
DEDUCTIBILITY AND SUBSIDY
ne of the most controversial aspects (because it involves scores of billions of dollars) of the Reagan administration's tax "reform" plan is its proposal to eliminate the deductibility of state and local taxes from the federal income tax. The argument rests on the view that, under deductibility, the citizens of the low-tax states are "subsidizing" the high-tax states. Since subsidies are presumed to be unfortunate and non-neutral to the market, deductibility is supposed to be eliminated in a quest for neutrality and an approximation to the workings of the free market. The opponents make the obvious reply that since taxation is supposed to be on net income, eliminating deductibility would mean that people are being taxed twice on the same income; once by the federal, and again by the state or local authorities. But, in the meanwhile, the subsidy argument has not faced enough discussion. For the proponents of the reform have engaged in tricky semantics on the word "subsidy." Subsidy has always meant that one set of people has been taxed and the funds transferred to another group: that Peter has been taxed to
pay Paul. But if the tax-oppressed citizens of New York are taxed less because of deductibility, in what way are they "subsidized"? All that has happened is that New Yorkers are suffering less expropriation of their hard-earned property than they would otherwise. But they are only being "subsidized" in precisely the same sense as when a robber, assaulting someone on the highway, graciously allows his victim to keep bus fare home. How can allowing you to keep more of your own money be called a "subsidy?" Only on one assumption. For the hidden assumption of those who want to eliminate deductibility (not only of state and local taxes but of many other expenditures and "loopholes"), is that the government is really the just owner of all of our income and property, and that allowing us to keep any of it, or any more of it than before, constitutes an illegitimate "subsidy." Or, more specifically, that the federal government must collect a certain amount of taxes from its subjects, that this amount is somehow written in stone, and that any person or group paying less than some arbitrarily allotted figure means that someone else will have to pick up his tab. Only then does the idea that a tax cut is equivalent to a subsidy make any sense at all. But this is a curious argument indeed. There is no warrant for the notion that payment of some grand allotted total is so vital that it must override any devotion to the rights of person and property, to the idea that people are entitled to keep the property they have earned. The recent emphasis on tax allocation, on concentrating on "fair shares" or alleged "subsidies," has been a clever and largely successful device to divert people's attention from the real problem: that taxes are burdensome and oppressive for everyone. The agitation for tax "reform" has managed to deflect people's attention from the need to lower everyone's taxes to a great crusade to try to make sure that the other guy pays his "fair share" and is not being "subsidized." In that way, the long suffering citizens are encouraged to fight among themselves, to try to get someone else's taxes increased, instead of maintaining taxpayer solidarity and keeping their eyes on lowering taxes, period,
wherever and however they can. Such a grand taxpayers' coalition can only be maintained if there is a tacit agreement that, regardless of whose taxes are cut and by how much, no person or group will have to suffer an increase of taxes, and this means all coerced payments to government, whether they be called taxes, fees, revenues, contributions, or "closing of loopholes." Z
59 THAT GASOLINE TAX
he big bad gasoline tax, one of the favorite programs of left-liberalism, is back in the limelight. After having denounced the scheme during the campaign as a tax on the middle class, then President-elect Clinton professed surprise that so many luminaries at the interregnum "economic summit" championed the idea. Of course, he should not have been surprised at all, since Clinton's much-vaunted love of "diversity" clearly does not extend to the intellectual realm. At the Little Rock economic summit, the economists and businessmen ran the full gamut from left-liberal to left-liberal (my own invitation, as they say, got lost in the mail). The only questions seem to be: how high should the gas tax increase go—the "moderate" 50 cents a gallon suggested by Tsongas (the mainstream) or the more rigorous $1 or more a gallon suggested by Rivlin (the administration)—and how many months or years are we to be allowed for the tax to be phased in? The official arguments for the gas tax are general (helping to cut the deficit) as well as specific to this particular tax. On the glories of the gas tax per se, one common argument is that the tax would force the consumer to "conserve" more gasoline by
purchasing less. That it will, but why is it such a good idea to force people to buy less gas? If the federal government slapped a $500 tax on the sale of chess sets, it would surely "conserve" them by forcing people to purchase a lot less. But why is this dictatorial coercion, this forcing a lower standard of living upon American consumers, supposed to be a good thing in a free society? One favorite answer of the pro-gas-taxers is that consumers will be led, by the tax, to conserve scarce fuel. But conservation of resources is one of the major functions of the free price system. The market economy is continually being forced to choose: how much of product X or product Y, of resource X or Y, should be produced now, and how much should be "conserved" to be produced in the future? Not just of oil and gas, but of everything else: copper, iron, timber, etc. In every area, this "conservation," this decision on how to allocate production over time, takes place smoothly and harmoniously on the free market. The price of every resource and product is set on the market by the interaction of demand (ultimately consumer demand) and the relative scarcities of supply. If the supply of X, now and in the expected near future, falls, then the current price of X will rise. In this way, an expected future decline in supply is met right now with a rise in price, which will induce buyers to purchase less, and producers to mine or manufacture more of the product in response to the higher price. You don't need a tax to accomplish the task of allocation and conversation. In fact, a tax is a most clumsy way of meeting the problem. In the first place, since government knows very little and the market knows a lot, the government will not hit the proper target; indeed, since government's coercion comes on top of market action, a tax is bound to "overconserve," to reduce the production of a good below the optimum. And second, unlike a price rise accruing to producers, a tax provides no incentive for supply to increase or productivity to improve.
And why is gasoline supposed to need non-market conservation measures? On the contrary, over the past decade, the real price of gasoline (corrected for inflation) has fallen by 40 percent; in short an increasing abundance of oil and gas relative to demand has demonstrated that there is no need to worry about conservation of oil. Another argument for a gas tax is that it will force consumers to use gas in a more "fuel-efficient" way. But the entire worry about "fuel efficiency" is absurd and ill-conceived. Why should automobiles only be efficient in using fuel? There are many aspects of "efficiency," including efficiency per man hour, efficiency in use of tires, and efficiency in the car taking you where you want to go. The market coordinates all these efficiencies in the most optimal way for the consumer. Why the fuel fetish? Moreover, federal rules mandating ever-greater miles-per-gallon have already greatly increased the cost of cars and crippled auto safety by forcing upon us everlighter-weight automobiles. Another argument claims that a higher gas tax would "reduce our dependence on foreign oil." But in the first place, the tax would discourage the use and production of domestic oil as well as foreign; and second, haven't we demonstrated, with the Gulf War, the willingness to use the direst coercion against even the sniff of a possible threat to our foreign oil supplies? And besides, what's wrong with free trade and the international division of labor? Probably the dopiest, though one of the common, arguments is that other countries have a much higher gas tax: the United States now has a gas tax that is "only" 37 percent of the retail price, whereas in Western Europe the gas tax averages over 70 percent. Maybe we can find lots of countries with a higher TB rate. Are we supposed to rush to emulate them too? This is an absurd twist on a typical kid's argument to his parents: "Jimmy's parents let him stay up till 11" or, a few years later, "Jimmy's parents bought him a bigger car." I understand what the kids are getting
out of these other-directed arguments. But what do we get out of pointing to other countries that are even more socialistic than our own? Even the media recognize a couple of problems with the gas tax. First, that it penalizes rural people and Westerners, where distances are great and cars are driven far more than in Eastern or urban areas. A feeble response is that the proceeds of the tax will be used to "invest" in America's highways, thereby aiding the drivers. But if it goes into highways, how will it help reduce the deficit? The second recognized difficulty is that the gas tax which injures the broad middle class, is "regressive" and is therefore "unfair." This was Clinton's reason for rejecting a higher gas tax in the first place. But presumably, this argument can be countered by giving some other tax or spending goody to the middle class (a process which again defies the deficit argument). The general argument for the gas tax is, of course, that it will cut the deficit; official estimates claim that a 50 cent a gallon tax rise will cut the deficit by $50 billion. It is strange that liberals only worry about the deficit when they can use it as an excuse to raise taxes. How come there is no similar enthusiasm for the only deficit reduction scheme that works: cutting government expenditures? When have tax increases ever worked to cut deficits? The huge tax increases under Reagan? Under Bush? This is apart from the problem that these estimates are only shots in the dark, since no one knows by how much people will reduce their purchases from any given increase. Cutting through the raft of specious arguments, we must ask: why the persisting yen for a gas increase among left-liberals? In the first place, of course, it is the essence of the liberal creed that they have never met a tax, or for that matter a government expenditure, they haven't liked. Both taxes and expenditures take away from producers money they have earned, and shift resources from private citizens to the maw of government.
In short, taxes and expenditures both fulfill the Fabian liberal objective of moving the country ever closer to full-scale socialism. This accounts for the general itch for taxation, but why the long-time special fondness for the gas tax? Because, of all the features of modern American life, liberals have special hatred for the automobile. For the first time in history, the automobile permits each individual to travel about cheaply and comfortably on his own. In contrast to mass transport, which liberals find satisfyingly collective, egalitarian, and rigidly fixed to time and place schedules, the automobile is gloriously individualistic. Above all, liberals detest cars which are plush, luxuriant "gas guzzlers," cars that embody and glorify the values and the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie, the productive middle-class whom liberal intellectuals, in their deep resentment of non-intellectuals so yearn to cripple and bring down. Z
60 BABBITRY AND TAXES: A PROFILE IN COURAGE?
here is no question that the media darling of the early 1988 presidential election season was former governor Bruce Babbitt of Arizona. As time neared for the Iowa caucuses, pundits for virtually every organ of the Establishment media weighed in with serioso think-pieces about the glory and the wonder, the intelligence and especially the high courage of a great man who suffered the misfortune of looking like Ichabod Crane on television. Gloomily, the pundits figured that the Iowa masses would lack the perception and the wisdom of being able to look beyond the TV surface and see the statesman lurking underneath. Fortunately perhaps for America, the pundits proved
correct, and the number of voters for Bruce Babbitt barely exceeded the number of his ardent fans in the national media. Of what does the great courage of Bruce Babbitt, as trumpeted by the media, consist? The answer is his intrepid valor in coming out, frankly and squarely, for higher taxes to slash the federal deficit. The similar gallantry of Mondale in 1984 is then recalled. Set aside the palpable fact that Mondale had a lot more to lose, in contrast to Bruce Babbitt, who began close to zero percent popularity in any case. The interesting question to ask is: what kind of "courage" is this? It used to be thought that heroism and "courage" meant being willing to go out into the lists, candidly and unafraid, to battle the mighty and despotic powers-that-be. Can we really call it "courage" when a Mondale or a Babbitt frankly calls upon the eager state apparatus to increase still further its already outrageous and parasitic plunder of the hard-earned money of honest and productive American citizens? Whooping it up for higher taxes is the moral equivalent of some Ugandan theoretician of a few years ago publicly urging Idi Amin to pile on his looting and his despotism still further, or of a Mafia consigliere advising the capo to add an extra ten percent to the "protection fee" imposed on neighborhood stores. We can think of many names for this sort of activity, but "courage" is surely not one of them. It might be objected that, after all, a politician who urges higher taxes is not only imposing suffering on other people; he himself as a taxpayer will also have to bear the same deprivations as other citizens. Isn't there, then, a kind of nobility, even if misguided, in his plea for "belt-tightening" common sacrifice? To meet this question, we must realize a vital truth that has long remained discreetly veiled to the tax-burdened citizenry. And that is: contrary to carefully instilled myth, politicians and bureaucrats pay no taxes. Take, for example, a politician who receives a salary of, say, $80,000; assume he duly files his income tax return, and pays $20,000. We must realize that he does not in reality pay $20,000 in taxes; instead, he is simply a
net tax-receiver of $60,000. The notion that he pays taxes is simply an accounting fiction, designed to bamboozle the citizenry into believing that he and the rest of us are on the same moral and financial footing before the law. He pays nothing; he simply is extracting $60,000 per annum from our pockets. The only virtue of United Nations' employees is that they are frankly and openly exempt from all taxes levied by any nation-state—which simply makes their position the same as other national bureaucrats, except uncamouflaged and unadorned. The same principle, too, applies to sales or property or any other tax. Bureaucrats and politicians do not pay them; they are simply subtracted from the net transfer to themselves from the body of taxpayers. Unfortunately in current American politics, we are trapped between purveyors of false choices: the "courageous" who call for higher taxes, and the supply-siders who say that there's nothing really wrong with deficits, and that we should learn to relax and enjoy them. It seems to be forgotten that there is another tried and true, and perhaps far more "courageous," way of slashing the deficits: cutting government spending. It would seem embarrassingly trivial to mention it, except somehow this alternative has gotten lost down the Orwellian memory hole. "But where would you cut?" asks the cunning critic, hoping to get us all bogged down in the numbing minutiae of whether $50,000 should be cut from a grant to some New Jersey avant-garde theater group. The proper answer is: anywhere and everywhere; only wholesale flailing away with a meat axe could possibly do justice to the task. An immediate 50 percent across-the-board slash in literally everything; abolishing every other government agency at random; a line-by-line reduction of the budget to some previous president's—the further back in time the better; all these will do nicely for openers. The important thing is to adopt the spirit, the mind-set; and a balanced budget will be the least of the wondrous results to follow. Z
61 FLAT TAX OR FLAT TAXPAYER?
osannas poured in from all parts of the academic spectrum—left, right, and center—hailing the Treasury's 1986 draft plan as an approach to the ideal of the "flat tax." (Since the plan calls for three classes of income tax rates, it has been called a "flat tax with bumps.") This near-unanimity should not be surprising, because a flat tax appeals to the sort of academic who, regardless of ideology, likes to push people around like pawns on a chessboard. The great nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt called such intellectual social engineers "terrible simplifiers." The label applies beautifully to the legion of flat-taxers because one of their prime arguments is that they would replace our bewildering mosaic of tax laws by one of limpid simplicity, one that "you could make out on a postcard." Unfortunately, this proposed simplicity is more childlike and naive than a great burst of clarifying intelligence. For our Terrible Simplifiers fail to stop and ask themselves why the tax laws are so complicated. No one likes complexity for its own sake. There is a good reason for the current complexity: it is the result of a myriad of individuals, groups, and businesses trying their darndest to get out from under the crippling income tax. And, in contrast to the flat-tax academic who sneers at all other groups than his own as slaves of sinister special interests, there is nothing wrong with this often messy process. For these are people who, quite simply and even admirably, are trying to keep some of their hard-earned money from being snatched up in the maw of the tax-collector. And these people have already found out what our flat-tax academics seem not to have cottoned to: there are things in this
life worse than complexity, and one of them is paying more taxes. Complexity is good if it allows you to keep more of your own money. In the name of sacred simplicity, in fact, our flat-taxers are cheerfully willing to impose enormous losses on a very large number of individuals and businesses, in the following ways: RAISE the tax on capital gains to treat it like income, thereby crippling saving and investment, particularly in new and growing firms. One of the things that has kept the English economy from going totally down the tubes is that England, despite its cripplingly high income taxation, has no tax at all on capital gains. ELIMINATE accelerated depreciation, thereby destroying an excellent 1981 tax reform that allowed businesses to depreciate rapidly and reinvest. This change will particularly hurt heavily capitalized "smokestack" industries, already in economic trouble. ELIMINATE OR RESTRICT income-tax deductions for mortgage payments, plus treat homeowners as having a taxable income from "imputed" rent, i.e., from the rent they would otherwise have paid if they had been tenants instead of homeowners. This double blow to homeowners is so politically explosive that it will probably not go through—but such is the full intention of the flat-taxers. Unfortunately, those who are taxed on "imputed" income will not be able to pay their taxes in "imputed" form. They will have to pay Uncle Sam in money. ELIMINATE oil depletion allowances, a neat way to send the oil industry into a depression. Flat-tax academics persist in regarding depreciation payments and depletion allowances as "subsidies" to capitalists and oil or mining companies. They are not subsidies, however, they are ways of permitting these firms to keep more of their own money, something which at least profree enterprise academics are supposed to believe in. Furthermore, only income is supposed to be taxed, and not accumulated wealth; taxing "income" which is merely the loss of capital value (either by depreciation or depletion) is really a tax on capital or wealth.
ELIMINATE tax deductions for uninsured medical payments or losses due to accident or fire. Does one get a glimmer of why economists are sometimes called "heartless"? Note that, unlike some welfare economists, I am in no sense a slave to the ideal of "Pareto-optimality" (the notion that no government action must impose a loss on anyone). I am willing to advocate radical measures that impose losses on some people, but only to achieve a substantial increase in freedom. But severe losses merely for the sake of symmetry?! We are left with the final Argument From Simplicity: that the flat tax will enable all of us to dispense with tax lawyers and accountants. A powerful lure, perhaps, but fallacious and untrue on many levels. In the first place, those taxpayers who want simplicity can achieve it now: they can fill out the simplified tax forms. Two-thirds of American taxpayers do so now. The rest of us who struggle with complex forms are doing so for a good reason: to pay less taxes. Second, those of us who have our own businesses, including the business of writing and lecturing, will enjoy no reduction in the complexity of our tasks; we will still be struggling at great length to see what our net business gain (or loss) might be. None of this will change under the reign of the Simplifiers. And finally, there is, once again, a good reason for our paying money to tax lawyers and accountants. Spending money on them is no more a social waste that our purchase of locks, safes, or fences. If there were no crime, expenditure on such safety measures would be a waste, but there is crime. Similarly, we pay money to the lawyers and accountants because, like fences or locks, they are our defense, our shield and buckler, against the tax man. Many years ago, my friend and mentor Frank Chodorov, during the midst of the McCarthy era, wrote that "the way to get rid of Communists in government jobs is to get rid of the jobs." Similarly, the way to get rid of tax lawyers and accountants is to abolish the income tax. That would be Sweet Simplicity indeed! Z
62 MRS. THATCHER'S POLL TAX
iots in the streets; protest against a hated government; cops arresting protesters. A familiar story these days. But suddenly we find that the protests are directed, not against a hated Communist tyranny in Eastern Europe, but against Mrs. Thatcher's regime in Britain, a supposed paragon of liberty and the free market. What's going on here? Are anti-government demonstrators heroic freedom-fighters in Eastern Europe, but only crazed anarchists and alienated punks in the West? The anti-government riots in London at the end of March were, it must be noted, anti-tax riots, and surely a movement in opposition to taxation can't be all bad. But wasn't the protest movement at bottom an envy-ridden call for soaking the rich, and hostility to the new Thatcher tax a protest against its abstention from egalitarian leveling? Not really. There is no question that the new Thatcher "community charge" was a bold and fascinating experiment. Local government councils, in many cases havens of the leftwing Labour Party, have been engaging in runaway spending in recent years. As in the case of American local governments, basic local revenue in great Britain has been derived from the property tax ("rates" in Britain) which are levied proportionately on the value of property.
Whereas in the United States, conservative economists tend to hail proportionate taxation (especially on incomes) as ideal and "neutral" to the market, the Thatcherites have apparently understood the fallacy of this position. On the market, people do not pay for goods and services in proportion to their incomes. David Rockefeller does not have to pay $1,000 for a loaf of bread for which the rest of us pay $1.50. On the contrary,
on the market there is a strong tendency for a good to be priced the same throughout the market; one good, one price. It would be far more neutral to the market, indeed, for everyone to pay, not the same tax in proportion to his income, but the same tax as everyone else, period. Everyone's tax should therefore be equal. Furthermore, since democracy is based on the concept of one man or woman, one vote, it would seem no more than fitting to have a principle of one man, one tax. Equal voting, equal taxation. The concept of an equal tax per head is called the "poll tax," and Mrs. Thatcher decided to bring the local councils to heel by legislating the abolition of the local rates, and their replacement by an equal poll tax per adult, calling it by the euphemism, "community charge." At least on the local level, then, soaking the rich has been replaced by an equal tax. But there are several deep flaws in the new tax. In the first place, it is still not neutral to the market, since—a crucial difference—market prices are paid voluntarily by the consumer purchasing the good or service, whereas the tax (or "charge") is levied coercively on each person, even if the value of the "service" of government to that person is far less than the charge, or is even negative. Not only that: but a poll tax is a charge levied on a person's very existence, and the person must often be hunted down at great expense to be forced to pay the tax. Charging a man for his very existence seems to imply that the government owns all of its subjects, body and soul. The second deep flaw is bound up with the problem of coercion. It is certainly heroic of Mrs. Thatcher to want to scrap the property tax in behalf of an equal tax. But she seems to have missed the major point of the equal tax, one that gives it its unique charm. For the truly great thing about an equal tax is that in order to make it payable, it has to be drastically reduced from the levels before the equality is imposed. Assume, for example, that our present federal tax was suddenly shifted to become an equal tax for each person. This would
mean that the average person, and particularly the low-income person, would suddenly find himself paying enormously more per year in taxes—about $5,000. So that the great charm of equal taxation is that it would necessarily force the government to lower drastically its levels of taxing and spending. Thus, if the U.S. government instituted, say, a universal and equal tax of $10 per year, confining it to the magnificent sum of $2 billion annually, we would all live quite well with the new tax, and no egalitarian would bother about protesting its failure to soak the rich. But instead of drastically lowering the amount of local taxation, Mrs. Thatcher imposed no such limits, and left the total expenditure and tax levels, as before, to the local councils. These local councils, Conservative as well as Labour, proceeded to raise their tax levels substantially, so that the average British citizen is being forced to pay approximately one-third more in local taxes. No wonder there are riots in the streets! The only puzzle is that the riots aren't more severe. In short, the great thing about equal taxation is using it as a club to force an enormous lowering of taxes. To increase tax levels after they become equal is absurd: an open invitation for tax evasion and revolution. In Scotland, where the equal tax had already gone into effect, there are no penalties for non-payment and an estimated one-third of citizens have refused to pay. In England, where payment is enforced, the situation is rougher. In either case, it is no wonder that popularity of the Thatcher regime has fallen to an all-time low. The Thatcher people are now talking about placing caps on local tax rates, but capping is scarcely enough: drastic reductions are a political and economic necessity, if the poll tax is to be retained. Unfortunately, the local tax case is characteristic of the Thatcher regime. Thatcherism is all too similar to Reaganism: free-market rhetoric masking statist content. While Thatcher has engaged in some privatization, the percentage of government spending and taxation to GNP has increased over the course of her regime, and monetary inflation has now led to price inflation. Basic discontent, then, has risen, and the
increase in local tax levels has come as the vital last straw. It seems to me that a minimum criterion for a regime receiving the accolade of "pro-free-market" would require it to cut total spending, cut overall tax rates, and revenues, and put a stop to its own inflationary creation of money. Even by this surely modest yardstick, no British or American administration in decades has come close to qualifying. Z
63 EXIT THE IRON LADY
rs. Thatcher's departure from British rule befitted her entire reign: blustering in rhetoric ("the Iron Lady will never quit") accompanied by very little concrete action (as the Iron Lady quickly departed). Her rhetoric did bring free-market ideas back to respectability in Britain for the first time in a half-century, and it is certainly gratifying to see the estimable people at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London become Britain's most reputable think-tank. It is also largely to the credit of the Thatcher Era that the Labour Party has moved rightward, and largely abandoned its loony left-wing views, and that the British have decisively abandoned their post-Depression psychosis about unemployment rates ever being higher than 1 percent. The Thatcher accomplishments, however, are a very different story, and very much of a mixed-bag. On the positive side, there was a considerable amount of denationalization and privatization, including the sale of public housing units to the tenants, thereby converting former Labour voters to staunchly Conservative property owners. Another of her successes was breaking the massive power of the British trade unions.
Unfortunately, the pluses of the Thatcher economic record are more than offset by the stark fact that the State ends the Thatcher era more of a parasitic burden on the British economy and society than it was when she took office. For example, she never dared touch the sacred cow of socialized medicine, the National Health Service. For that and many other reasons, British government spending and revenues are more generous than ever. Furthermore, despite Mrs. Thatcher's lip-service to monetarism, her early successes against inflation have been reversed, and monetary expansion, inflation, government deficits, and accompanying unemployment are higher than ever. Mrs. Thatcher left office, after eleven years, in the midst of a disgraceful inflationary recession: with inflation at 11 percent, and unemployment at 9 percent. In short, Mrs. Thatcher's macroeconomic record was abysmal. To top it off, her decisive blunder was the replacement of local property taxes by an equal tax per person (a "poll tax"). In England, in contrast to the United States, the central government has control over the local governments, many of which are ruled by wild-spending left Labourites. The equal tax was designed to curb the free-spending local governments. Instead, what should have been predictable happened. The local governments generally increased their spending and taxes, the higher equal tax biting fiercely upon the poor and middleclass, and then effectively placed the blame for the higher taxes upon the Thatcher regime. Moreover, in all this maneuvering, the Thatcherites forgot that the great point about an equal tax is precisely that taxes have to be drastically lowered so that the poorest can pay them; to raise equal tax rates above the old property tax, or to allow them to be raised, is a species of economic and political insanity, and Mrs. Thatcher reaped the proper punishment for egregious error. Why then didn't the Thatcher government, upon installing the equal tax for local governments, directly decree drastically lower tax rates for each locale? Then the British masses would
have welcomed instead of combatted the poll tax. The Thatcherite answer is that the central government would have had to assume funding of such local government activities as education, which would have raised either central taxes or the central government deficit. But that only pushed the analysis one step further: why wasn't the Thatcher government prepared to slash such spending, which is almost as bloated as in the U.S.? Clearly the answer is either that the Thatcherites did not truly believe their own rhetoric or that they didn't have the guts to raise the issue. In either case, Mrs. Thatcher deserved her eventual fate. In one area of the macro-economy we must regret the exit of Mrs. Thatcher: hers was the only voice raising a cry against the creation of the European Central Bank, issuing a new European currency unit. Unfortunately, and especially since the firing of her monetarist economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters, Mrs. Thatcher failed to make a convincing case for her opposition to this coming new order, putting it solely in cranky, hectoring terms of British national glory as against subordination to "Europe." She therefore came off as a narrow anti-European obstructionist as against a seemingly enlightened and beneficent "united Europe." The problem in almost all analyses of the new European Community is the usual conflation of State and society. Socially and economically, to the extent that the new Europe will be a vast free-trade and free-capital investment area, this new order will be all to the good: expanding the division of labor, the productivity, and the living standards of all the participating nations. Unfortunately, the essence of the new Europe will not be its free-trade area, but a giant new State bureaucracy, headquartered in Strasbourg and Brussels, controlling, regulating, and "equalizing" tax rates everywhere by coercing the raising of taxes in low-tax countries. And the worst aspect of this united Europe is precisely the area that Mrs. Thatcher zeroed in on: money and banking. While the monetarists are dead wrong in preferring a Europe
(or a world) of nationally fragmented fiat monies to an international gold money, they are right in warning of the dangers of the new scheme. For the problem is that the new currency will of course not be gold, a market-produced money, but a fiat paper issued in new currency units. So that the result of this neo-Keynesian scheme will be inflationary fiat money, the issue of which is controlled by the regional Central Bank, i.e., by the new regional government. This collaboration will then make it much easier for the Central Banks of the U.S., Britain, and Japan, to collaborate with the new European Central Bank, and thereby to move rapidly toward the old Keynesian dream: a World Central Bank issuing a new world paper currency unit. And then, we would be truly off to the races, with the world's Money and macro-economy totally at the mercy of a worldwide inflation, centrally controlled by self-proclaimed all-wise Keynesian masters. It is unfortunate that Mrs. Thatcher would not articulate her opposition to the new monetary Europe in such terms. Z
64 THE BUDGET CRISIS
n politics fall, not spring, is the silly season. How many times have we seen the farce: the crisis deadline in October, the budget "summit" between the Executive and Congress, and the piteous wails of liberals and centrists that those wonderful, hard-working, dedicated "federal workers" may be "furloughed," which unfortunately does not mean that they are thrown on the beach to find their way in the productive private sector. The dread furlough means that for a few days or so, the oppressed taxpaying public gets to keep a bit more of its own money, while the federal workers get a rare chance to apply
their dedication without mulcting the taxpayers: an opportunity that these bureaucrats invariably seem to pass up. Has it occurred to many citizens that, for the few blessed days of federal shutdown, the world does not come to an end? That the stars remain in their courses, and everyone goes about their daily life as before? I would like to offer a modest proposal, giving us a chance to see precisely how vital to our survival and prosperity is the Leviathan federal government, and how much we are truly willing to pay for its care and feeding. Let us try a great social experiment: for one year, one exhilarating jubilee year, we furlough, without pay, the Internal Revenue Service and the rest of the revenue-gathering functions of the Department of Treasury. That is, for one year, suspend all federal taxes and float no public debt, either newly incurred or even for payment of existing interest or principal. And then let us see how much the American public is willing to kick into, purely voluntarily, the public till. We make these voluntary contributions strictly anonymous, so that there will be no incentive for individuals and institutions to collect brownie-points from the feds for current voluntary giving. We allow no carryover of funds or surplus, so that any federal spending for the year—including the piteous importuning of Americans for funds takes place strictly out of next year's revenue. It will then be fascinating to see how much the American public is truly willing to pay, how much it thinks the federal government is really worth, how much it is really convinced by all the slick cons: by the spectre of roads falling apart, cancer cures aborted, by invocations of the "common good," the "public interest," the "national security," to say nothing of the favorite economists' ploys of "public goods" and "externalities." It would be even more instructive to allow the various anonymous contributors to check off what specific services or agencies they wish to earmark for expenditure of their funds. It
would be still more fun to see vicious and truthful competitive advertising between bureaus: "No, no, don't contribute to those lazy louts in the Department of Transportation (or whatever), give to us." For once, government propaganda might even prove to be instructive and enjoyable. The precedent has already been set: if it is proper and legitimate for President Bush and his administration to beg Japan, Germany, and other nations for funds for our military adventures in the Persian Gulf, why shouldn't they be forced, at least for one glorious year, to beg for funds from the American people, instead of wielding their usual bludgeon? The 1990 furlough crisis highlights some suggestive but neglected aspects of common thinking about the budget. In the first place, all parties are talking about "fair sharing of the pain," of the "necessity to inflict pain," etc. How come that government, and only government, is regularly associated with a systematic infliction of pain? In contemplating the activities of Sony or Proctor and Gamble or countless other private firms, do we ask ourselves how much pain they propose to inflict upon us in the coming year? Why is it that government, and only government, is regularly coupled with pain: like ham-and-eggs, or . . . death-and-taxes? Perhaps we should begin to ask ourselves why government and pain are Gemini twins, and whether we really need an institution that consists of a massive engine for the imposition and administration of pain and suffering. Is there no better way to run our affairs? Another curious note: it is now the accepted orthodoxy of our liberal—and centrist—Establishment that taxes must be raised, regardless of where we are in the business cycle. So strong is this article of faith that the fact that we are already in a recession (and intelligent observers do not have to wait for the National Bureau of Economic Research to tell us that retroactively) seems to make no dent whatever in the thirst for higher taxes.
And yet there is no school of economic thought—be it New Classical, Keynesian, monetarist, or Austrian that advocates raising taxes in a recession. Indeed, both Keynesians and Austrians would advocate cutting taxes in a recession, albeit for different reasons. So whence this fanatical devotion to higher taxes? The liberal-centrists profess its source to be deep worry about the federal deficit. But since these very same people, not too long ago, scoffed at worry about the deficit as impossibly Neanderthal and reactionary, and since right now these same people brusquely dismiss any call for lower government spending as ipso facto absurd, one suspects a not very cleverly hidden agenda at work. Namely: a love for higher taxes and for higher government spending for their own sake, or, rather, for the sake of expanding statism and collectivism as contrasted with the private sector. There is one way we can put our hypothesis to the test: shouldn't these newfound worriers about the deficit delight in our modest proposal one year with no deficit at all, one year with no infliction of pain whatever? Wanna bet? Z
65 THE BALANCED-BUDGET AMENDMENT HOAX
t is a hallmark of the triumph of image over substance in modern society that an administration which has submitted to Congress budgets with the biggest deficits in American history should propose as a cure-all a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget. Apart from the high irony of such a proposal from such a source, the amendment-mongers don't
seem to realize that the same pressures of the democratic process that have led to permanent and growing deficits will also be at work on the courts that have acquired the exclusive power to interpret the Constitution. The federal courts are appointed by the executive and confirmed by the legislature, and are therefore part and parcel of the government structure. Apart from these general strictures on rewriting the Constitution as a panacea for our ills, the various proposed balancedbudget amendments suffer from many deep flaws in themselves. The major defect is that they only require a balance of the future estimated budget, and not of the actual budget at the end of a given fiscal year. As we all should know by this time, economists and politicians are expert at submitting glittering projected future budgets that have only the foggiest relation to the actual reality of the future year. It will be duck soup for Congress to estimate a future balance; not so easy, however, to actually balance it. At the very least, any amendment should require the actual balancing of the budget at the end of each particular year. Second, balancing the budget by increasing taxes is like curing influenza by shooting the patient; the cure is worse than the disease. Dimly recognizing this fact, most of the amendment proposals include a clause to limit federal taxation. But unfortunately, they do so by imposing a limit on revenues as a percentage of the national income or gross national product. It is absurd to include such a concept as "national income" in the fundamental law of the land; there is no such real entity, but only a statistical artifact, and an artifact that can and does wobble according to the political breeze. It is all too easy to include or exclude an enormous amount from this concept. A third flaw highlights again the problem of treating "the budget" as a constitutional entity. As a means of making the deficit look less bleak, there has been an increasing tendency for the government to spend money on "off-budget" items that simply don't get included in official expenses, and therefore don't get added to the deficit. Any balanced-budget amendment
would provide a field day for this kind of mass trickery on the American public. We must here note a disturbing current tendency for "born again" prodeficit economists in conservative ranks to propose that "capital" items be excluded from the federal budget altogether. This theory is based on an analogy with private firms and their "capital" versus "operating" budgets. One would think that allegedly free-market economists would not have the effrontery to apply this to government. Get this adopted, and the government could happily throw away money on any boondoggle, no matter how absurd, so long as they could call it an "investment in the future." Here is a loophole in the balancedbudget amendment that would make any politician's day! A fourth problem is that the various proposals make it all too easy for Congress to override the amendment. Suppose Congress or the president violate the amendment. What then? Would the Supreme Court have the power to call the federal marshals and lock up the whole crew? To ask that question is to answer it. (Of course, by making the budget balance prospective instead of real, this problem would not even arise, since it would be almost impossible to violate the amendment at all.) But isn't half a loaf better than none? Isn't it better to have an imperfect amendment than none at all? Half a loaf is indeed better than none, but even worse than no loaf is an elaborate camouflage system that fools the public into thinking that a loaf exists where there is really none at all. Or, to mix our metaphors, that the naked Emperor is really wearing clothes. We now see the role of the balanced budget amendment in the minds of many if not most of its supporters. The purpose is not actually to balance the budget, for that would involve massive spending cuts that the Establishment, "conservative" or liberal, is not willing to contemplate. The purpose is to continue deficits while deluding the public into thinking that the budget is, or will soon be, balanced. In that way, the public's slipping confidence in the dollar will be shored up. Thus, the balanced-budget amendment turns out to
be the fiscal counterpart of the supply-siders' notorious proposal for a phony gold standard. In that scheme, the public would not be able to redeem its dollars in gold coin, the Fed would continue to manipulate and inflate, but all the while this inflationist policy would now be cloaked in the confidencebuilding mantle of gold. In both plans, we would be dazzled by the shadow, the rhetoric of sound policy, while the same old program of cheap money and huge deficits would proceed unchecked. In both cases, the dominant ideology seems to be that of P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute." Z
Economic Ups and Downs
66 THE NATIONAL BUREAU AND BUSINESS CYCLES
ot only is there confusion about whether or not a recession is imminent, but some economists think that we're already in one (1988). Thus, Richard W. Rahn, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently declared: "The economic slowdown is not coming: it's here, and soon it will be gone." Not knowing whether or not we're in a recession is not as silly as it sounds. It takes a while for data to come in, and then to figure out if a decline is a mere glitch or if it constitutes a new trend. But the natural confusion is compounded by the thrall in which virtually all economists, statisticians, and financial writers have been held by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Everyone waits for the National Bureau to speak; when the oracle finally makes its pronouncement, it is accepted without question. Thus, in 1966, the economy slowed down and receded to such an extent that I, for one, concluded that we were in a recession. But no, GNP had not declined quite long enough to meet the Bureau's definition of a recession, and that, unfortunately, was that. And since we were not in what the Bureau called a "recession," we by definition continued to be in a "boom." The reason is that, by the Bureau's peculiar and arbitrary standards and methods, the economy cannot be just sort of
First published in June 1988. 243
lolling along, in neither a boom nor a recession. It has to be in one or the other. To say that the Bureau is fallible should go without saying; but instead, its pronouncements are taken as divine writ. Why is that? Precisely because the Bureau was cleverly designed, and so proclaimed, to be an allegedly value-free, purely "scientific" institution. The Bureau is a private institution, supported by a large group of associations and institutions, business and union groups, banks, foundations, and scholarly associations, which confer upon it an almost painful respectability. Its numerous books and monographs are very long on statistics, short on text or interpretation. Its proclaimed methodology is Baconian: that is, it trumpets the claim that it has no theories, that it collects myriads of facts and statistics, and that its cautiously worded conclusions arise solely, Phoenix-like, out of the data themselves. Hence, its conclusions are accepted as unquestioned holy "scientific" writ. And yet, despite its proclamations, the National Bureau's procedures themselves necessarily manipulate the data to arrive at conclusions. And these procedures are not free of theory, indeed they rest on faulty and questionable theoretical assumptions. Hence, the conclusions, far from being strictly "scientific," are skewed and misshaped to the extent that they are determined by the procedures themselves. Specifically, the Bureau selects "reference cycles," of the general economy, and then examines "specific cycles" of particular prices, production, etc. and compares these with the reference cycles. Unfortunately, all depends on the Bureau's dating theory, that is, it picks out only the trough and peak months, first for the general cycles, and then for each specific cycle. But suppose, as in many cases, the curve is flat, or there are several peaks or troughs close to each other. In these cases, the Bureau arbitrarily takes the last month of the plateau, or the multi-peak or trough period, and calls that the peak or trough month. There is no earthly economic reason
for this; why not take the whole period as a peak or trough period, or average the data, or whatever? Instead, the Bureau takes only the last month and calls that the peak or trough, and then compounds that error by arbitrarily squeezing the distance between the designated "peak month" and "trough month" into three equal parts, and assuming that everything in between peak and trough is a straight line of expansion or contraction, boom or bust. In other words, in the real world, any given time series, say copper prices, or housing starts in California, might have dawdled near the trough, gone quickly upward, and stayed at a plateau or multi-peak for many months. But on the Procrustean rack of National Bureau doctrine, the activity is squeezed into a single, one-month trough; a straight line expansion, divided into three parts by time; reaching a singlemonth peak; and then going down in a similar linear, jaggedline contraction. In short, National Bureau methods inevitably force the economy to look falsely like a series of jagged, sawtoothed, straight lines upward and downward. The triumphant conclusion that "life is a series of sawtooth lines" is imposed by the way the Bureau massages the data in the first place. That massaging is bad enough. But then the Bureau compounds the error by averaging all the specific cycles, its leads and lags, etc. as far as the data will go back, say from the 1860s to the 1980s. It is from that averaging that the Bureau has developed its indices of "leading . . . coincident," and "lagging" indicators, the first of which are supposed to (but not very successfully) forecast the future. The problem with this averaging of cycle data over the decades is that it assumes a "homogeneous population," that is, it assumes that all these cycles, say for copper prices or housing starts in California, are the same thing, and operate in the same context over all these decades. But that is a whopping assumption; history means change, and it is absurd to assume that the underlying population of all this data remains constant and unchanging, and therefore can be averaged meaningfully.
When the National Bureau set forth this methodology in Arthur F. Burns and Wesley C. Mitchell, Measuring Business Cycles (National Bureau of Economic Research, 1946), it was correctly criticized by a distinguished econometrician for being "Measurement without Theory" in the Journal of Political Economy, but still it quickly swept the board to achieve oracular status. Particularly irritating were the claims of the Bureau that those of us who held definite business cycle theories were partial and arbitrary, whereas the Bureau spoke only from the facts of hard, empirical reality. Yet the Bureau has had far less respect for empirical reality than have allegedly "anti-empirical" Austrians. Austrians realize that empirical reality is unique, particularly raw statistical data. Let that data be massaged, averaged, seasonals taken out, etc. and then the data necessarily falsify reality. Their Baconian methodology has not saved the Bureau from this trap; it has only succeeded in blinding them to the ways that they have been manipulating data arbitrarily. Z
67 INFLATIONARY RECESSION, ONCE MORE
am by no means a complete "contrarian," but I have one contrarian index to offer as a sound "leading indicator" of recession: every time Establishment economists and financial writers trumpet the existence of a brave new world of permanent boom with no more recessions, I know that a big recession is just around the corner. It never fails. During the late 1920s the Establishment, led by proto-Friedmanite economist Irving Fisher, proclaimed a "New Era," an era of permanent boom with no more depressions—all
because of the wise fine-tuning of that wonderful new institution, the Federal Reserve System. And then came 1929. During the 1960s we were assured by the Keynesian Establishment that business cycles were a relic of the bygone Bad Old Days of laissez-faire: that wise fine-tuning by Keynesian officials would insure a world of continuous full employment without inflation. So sure of themselves were Establishment economists that "Business Cycle" courses in graduate school were abolished. Why linger in the antiquities of a pre-modern world? Instead, they were replaced by courses in "Macroeconomics" and "Economic Growth." And then bingo! came not only the deep recessions, but the seemingly impossible phenomenon of inflationary recessions: recessions and price inflation at the same time, first in 1973–75, and then the two-humped recession of 1980–82, the biggest and steepest recession since the Great Depression. (In the old days, such major recessions would have routinely been called "depressions," but therapy-by-semantics has taken over, and the word "depression" has been effectively outlawed as too . . . depressing.) And now, in the middle and late 1980s, the Reaganite Establishment began to assure us that, once again, a new economic era had arrived, that the miracle of the Reagan tax cuts (actually non-existent) had, along with a more global and technologically sophisticated technology, assured us that there would never be any more recessions, except perhaps some painless rolling readjustments in specific industries or regions. It was time for another Big One, and sure enough, here we are. Not only has the Establishment forgotten about recessions, but in particular they totally forgot that postwar recessions have been inflationary. Combining the worst of both worlds, unemployment, bankruptcies, and declines of activity have been accompanied by steep increases in the cost of living. A halfcentury of Keynesian fine-tuning (from which we still suffer, despite the Reaganaut label) has not cured inflation or
recessions; it has only accomplished the feat of bringing us both at the same time. Everyone is afraid to use his judgment on whether we are in a recession; it has become the custom of everyone to await breathlessly the pronouncement of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a much revered private institution which has established a Dating Committee of a handful of experts, who sift the data to figure out when, if ever, a recession has begun. The problem is that it takes many months into a recession for the NBER to make up its mind: by the time it pronounces that we're in a recession, it is almost over. Thus, the steep recession that started in November 1973 was only pronounced a recession a year later; but six months after that, by March 1975, we were on the way to recovery. Most recessions are over in a year or year and a half. Of course, maybe that's the point: for the Establishment to lull us all to sleep until the recession is over. The reason why it takes the NBER such a long time to make up its mind, is because it feels that it has to get the precise month of the onset of the recession absolutely right; and the reason it suffers from this precise month fetish (which, in all reason and common sense, doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference) is because the entire deeply flawed NBER approach to business cycles depends on getting the "reference month" down precisely, and then basing all of its averages, and leads and lags, on that particular month. To date the recession one or two months either way would mess up all the calculations based on the NBER paradigm. And that, of course, comes first, way before trying to figure out what is going on and getting the knowledge to the public as quickly as possible. Looking at the housing market, unemployment, debt liquidation, and many other factors in 1988, I am willing to state flatly that we are in another inflationary recession. What does this mean? It is heartwarming to see some economists welcoming the recession as having an important cleansing effect on malinvestment and unsound debt, paving the way for more
rapid and more sustainable economic growth. Thus, Victor Zarnowitz of the University of Chicago states that "it may be healthier for the economy to endure an occasional recession . . . than to grow sluggishly for a prolonged period," and David A. Poole, economist of Van Eck Management Corp., warns that there shouldn't be a recovery too soon, presumably stimulated by government, for then "the recessionary cleansing process will not have had time to work." Welcome to Austrian Economics! But how is the current Establishment (the Bush administration center plus Democratic left-liberalism) proposing to deal with this recession? Remarkably, by violating every tenet of every school of thought known to economics: by steeply raising taxes! Every school: Austrian, Keynesian, monetarist, or classical, would react in horror to such a plan, which obviously worsens a recession by lowering saving and investment, and productive (as opposed to parasitic and wasteful government) consumption. Raising taxes does nothing to help the inflation, and does a lot to make the recession more severe; and it aggravates the deadweight burden of government on the economy. But wouldn't raising taxes cure the budget deficit? No, it would only give government an excuse (as if they needed one!) to increase the burden of government spending still further. The one thing worse than a deficit, furthermore, is higher taxes; increasing taxes will only bring us more of both. Can't the government do anything to alleviate our current inflationary recession? Yes, it can, and quickly. (Never say that Austrians can't come up with positive, even short-run, suggestions for government policy.) First, to stop the inflationary part of current crisis, the Federal Reserve can stop, permanently, all further purchase of any assets, or lowering of reserve ratios. This will stop all future inflationary credit expansion. Second, it can cut all taxes drastically: sales, excise, capital gains, medicare, social security, and income (for upper, middle, and lower incomes). Third, it can cut government spending, everywhere, even more drastically:
thus cutting the deficit as well as all its other benefits. And that's for openers. You think Newt Gingrich is tough? Z
DEFLATION, FREE OR COMPULSORY
ew occurrences have been more dreaded and reviled in the history of economic thought than deflation. Even as perceptive a hard-money theorist as Ricardo was unduly leery of deflation, and a positive phobia about falling prices has been central to both Keynesian and monetarist thought. Both the inflationary spending and credit prescriptions of Irving Fisher and the early Chicago School, and the famed Friedmanite "rule" of fixed rates of money growth, stemmed from a fervid desire to keep prices from falling, at least in the long run. It is precisely because free markets and the pure gold standard lead inevitably to falling prices that monetarists and Keynesians alike call for fiat money. Yet, curiously, while free or voluntary deflation has been invariably treated with horror, there is general acclaim for the draconian, or compulsory, deflationary measures adopted recently—especially in Brazil and the Soviet Union—in attempts to reverse severe inflation. But first, some clarity is needed in our age of semantic obfuscation in monetary matters. "Deflation" is usually defined as generally falling prices, yet it can also be defined as a decline in the money supply which, of course, will also tend to lower prices. It is particularly important to distinguish between changes in prices or the money supply that arise from voluntary changes in people's values or actions on the free market; as against deliberate changes in the money supply imposed by governmental coercion.
Price deflation on the free market has been a particular victim of deflation-phobia, blamed for depression, contraction in business activity, and unemployment. There are three possible causes for such deflation. In the first place, increased productivity and supply of goods will tend to lower prices on the free market. And this indeed is the general record of the Industrial Revolution in the West since the mid-eighteenth century. But rather than a problem to be dreaded and combatted, falling prices through increased production is a wonderful longrun tendency of untrammelled capitalism. The trend of the Industrial Revolution in the West was falling prices, which spread an increased standard of living to every person; falling costs, which maintained general profitability of business; and stable monetary wage rates—which reflected steadily increasing real wages in terms of purchasing power. This is a process to be hailed and welcomed rather than to be stamped out. Unfortunately, the inflationary fiat money world since World War II has made us forget this home truth, and inured us to a dangerously inflationary economic horizon. A second cause of price deflation in a free economy is in response to a general desire to "hoard" money which causes people's stock of cash balances to have higher real value in terms of purchasing power. Even economists who accept the legitimacy of the first type of deflation react with horror to the second, and call for government to print money rapidly to prevent it. But what's wrong with people desiring higher real cash balances, and why should this desire of consumers on the free market be thwarted while others are satisfied? The market, with its perceptive entrepreneurs and free price system, is precisely geared to allow rapid adjustments to any changes in consumer valuations. Any "unemployment" of resources results from a failure of people to adjust to the new conditions, by insisting on excessively high real prices or wage rates. Such failures will be quickly corrected if the market is allowed freedom to adapt—
that is, if government and unions do not intervene to delay and cripple the adjustment process. A third form of market-driven price deflation stems from a contraction of bank credit during recessions or bank runs. Even economists who accept the first and second types of deflation balk at this one, indicting the process as being monetary and external to the market. But they overlook a key point: that contraction of bank credit is always a healthy reaction to previous inflationary bank credit intervention in the market. Contractionary calls upon the banks to redeem their swollen liabilities in cash is precisely the way in which the market and consumers can reassert control over the banking system and force it to become sound and non-inflationary. A market-driven credit contraction speeds up the recovery process and helps to wash out unsound loans and unsound banks. Ironically enough, the only deflation that is unhelpful and destructive generally receives favorable press: compulsory monetary contraction by the government. Thus, when "free market" advocate Collor de Mello became president of Brazil in March 1990, he immediately and without warning blocked access to most bank accounts, preventing their owners from redeeming or using them, thereby suddenly deflating the money supply by 80 percent. This act was generally praised as a heroic measure reflecting "strong" leadership, but what it did was to deliver the Brazilian economy the second blow of a horrible one-two punch. After governmental expansion of money and credit had driven prices into severe hyperinflation, the government now imposed further ruin by preventing people from using their own money. Thus, the Brazilian government imposed a double destruction of property rights, the second one in the name of the free market and "of combatting inflation." In truth, price inflation is not a disease to be combatted by government; it is only necessary for the government to cease inflating the money supply. That, of course, all governments are
reluctant to do, including Collor de Mello's. Not only did his sudden blow bring about a deep recession, but the price inflation rate, which had fallen sharply to 8 percent per month by May 1990, started creeping up again. Finally, in the month of December, the Brazilian government quickly expanded the money supply by 58 percent, driving price inflation up to 20 percent per month. By the end of January, the only response the "free market" government could think of was to impose a futile and disastrous price and wage freeze. In the Soviet Union, President Gorbachev, perhaps imitating the Brazilian failure, similarly decided to combat the "ruble overhang" by suddenly withdrawing large-ruble notes from circulation and rendering most of them worthless. This severe and sudden 33 percent monetary deflation was accompanied by a promise to stamp out the "black market," i.e., the market, which had until then been the only Soviet institution working and keeping the Soviet people from mass starvation. But the black marketeers had long since gotten out of rubles and into dollars and gold, so that Gorby's meat axe fell largely on the average Soviet citizen, who had managed to work hard and save from his meager earnings. The only slightly redeeming feature of this act is that at least it was not done in the name of privatization and the free market; instead, it was part and parcel of Gorbachev's recent shift back to statism and central control. What Gorbachev should have done was not worry about the rubles in the hands of the public, but pay attention to the swarm of new rubles he keeps adding to the Soviet economy. The prognosis is even gloomier for the Soviet future if we consider the response of a leading allegedly free-market reformer, Nicholas Petrakov, until recently Gorbachev's personal economic adviser. Asserting that Gorbachev's brutal action was "sensible," Petrakov plaintively added that "if, in the future, we go on just printing more money everything will just go back to
square one." And why should anyone think this will not happen? Z
69 BUSH AND THE RECESSION
nfortunately, John Maynard Keynes, the disastrous and discredited spokesman and inspiration for the macroeconomics of virtually the entire world since the 1930s (and that includes the Western World, the Third World, the Gorbachev era, as well as the Nazi economic system), still lives. President Bush's reaction to this grim recession has been Keynesian through and through not surprising, since his economic advisers are Keynesian to the core. Since Keynesians are perpetual trumpeters for inflationary credit expansion, they of course do not talk about the basic cause of every recession; previous excesses of inflationary bank credit, stimulated and controlled by the central bank—in the U.S., the Federal Reserve system. To Keynesians, recessions come about via a sudden collapse in spending—by consumers and by investors. This collapse, according to Keynesians, comes about because of a decline in what Keynes called "animal spirits": people become worried, depressed, apprehensive about the future, so they invest, borrow, and spend less. The Keynesian remedy to this "market failure" brought about by private citizens being irrational worry-warts, is provided by good old government, the benevolent Mr. Fixit. When guided by wise and coolheaded Keynesian economists, government is able, as a judicious seacaptain at the helm, to compensate for the foolish whims of the public and to steer the economy on a proper and rational course.
There are, then, two anti-recession weapons available to government in the Keynesian schema. One is to spend a lot more money, particularly by incurring large-scale deficits. The problem with this weapon, as we all know far too well, is that government deficits are now permanently and increasingly stratospheric, in good times as well as bad. Current estimates for the federal deficit, which almost always prove too low, are approaching the annual rate of $500 billion (especially if we eliminate the phony accounting "surplus" of $50 billion in the Social Security account). If increasing the deficit further is no longer a convincing tool of government, the only thing left is to try to stimulate private spending. And the principal way to do that is for the government to soft-soap the public, to treat the public as if it were a whiny kid, that is: to stimulate its confidence that things are really fine and getting better so that the public will open its purses and wallets and borrow and spend more. In other words, to lie to the public "for its own good." Except that many of us are convinced that it's really lying for the good of the politicians, so that the deluded public will continue to have confidence in them. Hence all the disgraceful gyrations of the Bush administration: the year-long claim that we weren't in a recession, then the idea that we had been in it but were now out, then the soft-soap about a "weak recovery," then the nonsense about "double-dip" recession, and all the rest. Only when an aroused public hit him in the face did the President acknowledge that there's a real problem, and that maybe something should be done about it. But what to do, within the Keynesian framework? First, the Fed drove down interest rates, expecting that now people would borrow and spend. But no one feels like lending and borrowing in recessions, and so nothing much happened, except that shortterm Treasury securities got cheaper to buy—not very useful for the private economy. But, darn it, credit card rates stayed high, so Bush got the idea of talking down credit card rates, stimulating more consumers to borrow.
The resulting fiasco is well-known. Senator Al D'Amato (RNY), ever the eager beaver, figured that forcing rates down is more effective than talking them down, and so Congress only just missed passing this disaster by a vigorous protest of the banks and a mini-crash in the stock market bringing it to its senses. Outgoing chief-of-staff John Sununu, as ever attentive to the actions of "this President," tried to justify Bush's jawboning as correct, asserting that Congress's error was to try coercion. But Bush's idea of talking credit card rates down was only slightly less idiotic than forcing them down. The point is that prices on the market, including interest rates, are not set arbitrarily, or according to the good or bad will of the sellers or lenders. Prices are set according to the market forces of supply and demand. Credit card rates did not stay high because bankers decided to put the screws to this particular group of borrowers. The basic reason for credit card rates staying high is because the public—in its capacity as borrowers, not in its capacity as economic pundits—doesn't care that much about these rates. Consumers are not credit-card rate sensitive. Why? Because basically there are two kinds of credit-card users. One is the sober, responsible types who pay off their credit cards each month, and for whom interest charges are simply not important. The other group is the more live-it-up types such as myself, who tend to borrow up to the limit on their cards. But for them, interest rates are not that important either: because in order to take advantage of low-rate cards (and there are such around the country), they would have to pay off existing cards first—a slow process at best. There was another gaping fallacy in the Bush-D'Amato attitude, which the bankers quickly set them straight about. Interest rates are not the only part of the credit-card package. There is also the quality of the credit: the ease of getting the card, the requirements for getting it and keeping it, as well as the annual fee, etc. As the banks pointed out, at a 14 instead of a 19 percent
rate, far fewer people are going to be granted credit cards. Pathetically, the only positive thing that President Bush can think of to speed the recovery is to spend money faster, that is: to step up government spending, and hence the deficit, early in the year, presumably to be offset later by a fall in its rate of spending. What about tax cuts? Here the Bush administration is trapped in the current Keynesian view that, the deficits already being too high, every tax cut must be balanced by a tax increase somewhere else: i.e., be "revenue neutral." Hence, the administration feels limited to the correct but picayune call for a cut in the capital gains tax, since this presumably will be made up by a supply-side increase to keep total revenue constant. What is needed is the courage to bust out of this entire fallacious and debilitating Keynesian paradigm. Massive tax cuts, especially in the income tax are needed (a) to reduce the parasitic and antiproductive burden of government on the taxpayer, and (b) to encourage the public to spend and especially to save more, because only through increased private savings will there come greater productive investment. Moreover, the increased saving will speed recovery by validating some of the shaky and savings-starved investments of the previous boom. First of all, massive tax cuts may force the government to reduce its own swollen spending, and thereby reduce the burden of government on the system. And second, if this means that total government revenue is lower, so much the better. The burden of tax-rates is twofold: rates that are high and cripple savings and investment activity; and revenues that are high and siphon off money from the productive private sector into wasteful government boondoggles. The trouble with the supply-siders is that they ignore the second burden, and hence fall into the Keynesian-Bush "revenue-neutral" trap. And finally, if the Bush administration is so worried about the deficit, it should do its part by proposing drastic cuts in government spending, and justify it to the public by showing that government spending is not helpful to a prosperous economy but
precisely the opposite. Then, if Congress rejects this proposition, and keeps increasing spending, the Administration could put the onus for prolonging the recession squarely upon Congress. But of course it can't do so, because that would mean a fundamental break with the Keynesian doctrine that has formed the paradigm for the world's macroeconomics for the past half-century. We will never break out of our economic stagnation or our boom-bust cycles and achieve permanent prosperity until we have repudiated Keynes as thoroughly and as intensely as the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have repudiated Marx and Lenin. The real way to achieve freedom and prosperity is to hurl all three of these icons of the twentieth century into the dustbin of history. Z
LESSONS OF THE RECESSION
t's official! Long after everyone in America knew that we were in a severe recession, the private but semi-official and incredibly venerated National Bureau of Economic Research has finally made its long-awaited pronouncement: we've been in a recession ever since last summer. Well! Here is an instructive example of the reason why the economics profession, once revered as a seer and scientific guide to wealth prosperity, has been sinking rapidly in the esteem of the American public. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving group. The current recession, indeed, has already brought us several valuable lessons: Lesson # 1: You don't need an economist. . . . One of the favorite slogans of the 1960s New Left was: "You don't need a weatherman to tell you how the wind is blowing." Similarly, it
is all too clear that you don't need an economist to tell you whether you've been in a recession. So how is it that the macromavens not only can't forecast what will happen next, they can't even tell us where we are, and can barely tell us where we've been? To give them their due, I am pretty sure that Professors Hall, Zarnowitz, and the other distinguished solons of the famed Dating Committee of the National Bureau have known we've been in a recession for quite a while, maybe even since the knowledge percolated to the general public. The problem is that the Bureau is trapped in its own methodology, the very methodology of Baconian empiricism, meticulous data-gathering and pseudo-science that has brought it inordinate prestige from the economics profession. For the Bureau's entire approach to business cycles for the past five decades has depended on dating the precise month of each cyclical turning point, peak and trough. It was therefore not enough to say, last fall, that "we entered a recession this summer." That would have been enough for common-sense, or for Austrians, but even one month off the precise date would have done irreparable damage to the plethora of statistical manipulations—the averages, reference points, leads, lags, and indicators—that constitute the analytic machinery, and hence the "science," of the National Bureau. If you want to know whether we're in a recession, the last people to approach is the organized economics profession. Of course, the general public might be good at spotting where we are at, but they are considerably poorer at causal analysis, or at figuring out how to get out of economic trouble. But then again, the economics profession is not so great at that either. Lesson #2: There ain't no such thing as a "new era." Every time there is a long boom, by the final years of that boom, the press, the economics profession, and financial writers are rife with the pronouncement that recessions are a thing of the past, and that deep structural changes in the economy, or in
knowledge among economists, have brought about a "new era." The bad old days of recessions are over. We heard that first in the 1920s, and the culmination of that first new era was 1929; we heard it again in the 1960s, which led to the first major inflationary recession of the early 1970s; and we heard it most recently in the later 1980s. In fact, the best leading indicator of imminent deep recession is not the indices of the National Bureau; it is the burgeoning of the idea that recessions are a thing of the past. More precisely, recessions will be around to plague us so long as there are bouts of inflationary credit expansion which bring them into being. Lesson #3: You don't need an inventory boom to have a recession. For months into the current recession, numerous pundits proclaimed that we couldn't be in a recession because business had not piled up excessive inventories. Sorry. It made no difference, since malinvestments brought about by inflationary bank credit don't necessarily have to take place in inventory form. As often happens in economic theory, a contingent symptom was mislabeled as an essential cause. Unlike the above, other lessons of the current recession are not nearly as obvious. One is: Lesson #4: Debt is not the crucial problem. Heavy private debt was a conspicuous feature of the boom of the 1980s, with much of the publicity focused on the floating of high-yield ("junk") bonds for buyouts and takeovers. Debt per se, however, is not a grave economic problem. When I purchase a corporate bond I am channeling savings into investment much the same way as when I purchase stock equity. Neither way is particularly unsound. If a firm or corporation floats too much debt as compared to equity, that is a miscalculation of its existing owners or managers, and not a problem for the economy at large. The worst that can happen is that, if indebtedness is too great, the creditors will take over from
existing management and install a more efficient set of managers. Creditors, as well as stockholders, in short, are entrepreneurs. The problem, therefore, is not debt but credit, and not all credit but bank credit financed by inflationary expansion of bank money rather than by the genuine savings of either shareholders or creditors. The problem in other words, is not debt but loans generated by fractional-reserve banking. Lesson #5: Don't worry about the Fed "pushing on a string." Hard money adherents are a tiny fraction in the economics profession; but there are a large number of them in the investment newsletter business. For decades, these writers have been split into two warring camps: the "inflationists" versus the "deflationists." These terms are used not in the sense of advocating policy, but in predicting future events. "Inflationists," of whom the present writer is one, have been maintaining that the Fed, having been freed of all restraints of the gold standard and committed to not allowing the supposed horrors of deflation, will pump enough money into the banking system to prevent money and price deflation from ever taking place. "Deflationists," on the other hand, claim that because of excessive credit and debt, the Fed has reached the point where it cannot control the money supply, where Fed additions to bank reserves cannot lead to banks expanding credit and the money supply. In common financial parlance, the Fed would be "pushing on a string." Therefore, say the deflationists, we are in for an imminent, massive, and inevitable deflation of debt, money, and prices. One would think that three decades of making such predictions that have never come true would faze the deflationists somewhat, but no, at the first sign of trouble, especially of a recession, the deflationists are invariably back, predicting imminent deflationary doom. For the last part of 1990, the money supply was flat, and the deflationists were sure that their day had
come at last. Credit had been so excessive, they claimed, that businesses could no longer be induced to borrow, no matter how low the interest rate is pushed. What deflationists always overlook is that, even in the unlikely event that banks could not stimulate further loans, they can always use their reserves to purchase securities, and thereby push money out into the economy. The key is whether or not the banks pile up excess reserves, failing to expand credit up to the limit allowed by legal reserves. The crucial point is that never have the banks done so, in 1990 or at any other time, apart from the single exception of the 1930s. (The difference was that not only were we in a severe depression in the 1930s, but that interest rates had been driven down to near zero, so that the banks were virtually losing nothing by not expanding credit up to their maximum limit.) The conclusion must be that the Fed pushes with a stick, not a string. Early this year, moreover, the money supply began to spurt upward once again, putting an end, at least for the time being, to deflationist warnings and speculations. Lesson #6: The banks might collapse. Oddly enough there is a possible deflation scenario, but not one in which the deflationists have ever expressed interest. There has been, in the last few years, a vital, and necessarily permanent, sea-change in American opinion. It is permanent because it entails a loss of American innocence. The American public, ever since 1933, had bought, hook, line and sinker, the propaganda of all Establishment economists, from Keynesians to Friedmanites, that the banking system is safe, SAFE, because of federal deposit insurance. The collapse and destruction of the savings and loan banks, despite their "deposit insurance" by the federal government, has ended the insurance myth forevermore, and called into question the soundness of the last refuge of deposit insurance, the FDIC. It is now widely known that the FDIC simply doesn't have the money to insure all those deposits, and that in fact it is heading rapidly toward bankruptcy.
Conventional wisdom now holds that the FDIC will be shored up by taxpayer bailout, and that it will be saved. But no matter: the knowledge that the commercial banks might fail has been tucked away by every American for future reference. Even if the public can be babied along, and the FDIC patched up for this recession, they can always remember this fact at some future crisis, and then the whole fractional-reserve house of cards will come tumbling down in a giant, cleansing bank run. To offset such a run, no taxpayer bailout would suffice. But wouldn't that be deflationary? Almost, but not quite. Because the banks could still be saved by a massive, hyper-inflationary printing of money by the Fed, and who would bet against such emergency rescue? Lesson #7: There is no "Kondratieff cycle," no way, no how. There is among many people, even including some of the better hard-money investment newsletter writers, an inexplicable devotion to the idea of an inevitable 54-year "Kondratieff cycle" of expansion and contraction. It is universally agreed that the last Kondratieff trough was in 1940. Since 51 years have elapsed since that trough, and we are still waiting for the peak, it should be starkly clear that such a cycle does not exist. Most Kondratieffists confidently predicted that the peak would occur in 1974, precisely 54 years after the previous peak, generally accepted as being in 1920. Their joy at the 1974 recession, however, turned sour at the quick recovery. Then they tried to salvage the theory by analogy to the alleged "plateau" of the 1920s, so that the visible peak, or contraction, would occur nine or ten years after the peak, as 1929 succeeded 1920. The Kondratieffists there fell back on 1984 as the preferred date of the beginning of the deep contraction. Nothing happened, of course; and, now, seven years later, we are in the last gasp of the Kondratieff doctrine. If the current recession does not, as we have maintained, turn into a deep deflationary spiral, and the recession ends, there will simply be no time left for any plausible cycle of anything approaching 54 years. The Kondratieffist practitioners will, of course, never give up, any more
than other seers and crystal-ball gazers; but presumably, their market will at last be over. Z
71 THE RECESSION EXPLAINED you so!" may not be considered polite among Reces"I told sion friends or acquaintances, but in ideological clashes it is
important to remind one and all of your successes, since neither the indifferent nor your enemies are likely to do the job for you. In the case of Austrian business cycle theory, shouldering this task is particularly important. For not only have our ideological and methodological enemies been all too quick to bury Austrian theory as either (a) hopelessly Neanderthal and reactionary, and/or (b) obsolete in today's world, but also many of our erstwhile friends and adherents have been joining the chorus, maintaining that Austrian theory might have been applicable in the 1930s, or, more radically, only in the 19th century, but that it definitely has no application in the modern economy. Well, to paraphrase the great philosopher Etienne Gilson on natural law, Austrian cycle theory always survives to bury its enemies. In contrast to conventional wisdom, from Keynesian to monetarist to eclectic, Austrian theory has recently triumphed over its host of detractors in the following ways: 1. The perpetual boom of the '80s. As the 1980s went on, the Conventional Wisdom (CW) trumpeted that recessions were a thing of the dead and unlamented past. Here was a new era, of perpetual prosperity. Wise governmental fiscal and monetary policies, combined with structural changes such as the age of the computer and global capital markets, have made sure that
we never have a recession again, that 1981-82 was the Last Recession. I have long asserted that the best "leading indicator" of a recession is when the CW has started proclaiming the end of the business cycle and perpetual prosperity. Sure enough, here we are, and, as Austrians point out, the bigger and the longer the boom, the greater and deeper will tend to be the recession necessary to wash out the distortions and malinvestment of the inflationary boom, brought on by bank credit expansion. 2. The end of inflation. During the great boom of the '80s, the CW also proclaimed that inflation was a thing of the past. It was over, licked. Again: wise government monetary and fiscal policies, coupled with structural economic changes, and "efficient markets," insured that inflation was finished. And yet, inflation, which never really disappeared, is back in full force, and is even stronger now, in the depths of recession, than it was during most of the boom—a sure sign that not only is inflation still with us, but that it is going to pose a severe and accelerating problem as soon as recovery occurs. 3. (A corollary of one and two.) They forgot about inflationary recession. Inflation has persisted in every post-World War II recession since 1973–74, and indeed really began in the 1957–58 recession, after a couple of years of recovery. Yet everyone—and that means everyone including all wings of Establishment economics, and financial writers and forecasters—forgets all about the new reality of inflationary recession (also called "stagflation"), and writes and talks as if the choice in the coming months is always between inflation or recession. There is a long-running dispute among Austrian economists on whether market participants can or do learn from experience. Whatever the answer is (and I believe it is "yes"), it becomes increasingly clear that the body of economists and the financial press seem to be incapable of this simple learning experience. Look fellas: every recession is going to be inflationary from now on.
Presumably, the reason for this failure to learn is because it violates the basic theoretical prejudices of both Keynesian and monetarist economists: that either we are experiencing an inflationary boom or we are in a recession, never both. And indeed, no one can truly learn about these matters without a correct theory. But it just so happens that Austrian theory alone predicts and explains why all recessions, precisely in the modern world, will be inflationary. The reason: the scrapping of the gold standard and the shift to fiat money in the 1930s meant that there is no longer any restraint on the government or the Federal Reserve from creating as much money as it wishes—and it always wishes. This act does not eliminate business cycles; in fact, it makes them worse, by adding inflation and rising costs of living on top of recessions, falling asset values, bankruptcies, and unemployment. 4. The average person knows when we're in a recession long before economists do. Establishment economists, mired in their methodology of statistical correlation based on precise dating of cycle peaks and troughs, take a very long time to decide the precise month of the peak—in the current recession, July 1990. It took almost a year after that point before economists deigned to tell us what we already all knew: that we were in a big recession. 5. The average person knows we're in a recession long after the economists have proclaimed "recovery." Here we have a failing among economists far less excusable than methodological error. For hardly were we told, at long last, that we were in a recession, when the Establishment hastened to tell us that recovery was already under way. In a spectacular mistake, Establishment economists, professionally and politically bedded, as any Administration is, to Pollyanna optimism, hastened to assure us that the recession was over by the beginning of the third quarter of 1991. When it came to forecasting recovery, professional economic caution was shamefully thrown to the winds. Ever since the middle of 1991, the political and economic establishment has been desperately searching for signs of "recovery." "Well, it's
there but it's feeble"; "recoveries always begin weakly"; and on and on. Finally, by November, as most indices were clearly getting worse, economists, reluctant to admit their glaring error of the summer, started muttering about a possible "double-dip recession," about the danger of "slipping back into recession," etc. Look, let's face reality, and let the revered Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the semiofficial but universally exclaimed gurus of business cycle dating, go hang. 6. Once a recession has taken hold, the government cannot inflate out of it; government can only delay recovery, not hasten it. This is a vital truth of Austrian economics that has been absorbed by virtually no one. Once a recession is underway, Keynesian-monetarist type stimulation: cheap money, accelerating the money supply, etc., can only make things worse. But look at what has happened to such alleged anti-inflation "hawks" as Alan Greenspan and the Cleveland Fed: as soon as the recession took hold, and even though inflation is now worse than it has been in years, they have all thrown over their alleged anti-inflation principles and have been cutting interest rates like mad, trying rashly and vainly to hype the sick horse with another shot of inflationary stimulus. 7. Tax cuts are good in a recession, or any other time. Students of human folly can only stand in wonder at the Keynesian, one of whose traditional proposals was for tax cuts during recession, suddenly adopting a conservative, monetarist stance. During this recession, Keynesians declare that "yes, well, tax cuts are good in theory (?) but they won't help us out of recession, because of inevitable lag in the results of fiscal policy." The complaint is that the cuts will only take effect after a recovery (they hope) has already begun. Well, so what? Tax cuts are good at any time, especially for the long run. Apart from the business cycle, the American economy has been suffering from stagnation for the past twenty years; since 1973, the American standard of living has been level and even slightly declining. This is a highly worrisome feature of the modern
American economy. One way to remedy this problem is tax cuts, the deeper the better. Keynesian tax cuts were only designed to stimulate consumer spending in recession; Austrian tax cuts are a means of partially loosening the fetters by which the government has been chaining and binding down the private and productive sector of the economy, a crippling effect that has gotten steadily worse in recent years. But what about the deficit? The deficit is indeed monstrous and out of control, but the one way it should not and cannot be combatted is by raising taxes or keeping them high. Lower taxes would mean that government spending would have to be cut, and government spending cuts are the only sound way to cure deficits. Indeed, Austrian theory is unique in advocating government spending cuts even in a recession as a way to shift social spending from excessive consumption to much needed saving-and-investment. For, contrary to Keynesian myth, government spending is not "investment" at all (a cruel joke), but is wasteful "consumption" spending. The "consumers," in this case, are the politicians and government officials who leech off the productive private sector. Z
The Fiat Money Plague
72 TAKING MONEY BACK
oney is a crucial command post of any economy, and therefore of any society. Society rests upon a network of voluntary exchanges, also known as the "free-market economy"; these exchanges imply a division of labor in society, in which producers of eggs, nails, horses, lumber, and immaterial services such as teaching, medical care, and concerts, exchange their goods for the goods of others. At each step of the way, every participant in exchange benefits immeasurably, for if everyone were forced to be self-sufficient, those few who managed to survive would be reduced to a pitiful standard of living. Direct exchange of goods and services, also known as "barter," is hopelessly unproductive beyond the most primitive level, and indeed every "primitive" tribe soon found its way to the discovery of the tremendous benefits of arriving, on the market, at one particularly marketable commodity, one in general demand, to use as a "medium" of "indirect exchange." If a particular commodity is in widespread use as a medium in a society, then that general medium of exchange is called "money." The money-commodity becomes one term in every single one of the innumerable exchanges in the market economy. I sell my services as a teacher for money; I use that money to buy First published in The Freeman, September and October 1995. 271
groceries, typewriters, or travel accommodations; and these producers in turn use the money to pay their workers, to buy equipment and inventory, and pay rent for their buildings. Hence the ever-present temptation for one or more groups to seize control of the vital money-supply function. Many useful goods have been chosen as moneys in human societies. Salt in Africa, sugar in the Caribbean, fish in colonial New England, tobacco in the colonial Chesapeake Bay region, cowrie shells, iron hoes, and many other commodities have been used as moneys. Not only do these moneys serve as media of exchange; they enable individuals and business firms to engage in the "calculation" necessary to any advanced economy. Moneys are traded and reckoned in terms of a currency unit, almost always units of weight. Tobacco, for example, was reckoned in pound weights. Prices of other goods and services could be figured in terms of pounds of tobacco; a certain horse might be worth 80 pounds on the market. A business firm could then calculate its profit or loss for the previous month; it could figure that its income for the past month was 1,000 pounds and its expenditures 800 pounds, netting it a 200 pound profit.
GOVERNMENT PAPER
Throughout history, two commodities have been able to outcompete all other goods and be chosen on the market as money; two precious metals, gold and silver (with copper coming in when one of the other precious metals was not available). Gold and silver abounded in what we can call "moneyable" qualities, qualities that rendered them superior to all other commodities. They are in rare enough supply that their value will be stable, and of high value per unit weight; hence pieces of gold or silver will be easily portable, and usable in day-to-day transactions; they are rare enough too, so that there is little likelihood of sudden discoveries or increases in supply. They are durable so that they can last virtually forever, and so they provide a sage "store of value" for the future. And gold and silver are divisible, so that they can be divided into small pieces without
losing their value; unlike diamonds, for example, they are homogeneous, so that one ounce of gold will be of equal value to any other. The universal and ancient use of gold and silver as moneys was pointed out by the first great monetary theorist, the eminent fourteenth-century French scholastic Jean Buridan, and then in all discussions of money down to money and banking textbooks until the Western governments abolished the gold standard in the early 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt joined in this deed by taking the United States off gold in 1933. There is no aspect of the free-market economy that has suffered more scorn and contempt from "modern" economists, whether frankly statist Keynesians or allegedly "free market" Chicagoites, than has gold. Gold, not long ago hailed as the basic staple and groundwork of any sound monetary system, is now regularly denounced as a "fetish" or, as in the case of Keynes, as a "barbarous relic." Well, gold is indeed a "relic" of barbarism in one sense; no "barbarian" worth his salt would ever have accepted the phony paper and bank credit that we modern sophisticates have been bamboozled into using as money. But "gold bugs" are not fetishists; we don't fit the standard image of misers running their fingers through their hoard of gold coins while cackling in sinister fashion. The great thing about gold is that it, and only it, is money supplied by the free market, by the people at work. For the stark choice before us always is: gold (or silver), or government. Gold is market money, a commodity which must be supplied by being dug out of the ground and then processed; but government, on the contrary, supplies virtually costless paper money or bank checks out of thin air. We know, in the first place, that all government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer. Would we prefer to have shoes produced by competitive private firms on the free market, or by a giant monopoly of the federal government? The function of supplying money
could be handled no better by government. But the situation in money is far worse than for shoes or any other commodity. If the government produces shoes, at least they might be worn, even though they might be high-priced, fit badly, and not satisfy consumer wants. Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark. So it is a great boon that gold or silver are scarce and are costly to increase in supply. But if government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this "inflation" of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy. The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency. To understand this truth, we must examine the nature of government and of the creation of money. Throughout history, governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and I, governments do not produce useful goods and services which they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society. Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation. In older and saner times, indeed, the King was able to obtain sufficient revenue from the products of his own private lands and forests, as well as through highway tolls. For the State to achieve regularized, peacetime
taxation was a struggle of centuries. And even after taxation was established, the kings realized that they could not easily impose new taxes or higher rates on old levies; if they did so, revolution was very apt to break out.
If taxation is permanently short of the style of expenditures desired by the State, how can it make up the difference? By getting control of the money supply, or, to put it bluntly, by counterfeiting. On the market economy, we can only obtain good money by selling a good or service in exchange for gold, or by receiving a gift; the only other way to get money is to engage in the costly process of digging gold out of the ground. The counterfeiter, on the other hand, is a thief who attempts to profit by forgery, e.g., by painting a piece of brass to look like a gold coin. If his counterfeit is detected immediately, he does no real harm, but to the extent his counterfeit goes undetected, the counterfeiter is able to steal not only from the producers whose goods he buys. For the counterfeiter, by introducing fake money into the economy, is able to steal from everyone by robbing every person of the value of his currency. By diluting the value of each ounce or dollar of genuine money, the counterfeiter's theft is more sinister and more truly subversive than that of the highwayman; for he robs everyone in society, and the robbery is stealthy and hidden, so that the cause-and-effect relation is camouflaged. Recently, we saw the scare headline: "Iranian Government Tries to Destroy U.S. Economy by Counterfeiting $100 Bills." Whether the ayatollahs had such grandiose goals in mind is dubious; counterfeiters don't need a grand rationale for grabbing resources by printing money. But all counterfeiting is indeed subversive and destructive, as well as inflationary. But in that case, what are we to say when the government seizes control of the money supply, abolishes gold as money, and establishes its own printed tickets as the only money? In
other words, what are we to say when the government becomes the legalized, monopoly counterfeiter? Not only has the counterfeit been detected, but the Grand Counterfeiter, in the United States the Federal Reserve System, instead of being reviled as a massive thief and destroyer, is hailed and celebrated as the wise manipulator and governor of our "macroeconomy," the agency on which we rely for keeping us out of recessions and inflations, and which we count on to determine interest rates, capital prices, and employment. Instead of being habitually pelted with tomatoes and rotten eggs, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, whoever he may be, whether the imposing Paul Volcker or the owlish Alan Greenspan, is universally hailed as Mr. Indispensable to the economic and financial system. Indeed, the best way to penetrate the mysteries of the modern monetary and banking system is to realize that the government and its central bank act precisely as would a Grand Counterfeiter, with very similar social and economic effects. Many years ago, the New Yorker magazine, in the days when its cartoons were still funny, published a cartoon of a group of counterfeiters looking eagerly at their printing press as the first $10 bill came rolling off the press. "Boy," said one of the team, "retail spending in the neighborhood is sure in for a shot in the arm." And it was. As the counterfeiters print new money, spending goes up on whatever the counterfeiters wish to purchase: personal retail goods for themselves, as well as loans and other "general welfare" purposes in the case of the government. But the resulting "prosperity" is phony; all that happens is that more money bids away existing resources, so that prices rise. Furthermore, the counterfeiters and the early recipients of the new money bid away resources from the poor suckers who are down at the end of the line to receive the new money, or who never even receive it at all. New money injected into the economy has an inevitable ripple effect; early receivers of the new money spend more and bid up prices, while later receivers or those on
fixed incomes find the prices of the goods they must buy unaccountably rising, while their own incomes lag behind or remain the same. Monetary inflation, in other words, not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit; it also acts as a giant system of expropriation of the late receivers by the counterfeiters themselves and by the other early receivers. Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution. When the government is the counterfeiter, the counterfeiting process not only can be "detected"; it proclaims itself openly as monetary statesmanship for the public weal. Monetary expansion then becomes a giant scheme of hidden taxation, the tax falling on fixed income groups, on those groups remote from government spending and subsidy, and on thrifty savers who are naive enough and trusting enough to hold on to their money, to have faith in the value of the currency. Spending and going into debt are encouraged; thrift and hard work discouraged and penalized. Not only that: the groups that benefit are the special interest groups who are politically close to the government and can exert pressure to have the new money spent on them so that their incomes can rise faster than the price inflation. Government contractors, politically connected businesses, unions, and other pressure groups will benefit at the expense of the unaware and unorganized public.
We have already described one part of the contemporary flight from sound, free market money to statized and inflated money: the abolition of the gold standard by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, and the substitution of fiat paper tickets by the Federal Reserve as our "monetary standard." Another crucial part of this process was the federal cartelization of the nation's banks through the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Banking is a particularly arcane part of the economic system; one of the problems is that the word "bank" covers many different activities, with very different implications. During the
Renaissance era, the Medicis in Italy and the Fuggers in Germany, were "bankers"; their banking, however, was not only private but also began at least as a legitimate, non-inflationary, and highly productive activity. Essentially, these were "merchantbankers," who started as prominent merchants. In the course of their trade, the merchants began to extend credit to their customers, and in the case of these great banking families, the credit or "banking" part of their operations eventually overshadowed their mercantile activities. These firms lent money out of their own profits and savings, and earned interest from the loans. Hence, they were channels for the productive investment of their own savings. To the extent that banks lend their own savings, or mobilize the savings of others, their activities are productive and unexceptionable. Even in our current commercial banking system, if I buy a $10,000 CD ("certificate of deposit") redeemable in six months, earning a certain fixed interest return, I am taking my savings and lending it to a bank, which in turn lends it out at a higher interest rate, the differential being the bank's earnings for the function of channeling savings into the hands of creditworthy or productive borrowers. There is no problem with this process. The same is even true of the great "investment banking" houses, which developed as industrial capitalism flowered in the nineteenth century. Investment bankers would take their own capital, or capital invested or loaned by others, to underwrite corporations gathering capital by selling securities to stockholders and creditors. The problem with the investment bankers is that one of their major fields of investment was the underwriting of government bonds, which plunged them hipdeep into politics, giving them a powerful incentive for pressuring and manipulating governments, so that taxes would be levied to pay off their and their clients' government bonds. Hence, the powerful and baleful political influence of investment bankers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: in particular, the Rothschilds in Western Europe, and Jay Cooke and the House of Morgan in the United States.
By the late nineteenth century, the Morgans took the lead in trying to pressure the U.S. government to cartelize industries they were interested in—first railroads and then manufacturing: to protect these industries from the winds of free competition, and to use the power of government to enable these industries to restrict production and raise prices. In particular, the investment bankers acted as a ginger group to work for the cartelization of commercial banks. To some extent, commercial bankers lend out their own capital and money acquired by CDs. But most commercial banking is "deposit banking" based on a gigantic scam: the idea, which most depositors believe, that their money is down at the bank, ready to be redeemed in cash at any time. If Jim has a checking account of $1,000 at a local bank, Jim knows that this is a "demand deposit," that is, that the bank pledges to pay him $1,000 in cash, on demand, anytime he wishes to "get his money out." Naturally, the Jims of this world are convinced that their money is safely there, in the bank, for them to take out at any time. Hence, they think of their checking account as equivalent to a warehouse receipt. If they put a chair in a warehouse before going on a trip, they expect to get the chair back whenever they present the receipt. Unfortunately, while banks depend on the warehouse analogy, the depositors are systematically deluded. Their money ain't there. An honest warehouse makes sure that the goods entrusted to its care are there, in its storeroom or vault. But banks operate very differently, at least since the days of such deposit banks as the Banks of Amsterdam and Hamburg in the seventeenth century, which indeed acted as warehouses and backed all of their receipts fully by the assets deposited, e.g., gold and silver. This honest deposit or "giro" banking is called "100 percent reserve" banking. Ever since, banks have habitually created warehouse receipts (originally bank notes and now deposits) out of thin air. Essentially, they are counterfeiters of fake warehouse-receipts to cash or standard money, which circulate as if they were genuine, fully-backed notes or checking accounts. Banks make money by literally creating money out of thin air, nowadays
exclusively deposits rather than bank notes. This sort of swindling or counterfeiting is dignified by the term "fractionalreserve banking," which means that bank deposits are backed by only a small fraction of the cash they promise to have at hand and redeem. (Right now, in the United States, this minimum fraction is fixed by the Federal Reserve System at 10 percent.)
FRACTIONAL-RESERVE BANKING Let's see how the fractional reserve process works, in the absence of a central bank. I set up a Rothbard Bank, and invest $1,000 of cash (whether gold or government paper does not matter here). Then I "lend out" $10,000 to someone, either for consumer spending or to invest in his business. How can I "lend out" far more than I have? Ahh, that's the magic of the "fraction" in the fractional reserve. I simply open up a checking account of $10,000 which I am happy to lend to Mr. Jones. Why does Jones borrow from me? Well, for one thing, I can charge a lower rate of interest than savers would. I don't have to save up the money myself, but simply can counterfeit it out of thin air. (In the nineteenth century, I would have been able to issue bank notes, but the Federal Reserve now monopolizes note issues.) Since demand deposits at the Rothbard Bank function as equivalent to cash, the nation's money supply has just, by magic, increased by $10,000. The inflationary, counterfeiting process is under way. The nineteenth-century English economist Thomas Tooke correctly stated that "free trade in banking is tantamount to free trade in swindling." But under freedom, and without government support, there are some severe hitches in this counterfeiting process, or in what has been termed "free banking." First: why should anyone trust me? Why should anyone accept the checking deposits of the Rothbard Bank? But second, even if I were trusted, and I were able to con my way into the trust of the gullible, there is another severe problem, caused by the fact that the banking system is competitive, with free entry into the field. After all, the Rothbard Bank is limited in its clientele. After
Jones borrows checking deposits from me, he is going to spend it. Why else pay money for a loan? Sooner or later, the money he spends, whether for a vacation, or for expanding his business, will be spent on the goods or services of clients of some other bank, say the Rockwell Bank. The Rockwell Bank is not particularly interested in holding checking accounts on my bank; it wants reserves so that it can pyramid its own counterfeiting on top of cash reserves. And so if, to make the case simple, the Rockwell Bank gets a $10,000 check on the Rothbard Bank, it is going to demand cash so that it can do some inflationary counterfeit-pyramiding of its own. But, I, of course, can't pay the $10,000, so I'm finished. Bankrupt. Found out. By rights, I should be in jail as an embezzler, but at least my phony checking deposits and I are out of the game, and out of the money supply. Hence, under free competition, and without government support and enforcement, there will only be limited scope for fractional-reserve counterfeiting. Banks could form cartels to prop each other up, but generally cartels on the market don't work well without government enforcement, without the government cracking down on competitors who insist on busting the cartel, in this case, forcing competing banks to pay up.
CENTRAL BANKING Hence the drive by the bankers themselves to get the government to cartelize their industry by means of a central bank. Central Banking began with the Bank of England in the 1690s, spread to the rest of the Western world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and finally was imposed upon the United States by banking cartelists via the Federal Reserve System of 1913. Particularly enthusiastic about the Central Bank were the investment bankers, such as the Morgans, who pioneered the cartel idea, and who by this time had expanded into commercial banking. In modern central banking, the Central Bank is granted the monopoly of the issue of bank notes (originally written or
printed warehouse receipts as opposed to the intangible receipts of bank deposits), which are now identical to the government's paper money and therefore the monetary "standard" in the country. People want to use physical cash as well as bank deposits. If, therefore, I wish to redeem $1,000 in cash from my checking bank, the bank has to go to the Federal Reserve, and draw down its own checking account with the Fed, "buying" $1,000 of Federal Reserve Notes (the cash in the United States today) from the Fed. The Fed, in other words, acts as a bankers' bank. Banks keep checking deposits at the Fed and these deposits constitute their reserves, on which they can and do pyramid ten times the amount in checkbook money. Here's how the counterfeiting process works in today's world. Let's say that the Federal Reserve, as usual, decides that it wants to expand (i.e., inflate) the money supply. The Federal Reserve decides to go into the market (called the "open market") and purchase an asset. It doesn't really matter what asset it buys; the important point is that it writes out a check. The Fed could, if it wanted to, buy any asset it wished, including corporate stocks, buildings, or foreign currency. In practice, it almost always buys U.S. government securities. Let's assume that the Fed buys $10,000,000 of U.S. Treasury bills from some "approved" government bond dealer (a small group), say Shearson, Lehman on Wall Street. The Fed writes out a check for $10,000,000, which it gives to Shearson, Lehman in exchange for $10,000,000 in U.S. securities. Where does the Fed get the $10,000,000 to pay Shearson, Lehman? It creates the money out of thin air. Shearson, Lehman can do only one thing with the check: deposit it in its checking account at a commercial bank, say Chase Manhattan. The "money supply" of the country has already increased by $10,000,000; no one else's checking account has decreased at all. There has been a net increase of $10,000,000. But this is only the beginning of the inflationary, counterfeiting process. For Chase Manhattan is delighted to get a check on the Fed, and rushes down to deposit it in its own checking
account at the Fed, which now increases by $10,000,000. But this checking account constitutes the "reserves" of the banks, which have now increased across the nation by $10,000,000. But this means that Chase Manhattan can create deposits based on these reserves, and that, as checks and reserves seep out to other banks (much as the Rothbard Bank deposits did), each one can add its inflationary mite, until the banking system as a whole has increased its demand deposits by $100,000,000, ten times the original purchase of assets by the Fed. The banking system is allowed to keep reserves amounting to 10 percent of its deposits, which means that the "money multiplier"—the amount of deposits the banks can expand on top of reserves—is 10. A purchase of assets of $10 million by the Fed has generated very quickly a tenfold, $100,000,000 increase in the money supply of the banking system as a whole. Interestingly, all economists agree on the mechanics of this process even though they of course disagree sharply on the moral or economic evaluation of that process. But unfortunately, the general public, not inducted into the mysteries of banking, still persists in thinking that their money remains "in the bank." Thus, the Federal Reserve and other central banking systems act as giant government creators and enforcers of a banking cartel; the Fed bails out banks in trouble, and it centralizes and coordinates the banking system so that all the banks, whether the Chase Manhattan, or the Rothbard or Rockwell banks, can inflate together. Under free banking, one bank expanding beyond its fellows was in danger of imminent bankruptcy. Now, under the Fed, all banks can expand together and proportionately.
"DEPOSIT INSURANCE" But even with the backing of the Fed, fractional-reserve banking proved shaky, and so the New Deal, in 1933, added the lie of "bank deposit insurance," using the benign word "insurance" to mask an arrant hoax. When the savings and loan system
went down the tubes in the late 1980s, the "deposit insurance" of the federal FSLIC [Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation] was unmasked as sheer fraud. The "insurance" was simply the smoke-and-mirrors term for the unbacked name of the federal government. The poor taxpayers finally bailed out the S & Ls, but now we are left with the formerly sainted FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation], for commercial banks, which is now increasingly seen to be shaky, since the FDIC itself has less than one percent of the huge number of deposits it "insures." The very idea of "deposit insurance" is a swindle; how does one insure an institution (fractional-reserve banking) that is inherently insolvent, and which will fall apart whenever the public finally understands the swindle? Suppose that, tomorrow, the American public suddenly became aware of the banking swindle, and went to the banks tomorrow morning, and, in unison, demanded cash. What would happen? The banks would be instantly insolvent, since they could only muster 10 percent of the cash they owe their befuddled customers. Neither would the enormous tax increase needed to bail everyone out be at all palatable. No: the only thing the Fed could do, and this would be in their power, would be to print enough money to pay off all the bank depositors. Unfortunately, in the present state of the banking system, the result would be an immediate plunge into the horrors of hyperinflation. Let us suppose that total insured bank deposits are $1,600 billion. Technically, in the case of a run on the banks, the Fed could exercise emergency powers and print $1,600 billion in cash to give to the FDIC to pay off the bank depositors. The problem is that, emboldened at this massive bailout, the depositors would promptly redeposit the new $1,600 billion into the banks, increasing the total bank reserves by $1,600 billion, thus permitting an immediate expansion of the money supply by the banks by tenfold, increasing the total stock of bank money by
$16 trillion. Runaway inflation and total destruction of the currency would quickly follow.
To save our economy from destruction and from the eventual holocaust of run away inflation, we the people must take the money-supply function back from the government. Money is far too important to be left in the hands of bankers and of Establishment economists and financiers. To accomplish this goal, money must be returned to the market economy, with all monetary functions performed within the structure of the rights of private property and of the free-market economy. It might be thought that the mix of government and money is too far gone, too pervasive in the economic system, too inextricably bound up in the economy, to be eliminated without economic destruction. Conservatives are accustomed to denouncing the "terrible simplifiers" who wreck everything by imposing simplistic and unworkable schemes. Our major problem, however, is precisely the opposite: mystification by the ruling elite of technocrats and intellectuals, who, whenever some public spokesman arises to call for large-scale tax cuts or deregulation, intone sarcastically about the dimwit masses who "seek simple solutions for complex problems." Well, in most cases, the solutions are indeed clear-cut and simple, but are deliberately obfuscated by people whom we might call "terrible complicators." In truth, taking back our money would be relatively simple and straightforward, much less difficult than the daunting task of denationalizing and decommunizing the Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Our goal may be summed up simply as the privatization of our monetary system, the separation of government from money and banking. The central means to accomplish this task is also straightforward: the abolition, the liquidation of the Federal Reserve System—the abolition of central banking. How could the Federal Reserve System possibly be abolished? Elementary: simply repeal its federal charter, the Federal Reserve
Act of 1913. Moreover, Federal Reserve obligations (its notes and deposits) were originally redeemable in gold on demand. Since Franklin Roosevelt's monstrous actions in 1933, "dollars" issued by the Federal Reserve, and deposits by the Fed and its member banks, have no longer been redeemable in gold. Bank deposits are redeemable in Federal Reserve Notes, while Federal Reserve Notes are redeemable in nothing, or alternatively in other Federal Reserve Notes. Yet, these Notes are our money, our monetary "standard," and all creditors are obliged to accept payment in these fiat notes, no matter how depreciated they might be. In addition to cancelling the redemption of dollars into gold, Roosevelt in 1933 committed another criminal act: literally confiscating all gold and bullion held by Americans, exchanging them for arbitrarily valued "dollars." It is curious that, even though the Fed and the government Establishment continually proclaim the obsolescence and worthlessness of gold as a monetary metal, the Fed (as well as all other central banks) clings to its gold for dear life. Our confiscated gold is still owned by the Federal Reserve, which keeps it on deposit with the Treasury at Fort Knox and other gold depositaries. Indeed, from 1933 until the 1970s, it continued to be illegal for any Americans to own monetary gold of any kind, whether coin or bullion or even in safe deposit boxes at home or abroad. All these measures, supposedly drafted for the Depression emergency, have continued as part of the great heritage of the New Deal ever since. For four decades, any gold flowing into private American hands had to be deposited in the banks, which in turn had to deposit it at the Fed. Gold for "legitimate" non-monetary purposes, such as dental fillings, industrial drills, or jewelry, was carefully rationed for such purposes by the Treasury Department. Fortunately, due to the heroic efforts of Congressman Ron Paul it is now legal for Americans to own gold, whether coin or bullion. But the ill-gotten gold confiscated and sequestered by the Fed remains in Federal Reserve hands. How to get the gold out from the Fed? How privatize the Fed's stock of gold?
PRIVATIZING FEDERAL GOLD The answer is revealed by the fact that the Fed, which had promised to redeem its liabilities in gold, has been in default of that promise since Roosevelt's repudiation of the gold standard in 1933. The Federal Reserve System, being in default, should be liquidated, and the way to liquidate it is the way any insolvent business firm is liquidated: its assets are parceled out, pro rata, to its creditors. The Federal Reserve's gold assets are listed, as of October 30, 1991, at $11.1 billion. The Federal Reserve's liabilities as of that date consist of $295.5 billion in Federal Reserve Notes in circulation, and $24.4 billion in deposits owed to member banks of the Federal Reserve System, for a total of $319.9 billion. Of the assets of the Fed, other than gold, the bulk are securities of the U.S. government, which amounted to $262.5 billion. These should be written off posthaste, since they are worse than an accounting fiction: the taxpayers are forced to pay interest and principle on debt which the Federal Government owes to its own creature, the Federal Reserve. The largest remaining asset is Treasury Currency, $21.0 billion, which should also be written off, plus $10 billion in SDRs, which are mere paper creatures of international central banks, and which should be abolished as well. We are left (apart from various buildings and fixtures and other assets owned by the Fed, and amounting to some $35 billion) with $11.1 billion of assets needed to pay off liabilities totalling $319.9 billion. Fortunately, the situation is not as dire as it seems, for the $11.1 billion of Fed gold is a purely phony evaluation; indeed it is one of the most bizarre aspects of our fraudulent monetary system. The Fed's gold stock consists of 262.9 million ounces of gold; the dollar valuation of $11.1 billion is the result of the government's artificially evaluating its own stock of gold at $42.22 an ounce. Since the market price of gold is now about $350 an ounce, this already presents a glaring anomaly in the system.
DEBASEMENT
Where did the $42.22 come from? The essence of a gold standard is that the monetary unit (the "dollar," "franc," "mark," etc.) is defined as a certain weight of gold. Under the gold standard, the dollar or franc is not a thingin-itself, a mere name or the name of a paper ticket issued by the State or a central bank; it is the name of a unit of weight of gold. It is every bit as much a unit of weight as the more general "ounce," "grain," or "gram." For a century before 1933, the "dollar" was defined as being equal to 23.22 grains of gold; since there are 480 grains to the ounce, this meant that the dollar was also defined as .048 gold ounce. Put another way, the gold ounce was defined as equal to $20.67. In addition to taking us off the gold standard domestically, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal "debased" the dollar by redefining it, or "lightening its weight," as equal to 13.714 grains of gold, which also defined the gold ounce as equal to $35. The dollar was still redeemable in gold to foreign central banks and governments at the lighter $35 weight; so that the United States stayed on a hybrid form of international gold standard until August 1971, when President Nixon completed the job of scuttling the gold standard altogether. Since 1971, the United States has been on a totally fiat paper standard; not coincidentally, it has suffered an unprecedented degree of peace-time inflation since that date. Since 1971, the dollar has no longer been tied to gold at a fixed weight, and so it has become a commodity separate from gold, free to fluctuate on world markets. When the dollar and gold were set loose from each other, we saw the closest thing to a laboratory experiment we can get in human affairs. All Establishment economists—from Keynesians to Chicagoite monetarists—insisted that gold had long lost its value as a money, that gold had only reached its exalted value of $35 an ounce because its value was "fixed" at that amount by the government. The dollar allegedly conferred value upon gold rather than the other way round, and if gold and the dollar were
ever cut loose, we would see the price of gold sink rapidly to its estimated non-monetary value (for jewelry, dental fillings, etc.) of approximately $6 an ounce. In contrast to this unanimous Establishment prediction, the followers of Ludwig von Mises and other "gold bugs" insisted that gold was undervalued at 35 debased dollars, and claimed that the price of gold would rise far higher, perhaps as high as $70. Suffice it to say that the gold price never fell below $35, and in fact vaulted upward, at one point reaching $850 an ounce, in recent years settling at somewhere around $350 an ounce. And yet since 1973, the Treasury and Fed have persistently evaluated their gold stock, not at the old and obsolete $35, to be sure, but only slightly higher, at $42.22 an ounce. In other words, if the U.S. government only made the simple adjustment that accounting requires of everyone—evaluating one's assets at their market price—the value of the Fed's gold stock would immediately rise from $11.1 to $92.0 billion. From 1933 to 1971, the once very large but later dwindling number of economists championing a return to the gold standard mainly urged a return to $35 an ounce. Mises and his followers advocated a higher gold "price," inasmuch as the $35 rate no longer applied to Americans. But the majority did have a point: that any measure or definition, once adopted, should be adhered to from then on. But since 1971, with the death of the once-sacred $35 an ounce, all bets are off. While definitions once adopted should be maintained permanently, there is nothing sacred about any initial definition, which should be selected at its most useful point. If we wish to restore the gold standard, we are free to select whatever definition of the dollar is most useful; there are no longer any obligations to the obsolete definitions of $20.67 or $35 an ounce.
In particular, if we wish to liquidate the Federal Reserve System, we can select a new definition of the "dollar" sufficient to
pay off all Federal Reserve liabilities at 100 cents to the dollar. In the case of our example above, we can now redefine "the dollar" as equivalent to 0.394 grains of gold, or as 1 ounce of gold equalling $1,217. With such redefinition, the entire Federal Reserve stock of gold could be minted by the Treasury into gold coins that would replace the Federal Reserve Notes in circulation, and also constitute gold coin reserves of $24.4 billion at the various commercial banks. The Federal Reserve System would be abolished, gold coins would now be in circulation replacing Federal Reserve Notes, gold would be the circulating medium, and gold dollars the unit of account and reckoning, at the new rate of $1,217 per ounce. Two great desiderata—the return of the gold standard, and the abolition of the Federal Reserve—would both be accomplished at one stroke. A corollary step, of course, would be the abolition of the already bankrupt Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The very concept of "deposit insurance" is fraudulent; how can you "insure" an entire industry that is inherently insolvent? It would be like insuring the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Some freemarket economists advocate "privatizing" deposit insurance by encouraging private firms, or the banks themselves, to "insure" each others' deposits. But that would return us to the unsavory days of Florentine bank cartels, in which every bank tried to shore up each other's liabilities. It won't work; let us not forget that the first S & Ls to collapse in the 1980s were those in Ohio and in Maryland, which enjoyed the dubious benefits of "private" deposit insurance. This issue points up an important error often made by libertarians and free-market economists who believe that all government activities should be privatized; or as a corollary, hold that any actions, so long as they are private, are legitimate. But, on the contrary, activities such as fraud, embezzlement, or counterfeiting should not be "privatized"; they should be abolished. This would leave the commercial banks still in a state of fractional reserve, and, in the past, I have advocated going straight
to 100 percent, non-fraudulent banking by raising the gold price enough to constitute 100 percent of bank demand liabilities. After that, of course, 100 percent banking would be legally required. At current estimates, establishing 100 percent to all commercial bank demand deposit accounts would require going back to gold at $2,000 an ounce; to include all checkable deposits would require establishing gold at $3,350 an ounce, and to establish 100 percent banking for all checking and savings deposits (which are treated by everyone as redeemable on demand) would require a gold standard at $7,500 an ounce. But there are problems with such a solution. A minor problem is that the higher the newly established gold value over the current market price, the greater the consequent increase in gold production. This increase would cause an admittedly modest and one-shot price inflation. A more important problem is the moral one: do banks deserve what amounts to a free gift, in which the Fed, before liquidating, would bring every bank's gold assets high enough to be 100 percent of its liabilities? Clearly, the banks scarcely deserve such benign treatment, even in the name of smoothing the transition to sound money; bankers should consider themselves lucky they are not tried for embezzlement. Furthermore, it would be difficult to enforce and police 100 percent banking on an administrative basis. It would be easier, and more libertarian, to go through the courts. Before the Civil War, the notes of unsound fractional reserve banks in the United States, if geographically far from home base, were bought up at a discount by professional "money brokers," who would then travel to the banks' home base and demand massive redemption of these notes in gold. The same could be done today, and more efficiently, using advanced electronic technology, as professional money brokers try to make profits by detecting unsound banks and bringing them to heel. A particular favorite of mine is the concept of ideological Anti-Bank Vigilante Leagues, who would keep tabs on banks, spot the errant ones, and go on television to proclaim that banks are unsound, and urge note and deposit holders to
call upon them for redemption without delay. If the Vigilante Leagues could whip up hysteria and consequent bank runs, in which noteholders and depositors scramble to get their money out before the bank goes under, then so much the better: for then, the people themselves, and not simply the government, would ride herd on fractional reserve banks. The important point, it must be emphasized, is that at the very first sign of a bank's failing to redeem its notes or deposits on demand, the police and courts must put them out of business. Instant justice, period, with no mercy and no bailouts. Under such a regime, it should not take long for the banks to go under, or else to contract their notes and deposits until they are down to 100 percent banking. Such monetary deflation, while leading to various adjustments, would be clearly one-shot, and would obviously have to stop permanently when the total of bank liabilities contracted down to 100 percent of gold assets. One crucial difference between inflation and deflation, is that inflation can escalate up to an infinity of money supply and prices, whereas the money supply can only deflate as far as the total amount of standard money, under the gold standard the supply of gold money. Gold constitutes an absolute floor against further deflation. If this proposal seems harsh on the banks, we have to realize that the banking system is headed for a mighty crash in any case. As a result of the S &L collapse, the terribly shaky nature of our banking system is at last being realized. People are openly talking of the FDIC being insolvent, and of the entire banking structure crashing to the ground. And if the people ever get to realize this in their bones, they will precipitate a mighty "bank run" by trying to get their money out of the banks and into their own pockets. And the banks would then come tumbling down, because the people's money isn't there. The only thing that could save the banks in such a mighty bank run is if the Federal Reserve prints the $1.6 trillion in cash and gives it to the banks—igniting an immediate and devastating runaway inflation and destruction of the dollar.
Liberals are fond of blaming our economic crisis on the "greed of the 1980s." And yet "greed" was no more intense in the 1980s than it was in the 1970s or previous decades or than it will be in the future. What happened in the 1980s was a virulent episode of government deficits and of Federal Reserve-inspired credit expansion by the banks. As the Fed purchased assets and pumped in reserves to the banking system, the banks happily multiplied bank credit and created new money on top of those reserves. There has been a lot of focus on poor quality bank loans: on loans to bankrupt Third World countries or to bloated and, in retrospect, unsound real estate schemes and shopping malls in the middle of nowhere. But poor quality loans and investments are always the consequence of central bank and bank-credit expansion. The all-too-familiar cycle of boom and bust, euphoria and crash, prosperity and depression, did not begin in the 1980s. Nor is it a creature of civilization or the market economy. The boom-bust cycle began in the eighteenth century with the beginnings of central banking, and has spread and intensified ever since, as central banking spread and took control of the economic systems of the Western world. Only the abolition of the Federal Reserve System and a return to the gold standard can put an end to cyclical booms and busts, and finally eliminate chronic and accelerating inflation. Inflation, credit expansion, business cycles, heavy government debt, and high taxes are not, as Establishment historians claim, inevitable attributes of capitalism or of "modernization." On the contrary, these are profoundly anti-capitalist and parasitic excrescences grafted onto the system by the interventionist State, which rewards its banker and insider clients with hidden special privileges at the expense of everyone else. Crucial to free enterprise and capitalism is a system of firm rights of private property, with everyone secure in the property that he earns. Also crucial to capitalism is an ethic that encourages and rewards savings, thrift, hard work, and productive
enterprise, and that discourages profligacy and cracks down sternly on any invasion of property rights. And yet, as we have seen, cheap money and credit expansion gnaw away at those rights and at those virtues. Inflation overturns and transvalues values by rewarding the spendthrift and the inside fixer and by making a mockery of the older "Victorian" virtues.
OLD REPUBLIC
The restoration of American liberty and of the Old Republic is a multi-faceted task. It requires excising the cancer of the Leviathan State from our midst. It requires removing Washington, D.C., as the power center of the country. It requires restoring the ethics and virtues of the nineteenth century, the taking back of our culture from nihilism and victimology, and restoring that culture to health and sanity. In the long run, politics, culture, and the economy are indivisible. The restoration of the Old Republic requires an economic system built solidly on the inviolable rights of private property, on the right of every person to keep what he earns, and to exchange the products of his labor. To accomplish that task, we must once again have money that is produced on the market, that is gold rather than paper, with the monetary unit a weight of gold rather than the name of a paper ticket issued ad lib by the government. We must have investment determined by voluntary savings on the market, and not by counterfeit money and credit issued by a knavish and State-privileged banking system. In short, we must abolish central banking, and force the banks to meet their obligations as promptly as anyone else. Money and banking have been made to appear as mysterious and arcane processes that must be guided and operated by a technocratic elite. They are nothing of the sort. In money, even more than the rest of our affairs, we have been tricked by a malignant Wizard of Oz. In money, as in other areas of our lives, restoring common sense and the Old Republic go hand in hand. Z
73 THE WORLD CURRENCY CRISIS
he world is in permanent monetary crisis, but once in a while, the crisis flares up acutely, and we noisily shift gears from one flawed monetary system to another. We go back and forth from fixed paper rates to fluctuating rates, to some inchoate and aborted blend of the two. Each new system, each basic change, is hailed extravagantly by economists, bankers, the financial press, politicians, and central banks, as the final and permanent solution to our persistent monetary woes. Then, after some years, the inevitable breakdown occurs, and the Establishment trots out another bauble, another wondrous monetary nostrum for us to admire. Right now, we are on the edge of another shift. To stop this shell game, we must first understand it. First, we must realize that there are three coherent systems of international money, of which only one is sound and non-inflationary. The sound money is the genuine gold standard; "genuine" in the sense that each currency is defined as a certain unit of weight of gold, and is redeemable at that weight. Exchange rates between currencies were "fixed" in the sense that each was defined as a given weight of gold; for example, since the dollar was defined as one-twentieth of a gold ounce and the pound sterling as .24 of a gold ounce, the exchange rate between the two was naturally fixed at their proportionate gold weight, i.e., £ 1 = $4.87. The other two systems are the Keynesian ideal, where all currencies are fixed in terms of an international paper unit, and fluctuating independent fiat-paper moneys. Keynes wanted to call his new world paper unit the bancor while U.S. Treasury official (and secret Communist) Harry Dexter White wanted to
name it the unita. Bancor or unita, these new paper tickets would ideally be issued by a World Reserve Bank and would form the reserves of the various central banks. Then, the World Reserve Bank could inflate the bancor at will, and the bancor would provide reserves upon which the Fed, the Bank of England, etc. could pyramid a multiple expansion of their respective national fiat currencies. The whole world would then be able to inflate together, and therefore not suffer the inconvenience of inflationary countries losing either gold or income to sound-money countries. All the countries could inflate in a centrally-coordinated fashion, and we could suffer manipulation and inflation by a world government-banking elite without check or hindrance. At the end of the road would be a horrendous worldwide hyper-inflation, with no way of escaping into sounder or less inflated currencies. Fortunately, national rivalries have prevented the Keynesians from achieving their goal, and so they had to settle for "second best," the Bretton Woods system that the U.S. and Britain foisted on the world in 1944, and which lasted until its collapse in 1971. Instead of the bancor, the dollar served as the international reserve upon which other currencies could pyramid their money and credit. The dollar, in turn, was tied to gold in a mockery of a genuine gold standard, at the pre-war par of $35 per ounce. In the first place, dollars were not redeemable in gold coins, as they had been before, but only in large and heavy gold bars, which were worth many thousands of dollars. And second, only foreign governments and central banks could redeem their dollars in gold even on this limited basis. For two decades, the system seemed to work well, as the U.S. issued more and more dollars, and they were then used by foreign central banks as a base for their own inflation. In short, for years the U.S. was able to "export inflation" to foreign countries without suffering the ravages itself. Eventually, however, the ever-more inflated dollar became depreciated on the gold market, and the lure of high priced gold they could obtain from the U.S. at the bargain $35 per ounce led European central banks
to cash in dollars for gold. The house of cards collapsed when President Nixon, in an ignominious declaration of bankruptcy, slammed shut the gold window and went off the last remnants of the gold standard in August 1971. With Bretton Woods gone, the Western powers now tried a system that was not only unstable but also incoherent: fixing exchange rates without gold or even any international paper money with which to make payments. The Western powers signed the ill-fated Smithsonian Agreement on December 18, 1971, which was hailed by President Nixon as "the greatest monetary agreement in the history of the world." But if currencies are purely fiat, with no international money, they become goods in themselves, and fixed exchange rates are then bound to violate the market rates set by supply and demand. At that time the inflated dollar was heavily overvalued in regard to Western European and Japanese currencies. At the overvalued dollar rate, there were repeated scrambles to buy European and Japanese moneys at bargain rates, and to get rid of dollars. Repeated "shortages" of the harder moneys resulted from this maximum price control of their exchange rates. Finally, panic selling of the dollar broke the Smithsonian system apart in March 1973. With the collapse of Bretton Woods and the far more rapid disintegration of the "greatest monetary agreement" in world history, both the phony gold standard and the fixed paper exchange rate systems were widely and correctly seen to be inherent failures. The world now embarked, almost by accident on a new era: a world of fluctuating fiat paper moneys. Friedmanite monetarism was to have its day in the sun. The Friedmanite monetarists had come into their own, replacing the Keynesians as the favorites of the financial press and of the international monetary establishment. Governments and central banks began to hail the soundness and permanence of fluctuating exchange rates as fervently as they had once trumpeted the eternal virtues of Bretton Woods. The monetarists proclaimed the ideal international monetary system to be freely fluctuating exchange rates between different moneys, with no
government intervention to try to stabilize or even moderate the fluctuations. In that way, exchange rates would reflect, from day to day, the fluctuations of supply and demand, just as prices do on the free market. Of course, the world had suffered mightily from fluctuating fiat money in the not too distant past: the 1930s, when every country had gone off gold (a phony gold standard preserved for foreign central banks by the United States). The problem is that each nation-state kept fixing its exchange rates, and the result was currency blocs, aggressive devaluations attempting to expand exports and restrict imports, and economic warfare culminating in World War II. So the monetarists were insistent that the fluctuations must be absolutely free of all government intervention. But, in the fist place, the Friedmanite plan is politically so naive as to be almost impossible to put into practice. For what the monetarists do, in effect, is to make each currency fiat paper issued by the national government. They give total power over money to that government and its central bank, and then they issue stern admonitions to the wielders of absolute power: "Remember, use your power wisely, don't under any circumstances interfere with exchange rates." But inevitably, governments will find many reasons to interfere: to force exchange rates up or down, or stabilize them, and there is nothing to stop them from exercising their natural instincts to control and intervene. And so what we have had since 1973 is an incoherent blend of "fixed" and fluctuating, unhampered and hampered, foreign currency markets. Even Beryl W. Sprinkel, a dedicated monetarist who served as Undersecretary of Treasury for Monetary Policy in the first Reagan administration, was forced to backtrack on his early achievement of persuading the administration to decontrol exchange rates. Even he was compelled to intervene in "emergency" situations, and now the second Reagan administration moved insistently in the direction of refixing exchange rates.
The problem with freely fluctuating rates is not only political. One virtue of fixed rates, especially under gold, but even to some extent under paper, is that they keep a check on national inflation by central banks. The virtue of fluctuating rates—that they prevent sudden monetary crises due to arbitrarily valued currencies—is a mixed blessing, because at least those crises provided a much-needed restraint on domestic inflation. Freely fluctuating rates mean that the only damper on domestic inflation is that the currency might depreciate. Yet countries often want their money to depreciate, as we have seen in the recent agitation to soften the dollar and thereby subsidize exports and restrict imports—a back-door protectionism. The current refixers have one sound point: that worldwide inflation only became rampant in the mid and late 1970s, after the last fixed-rate discipline was removed. The refixers are on the march. During November 1985, a major, well-publicized international monetary conference took place in Washington, organized by U.S. Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Bill Bradley, and including representatives from the Fed, foreign central banks, and Wall Street banks. This liberal-conservative spectrum agreed on the basic objective: refixing exchange rates. But refixing is no solution; it will only bring back the arbitrary valuations, and the breakdowns of Bretton Woods and the Smithsonian. Probably what we will get eventually is a worldwide application of the current "snake," in which Western European currencies are tied together so that they can fluctuate but only within a fixed zone. This pointless and inchoate blend of fixed and fluctuating currencies can only bring us the problems of both systems. When will we realize that only a genuine gold standard can bring us the virtues of both systems and a great deal more: free markets, absence of inflation, and exchange rates that are fixed not arbitrarily by government but as units of weights of a precious market commodity, gold? Z
74 NEW INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SCHEME
ver since the Western world abandoned the gold coin standard in 1914, the international monetary system has been rocketing from one bad system to another, from the frying pan to the fire and back again, fleeing the problems of one alternative only to find itself deeply unhappy in the other. Basically, only two alternative systems have been considered: (1) fiat money standards, each national fiat currency being governed by its own central bank, with relative values fluctuating in accordance with supply and demand; and, (2) some sort of fixed exchange rate system, governed by international coordination of economic policies. Our current System 1 came about willy-nilly in 1973, out of the collapse of Bretton Woods System 2 that had been imposed on the world by the United States and Britain in 1944. System 1, the monetarist or Friedmanite ideal, at best breaks up the world monetary system into national fiat enclaves, adds great uncertainties and distortions to the monetary system, and removes the check of external discipline from the inflationary propensities of every central bank. At worst, System 1 offers irresistible temptations to every government to intervene heavily in exchange rates, precipitating the world into currency blocs, protectionist blocs, and "beggar-my-neighbor" policies of competing currency devaluations such as the economic warfare of the 1930s that helped generate World War II. The problem is that shifting to System 2 is truly a leap from the frying pan into the fire. The national fiat blocs of the 1930s emerged out of the System 2 pound sterling standard in which other countries pyramided an inflation of their currencies on top of inflating pounds sterling, while Britain retained a nominal but
phony gold standard. The 1930s system was itself replaced by Bretton Woods, a world dollar standard, in which other countries were able to inflate their own currencies on top of inflating dollars, while the United States maintained a nominal but phony gold standard at $35 per gold ounce. Now the problems of the Friedmanite System 1 are inducing plans for some sort of return to a fixed exchange rate system. Unfortunately, System 2 is even worse than System 1, for any successful coordination permits a concerted worldwide inflation, a far worse problem than particular national inflations. Exchange rates among fiat moneys have to fluctuate, since fixed exchange rates inevitably create Gresham's Law situations, in which undervalued currencies disappear from circulation. In the Bretton Woods system, American inflation permitted worldwide inflation, until gold became so undervalued at $35 an ounce that demands to redeem dollars in gold became irresistible, and the system collapsed. If System 1 is the Friedmanite ideal, then the Keynesian one is the most pernicious variant of System 2. For what Keynesians have long sought, notably in the Bernstein and Triffin Plans of old, and in the abortive attempt to make SDRs (special drawing rights) a new currency unit, is a World Reserve Bank issuing a new world paper-money unit, replacing gold altogether. Keynes called his suggested new unit the "bancor," and Harry Dexter White of the U.S. Treasury called his the "unita." Whatever the new unit may be called, such a system would be an unmitigated disaster, for it would allow the bankers and politicians running the World Reserve Bank to issue paper "bancors" without limit, thereby engineering a coordinated worldwide inflation. No longer would countries have to lose gold to each other, and they could fix their exchange rates without worrying about Gresham's Law. The upshot would be an eventual worldwide runaway inflation, with horrendous consequences for the entire world. Fortunately, a lack of market confidence, and inability to coordinate dozens of governments, have so far spared us this
Keynesian ideal. But now, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, an ominous trial balloon toward a World Reserve Bank had been floated. In a meeting in Hamburg, West Germany, 200 leading world bankers in an International Monetary Conference, urged the elimination of the current volatile exchange rate system, and a move towards fixed exchange rates. The theme of the Conference was set by its chairman, Willard C. Butcher, chairman and chief executive of Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. Butcher attacked the current system, and warned that it could not correct itself, and that a search for a better world currency system "must be intensified" (New York Times, June 23, 1987). It was not long before Toyo Gyoten, Japan's vice-minister of finance for international affairs, spelled out some of the concrete implications of this accelerated search. Gyoten proposed a huge multinational financial institution, possessing "at least several hundred billion dollars," that would be empowered to intervene in world financial markets to reduce volatility. And what is this if not the beginnings of a World Reserve Bank? Are Keynesian dreams at least beginning to come true? Z
75 "ATTACKING" THE FRANC
n all-too-familiar melodrama was played out in full on the stage of the world media. It was the same phony story, with the same Heroes and Villains. The French franc, a supposed noble currency, was "under attack." Previously in September, it was the British pound, and before that the Swedish krona. The "attack" is as fierce and mysterious as a shark attack in the coastal waters. The Hero is
the Prime Minister or Finance Minister of the country, who tries desperately to "defend the value" of the currency. Prime Minister Eduard Balladur of France, pledged himself to defend the "strong franc" (the franc fort) or go under (that is resign) in the attempt. The "defense" was waged, not with guns and planes, but with hard-currency reserves spent by the Bank of France, as well as many billions of dollars expended in the same cause by the German central bank, the Bundesbank. In many cases, international institutions and the Federal Reserve lend a hand in trying to support the value of the "threatened" currency. If national and international statesmen and governments are the Heroes, the Villains are speculators whose "attack" consists simply of selling the currency, the franc or pound, in exchange for currencies they consider "harder" and sounder, in this case the German mark, in other cases the U.S. dollar. The upshot is always the same. After weeks of hysteria and denunciation, the speculators win, even after repeated pledges by the prime minister or finance minister that such devaluations would never ever occur. The krona, the pound, or the franc is, one way or another, devalued. Its old official value is no more. The government loses a lot of money, but the promised resignations never take place. Prime Minister Balladur is still there, having saved face by widening the "permitted bands" of movement of the franc. And, as usual, after the hysteria passes, and the franc or pound or krona is finally lowered in value, everyone begins to realize, as if in a wonder of new insight, that the economy is really in better or at least more promising shape now than it was before the "attack" succeeded in its wicked work. Why the repeated subjection of currencies to attack? And why do the villains always win? And why do things always seem better after the "defeat" than before? It's really fairly simple. A currency's value is determined like any commodity: the greater the supply, the lower the value;
the greater the demand, the higher the value. Before the twentieth century, national currencies were not independent commodities but definitions of weight of either gold or silver (sometimes, unfortunately, both). In the twentieth century, and especially since the last vestige of the gold standard was eliminated in 1971, each currency has been an independent commodity. The supply of francs or dollars consist in whatever francs or dollars are in existence. The "demand" to hold these currencies depends largely on people's expectations of what will happen to price, or to the value of the currency. The more a government inflates its currency, then, the lower will be the "value" of that currency in two ways: its purchasing power in terms of goods and services, and its value in other currencies. Inflationary currencies, therefore, will tend to suffer from rising prices domestically and from falling exchange rates in terms of other, less inflated currencies. A severely inflated currency will lead to a "flight" from that currency, since people expect greater inflation, and a flight into harder currencies. The best and least inflated form of money is a worldwide gold currency. But absent gold redeemability, and given our existing fiat national currencies, by far the best course is to allow exchange rates to float freely in the foreign exchange markets, where they at least clear the market and insure no shortage or oversupply of currencies. At least, the values reflect supply and demand. Governments like to pretend that the value of their currency is greater than it really is. If France really wants a "franc fort," the central bank should stop increasing the supply of francs on the market. Instead, governments habitually want to enjoy the goodies of inflation (higher prices, high government spending, subsidies, and cheap loans to friends and allies of the government), without suffering any loss of prestige. As a result, governments habitually set a value of their currency higher than the free-market rate. Fixing the exchange rate amounts to an artificial overvaluation (minimum price floor) of their own currency, and an artificial
undervaluation (maximum price ceilings) of such harder currencies as dollars and marks. The result is a "surplus" of francs or krona and a "shortage" of the harder currencies. To maintain this artificially high rate, the government and its allies have to pour in (waste) many billions of dollars in what is equivalent to price supports, which eventually must run down as the government runs out of money and patience. And since the overvalued currency under attack has only one way to go— down—speculators can move in for a handsome and sure profit. Blaming speculators for these crises is as absurd as blaming "black marketeers" for higher prices under price controls. The true villains are the supposed "heroes," those government officials trying, like King Canute, to command the tides, and to maintain artificial and unsound valuations. The alleged Heroes are even more villainous these days than usual. Since 1979, the European governments have been trying to maintain a fixed exchange rate system among themselves; in the last few years, they have been trying to close the allowed bands of fluctuation—2.25 percent plus or minus the official rate—in preparation for a single European Currency Unit (ECU) that was supposed to begin at the end of 1993 and would be issued by a single European central bank. A single European currency and central bank was sold to the world public as a giant "free trade unit," but it actually was a giant step toward centralized government in Brussels. It was a step toward the old Keynesian dream of a world paper unit by a World Reserve Bank administered by a world government. Fortunately, with the resistance to Maastricht, and then with the pullout of Britain from the European Currency System and the face-saving new system of very wide exchange rate bands, the ECU and the Keynesian dream lie all but dead. The world market has once against triumphed over Keynesian statism, even though the power seemed to be in the Establishment's hands. In the French case, there was another villain condemned by all. The German Bundesbank, worried about German inflation
as a result of the mammoth subsidies to East Germany, has not been as inflationary as France would have liked. One way for France or Britain to be able to enjoy the goodies of inflation without the embarrassment of a falling currency is to try to muscle harder currencies to inflate, dragging them down to the level of the weaker currencies. Fortunately, the Germans, even though they inflated a bit and wasted billions supporting the franc, did not inflate nearly as much as the French or British would have liked. Yet for pursuing a relatively sound monetary course, the Germans were condemned as "selfish," for they had not sacrificed their all for "Europe"—that is, for Keynesian inflationists and centralizing collectivists. It is all too easy to despair as we look around and see the world's governments and opinion organs in the hands of powerseeking collectivists. But there is mighty force in our favor. Free markets, not only the long run but often in the short run, will triumph over government power. The market proved mightier than communism and the gulag. Even in the much despised form of shadowy speculators, it has once again triumphed over unworkable and malevolent plans of statesmen and international Keynesians. Z
76 BACK TO FIXED EXCHANGE RATES
old on to your hats: the world has now embarked on yet another "new economic order"—which means another disaster in the making. Ever since the abandonment of the "classical" gold-coin standard in World War I (by the United States in 1933), world authorities have been searching for a way
to replace the peaceful world rule of gold by the coordinated, coercive rule of the world's governments. They have searched for a way to replace the sound money of gold by an internationally coordinated inflation which would provide cheap money, abundant increases in the money supply, increasing government expenditures, and prices that do not rise too wildly or too far out of control, and with no embarrassing monetary crises or excessive declines in any one country's currency. In short, governments have tried to square the circle, or, to have their pleasant inflationary cake without "eating" it by suffering decidedly unpleasant consequences. The first new economic order of the twentieth century was the New Era dominated by Great Britain, in which the world's countries were induced to ground their currencies on a phony gold standard, actually based on the British pound sterling, which was in turn loosely based on the dollar and gold. When this recipe for internationally coordinated inflation collapsed and helped create the Great Depression of the 1930s, a new and very similar international order was constructed at Bretton Woods in 1944. In this case, another phony gold standard was created, this time with all currencies based on the U.S. dollar, in turn supposedly redeemable, not in gold coin to the public, but in gold bullion to foreign central banks and governments at $35 an ounce. In the late 1920s, governments of the various nations could inflate their currencies by pyramiding on top of an inflating pound; similarly in the Bretton Woods system, the U.S. exported its own inflation by encouraging other countries to inflate on top of their expanding accumulation of dollar reserves. As world currencies, and especially the dollar, kept inflating, it became evident that gold was undervalued and dollars overvalued at the old $35 par, so that Western European countries, reluctant to continue inflationary policies, began to demand gold for their accumulated dollars (in short, Gresham's Law, that money overvalued by the government will drive undervalued money out of circulation, came into effect). Since
the U.S. was not able to redeem its gold obligations, President Nixon went off the Bretton Woods standard, which had come to its inevitable demise, in 1971. Since that date, or rather since 1933, the world has had a fluctuating fiat standard, that is, exchange rates of currencies have fluctuated in accordance with supply and demand on the market. There are grave problems with fluctuating exchange rates, largely because of the abandonment of one world money (i.e., gold) and the shift to international barter. Because there is no world money, every nation is free to inflate its own currency at will—and hence to suffer a decline in its exchange rates. And because there is no longer a world money, unpredictably fluctuating uncertain exchange rates create a double uncertainty on top of the usual price system—creating, in effect, multiprice systems in the world. The inflation and volatility under the fluctuating exchange rate regime has caused politicians and economists to try to resurrect a system of fixed exchange rates—but this time, without even the element of the gold standard that marked the Bretton Woods era. But without a world gold money, this means that nations are fixing exchange rates arbitrarily, without reference to supply and demand, and on the alleged superior wisdom of economists and politicians as to what exchange rates should be. Politicians are pressured by conflicting import and export interests, and economists have made the grave error of mistaking a long-run tendency (of exchange rates on a fluctuating market to rest at the proportion of purchasing-powers of the various currencies) for a criterion by which economists can correct the market. This attempt to place economists above the market overlooks the fact that the market properly sets exchange rates on the basis, not only of purchasing power proportions, but also expectations of the future, differences in interest rates, differences in tax policy, fears of future inflation or confiscation, etc. Once again, the market proves wiser than economists.
This new coordinated attempt to fix exchange rates is a hysterical reaction against the high dollar. The Group of Seven nations (the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, West Germany, Japan, and Canada) helped drive down the value of the dollar, and then, in their wisdom, in February 1987, decided that the dollar was now somehow at a perfect rate, and coordinated their efforts to keep the dollar from falling further. In reality, the dollar was high until early 1986 because foreigners had been unusually willing to invest in dollars—purchasing government bonds as well as other assets. While this happy situation continued, they were willing to finance Americans in buying cheap imports. After early 1987, this unusual willingness disappeared, and the dollar began to fall in order to equilibrate the U.S. balance of payments. Artificially propping up the dollar in 1987 has led the other countries of the Group of Seven to purchase billions of dollars with their own currencies—a shortsighted effort which cannot last forever, especially because West Germany and Japan have fortunately not been willing to inflate their own currencies and lower their interest rates further, to divert capital from themselves toward the U.S. Instead of realizing that this coordination game is headed toward inevitable crisis and collapse, Secretary of Treasury James Baker, the creator of the new system, proposes to press ahead to a more formal New Order. In his September speech to the IMF and World Bank, Secretary Baker proposed a formal, coordinated regime of fixed exchange rates, in which—as a sop to public sentiment for gold—gold is to have an extremely shadowy, almost absurd, role. In the course of fine tuning the world economy, the central banks and treasuries of the world, in addition to looking at various "indicators" on their control panelsprice levels, interest rates, GNP, unemployment rates, etc.—will also be consulting a new commodity price index of their own making which, by secret formula, would also include gold. Such a ludicrous substitute for genuine gold money will certainly fool no one, and is an almost laughable example of the love of central bankers and treasury officials for secrecy and
mystification for its own sake, so as to bewilder and bamboozle the public. I do not often agree with J.K. Galbraith, but he is certainly on the mark when he calls this new secret index a "marvelous exercise in fantasy and obfuscation." Politically, the secret index embodies a ruling alliance within the Reagan administration between such conservative Keynesians as Secretary Baker and such supply-siders as Professor Robert Mundell and Congressman Jack Kemp (who have both hailed the scheme as a glorious step in the right direction). The supply-siders have long desired the restoration of a Bretton Woods-type system that would allow coordinated cheap money and inflation worldwide, coupled with a phony gold standard as camouflage, so as to build unjustified confidence in the new scheme among the pro-gold public. The conservative Keynesians have long desired a new Bretton Woods, based eventually on a new world paper unit issued by a World Central Bank. Hence the new alliance. The alliance was made politically possible by the disappearance from the Reagan administration of the Friedmanite monetarists, such as former Undersecretary of Treasury for Monetary Policy Beryl W. Sprinkel and Jerry Jordan, spokesmen for fluctuating exchange rates. With monetarism discredited by the repeated failures of their monetary predictions over the last several years, the route was cleared for a new international, fixed-rates system. Unfortunately, the only thing worse than fluctuating exchange rates is fixed exchange rates based on fiat money and international coordination. Before rates were allowed to fluctuate, and after the end of Bretton Woods, the U.S. government tried such an order, in the international Smithsonian Agreement of December 1971. President Nixon hailed this agreement as "the greatest monetary agreement in the history of the world." This exercise in international coordination lasted no more than a year and a half, foundering on monetary crises brought about by Gresham's Law from overvaluation of the dollar. How long will it take this new, New Order, along with its puerile secret index, to collapse as well? Z
77 THE CROSS OF FIXED EXCHANGE RATES
overnments, especially including the U.S. government, seem to be congenitally incapable of keeping their mitts off any part of the economy. Government, aided and abetted by its host of apologists among intellectuals and policy wonks, likes to regard itself as a deus ex machina (a "god out of the machine") that surveys its subjects with Olympian benevolence and omniscience, and then repeatedly descends to earth to fix up the numerous "market failures" that mere people, in their ignorance, persist in committing. The fact that history is a black record of continual gross failure by this "god," and that economic theory explains why it must be so, makes no impression on official political discourse. Every Nation-State, for example, is continually tempted to intervene to fix its exchange rates, the rates of its fiat paper money in terms of the scores of other moneys issued by all the other governments in the world.
Governments don't know, and don't want to know, that the only successful fixing of exchange rates occurred, not coincidentally, in the era of the gold standard. In that era, money was a market commodity, produced on the market rather than manufactured ad lib by a government or a central bank. Fixed exchange rates worked because these national money units—the dollar, the pound, the lira, the mark, etc.—were not independent things or entities. Rather each was defined as a certain weight of gold. Like all definitions such as the yard, the ton, etc., the point of the definition was that, once set, it was fixed forever. Thus,
for example, if, as was roughly the case in the nineteenth century, "the dollar" was defined as 1/20 of a gold ounce, "the pound" as 1/4 of a gold ounce, and "the French franc" as 1/100 of a gold ounce, the "exchange rates" were simply proportional gold weights of the various currency units, so that the pound would automatically be worth $5, the franc would automatically be worth 20 cents, etc. The United States dropped the gold standard in 1933, with the last international vestiges discarded in 1971. After the whole world followed, each national currency became a separate and independent entity, or good, from all the others. Therefore a "market" developed immediately among them, as a market will always develop among different tradable goods. If these exchange markets are left alone by governments, then exchange rates will fluctuate freely. They will fluctuate in accordance with the supplies and demands for each currency in terms of the others, and the day-to-day rates will reflect supply and demand conditions and, as in the case of all other goods, "clear the market" so as to equate supply and demand, and therefore assure that there will be no shortages or unsold surpluses of any of the moneys. Fluctuating fiat moneys, as the world has discovered once again, since 1971, are unsatisfactory. They cripple the advantages of international money and virtually return the world to barter. They fail to provide the check against inflation by governments and central banks once supplied by the stern necessity of redeeming their monetary issues in gold. What the world has failed to grasp is that there is one thing much worse than fluctuating fiat moneys: and that is fiat money where governments try to fix the exchange rates. For, as in the case of any price control, governments will invariably fix their rates either above or below the free market rate. Whichever route they take, government fixing will create undesirable consequences, will cause unnecessary monetary crises, and, in the long run, cannot be sustained and will end up in ignominious failure.
One crucial point is that government fixing of exchange rates will inevitably set "Gresham's Law" to work: that is, the money artificially undervalued by the government (set at a price too low by the government) will tend to disappear from the market ("a shortage"), while money overvalued by government (price set too high) will tend to pour into circulation and constitute a "surplus." The Clinton administration, which seems to have a homing instinct for economic fallacy, has been as bumbling and inconsistent in monetary policy as in all other areas. Thus, until recently, the administration, absurdly worried about a seemingly grave (but actually non-existent) balance of payments "deficit," has tried to push down the exchange rate of the dollar in order to stimulate exports and restrict imports. There is no way, however, that government can ever find and set some sort of "ideal" exchange rate. A cheaper dollar encourages exports all right, but the administration eventually came to realize that there is an inevitable down side: namely, that import prices of course are higher, which removes competition that will keep domestic prices down. Instead of learning the lesson that there is no ideal exchange rate apart from determination by the free market, the Clinton administration, as is its wont, reversed itself abruptly, and orchestrated a multi-billion campaign by the Fed and other major central banks to prop up the sinking dollar, as against the German mark and the Japanese yen. The dollar rate rose slightly, and the media congratulated Clinton for propping up the dollar. Overlooked in the hosannahs are several intractable problems. First, billions of taxpayers money, here and abroad, are being devoted to distorting market exchange rates. Second, since the exchange rate is being coercively propped up, such "successes" cannot be repeated for long. How long before the Fed runs out of marks and yen with which to keep up the dollar? How long before Germany, Japan, and other countries tire of inflating their currencies in order to keep the dollar artificially high?
If the Clinton administration persists, even in the face of these consequences, in trying to hold the dollar artificially high, it will have to meet the developing mark and yen "shortages" by imposing exchange controls and mark-and-yen-rationing on American citizens. In the meantime, one of the first bitter fruits of Nafta has already appeared. Like all other modern "free trade" agreements, Nafta serves as a back-channel to international currency regulation and fixed exchange rates. One of the unheralded aspects of Nafta was joint government action in propping up each others' exchange rates. In practice, this means artificial overvaluation of the Mexican peso, which has been dropping sharply on the market, in response to Mexican inflation and political instability. Thus, Nafta originally set up a "temporary" $6 billion credit pool to aid mutual overvaluation of exchange rates. With the peso slipping badly, falling 6 percent against the dollar since January, the Nafta governments, in late April, made the credit pool permanent, and raised it to $8.8 billion. Moreover, the three Nafta countries created a new North American Financial Group, consisting of the respective finance ministers and central bank chairman, to "oversee economic and financial issues affecting the North American partners." Robert D. Hormats, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, hailed the new arrangement as "a logical progression from trade and investment cooperation between the three countries to greater monetary and fiscal cooperation." Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is to point out that this is one more step of the U.S. government toward arrangements that will distort exchange rates, create monetary crises and currency shortages, and waste taxpayers' money and economic resources. Worst of all, the U.S. is marching inexorably toward economic regulation and planning by regional, and even world, governmental bureaucracies, out of control and accountable to no one, to none of the subject peoples anywhere on the globe. Z
THE KEYNESIAN DREAM
or a half-century, the Keynesians have harbored a Dream. They have long dreamed of a world without gold, a world rid of any restrictions upon their desire to spend and spend, inflate and inflate, elect and elect. They have achieved a world where governments and Central Banks are free to inflate without suffering the limits and restrictions of the gold standard. But they still chafe at the fact that, although national governments are free to inflate and print money, they yet find themselves limited by depreciation of their currency. If Italy, for example, issues a great many lira, the lira will depreciate in terms of other currencies, and Italians will find the prices of their imports and of foreign resources skyrocketing. What the Keynesians have dreamed of, then, is a world with one fiat currency, the issues of that paper currency being generated and controlled by one World Central Bank. What you call the new currency unit doesn't really matter: Keynes called his proposed unit at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, the "bancor"; Harry Dexter White, the U.S. Treasury negotiator at that time, called his proposed money the "unita"; and the London Economist has dubbed its suggested new world money the "phoenix." Fiat money by any name smells as sour. Even though the United States and its Keynesian advisers dominated the international monetary scene at the end of World War II, they could not impose the full Keynesian goal; the jealousies and conflicts of national sovereignty were too intense. So the Keynesians reluctantly had to settle for the jerry-built dollar-gold international standard at Bretton Woods, with exchange rates flexibly fixed, and with no World Central Bank at its head. As determined men with a goal, the Keynesians did not fail from not trying. They launched the Special Drawing Right
(SDR) as an attempt to replace gold as an international reserve money, but SDRs proved to be a failure. Prominent Keynesians such as Edward M. Bernstein of the International Monetary Fund and Robert Triffin of Yale, launched well-known Plans bearing their names, but these too were not adopted. Ever since the Bretton Woods system, hailed for nearly three decades as stable and eternal, collapsed in 1971, the Keynesians have had to suffer the indignity of floating exchange rates. Ever since the accession of Keynesian James R. Baker as Secretary of Treasury in 1985, the United States has abandoned its brief commitment to a monetarist hands-off the foreign exchange market policy, and has tried to engineer a phase transformation of the international monetary system. First, fixed exchange rates would be obtained by coordinated action of the large Central Banks. This has largely been achieved, at first covertly and then openly; the leading Central Banks picked a target point or zone, for, say, the dollar, and then by buying and selling dollars, manipulated exchange rates to stay within that zone. Their main difficulty has been figuring out what target to pick, since, indeed, they have no wisdom in rate-fixing beyond that of the market. Indeed, the concept of a just exchange-rate for the dollar is just as inane as the notion of the "just price" for a particular good. A tempting opportunity for mischief has been offered the Keynesians by the coming of the European Community in 1992. The Keynesians, led by now Secretary of State James Baker, have been pushing for a new currency unit for this United Europe, to be issued by a European-wide Central Bank. This would not only mean an international economic government for Europe, it would also mean that it would become relatively easy for the post-1992 European Central Bank to become coordinated with the Central Banks of the United States and Japan, and to segue without too much trouble to the long-cherished goal of the World Central Bank and world currency unit. Inflationist European countries, such as Italy and France, are eager for the coordinated European-wide inflation that a regional Central Bank would bring about. Hard-money countries such
as West Germany, however, are highly critical of inflationary schemes. You would expect Germany, therefore, to resist these Europeanist demands; so why don't they? The problem is that, ever since World War II, the United States has had enormous political leverage upon West Germany and the United States and its Keynesian foreign secretary Baker have been pushing hard for European monetary unity. Only Great Britain, happily, has been throwing a monkey-wrench into these Keynesian proceedings. Hard-money oriented, and wary of infringements on its sovereignty—and also influenced by Monetarist adviser Sir Alan Wakers—Britain might just succeed in blocking the European Central Bank indefinitely. At best, the Keynesian Dream is a long shot. It is always possible that, not only British opposition, but also the ordinary and numerous frictions between sovereign nations will insure that the Dream will never be achieved. It would be heartening, however, if principled opposition to the Dream could also be mounted. For what the Keynesians want is no less than an internationally coordinated and controlled worldwide, paper-money inflation, a fine-tuned inflation that would proceed unchecked upon its merry way until, whoops!, it landed the entire world smack into the middle of the untold horrors of global runaway hyperinflation. Z
79 MONEY INFLATION AND PRICE INFLATION
he Reagan administration seemed to have achieved the culmination of its "economic miracle" of the last several years: while the money supply had skyrocketed upward in double digits, the consumer price index remained virtually flat. Money cheap and abundant, stock and bond markets boomed, and yet
prices remaining stable: what could be better than that? Had the President, by inducing Americans to feel good and stand tall, really managed to repeal economic law? Had soft soap been able to erase the need for "root-canal" economics? In the first place, we have heard that song before. During every boom period, statesmen, economists, and financial writers manage to find reasons for proclaiming that now, this time, we are living in a new age where old-fashioned economic law has been nullified and cast into the dust bin of history. The 1920s is a particularly instructive decade, because then we had expanding money and credit, and a stock and bond market boom, while prices remained constant. As a result, all the experts as well as the politicians announced that we were living in a brand "new era," in which new tools available to government had eliminated inflations and depressions. What were these marvelous new tools? As Bernard M. Baruch explained in an optimistic interview in the spring of 1929, they were (a) expanded cooperation between government and business; and (b) the Federal Reserve Act, "which gave us coordinated control of our financial resources and . . . a unified banking system." And, as a result, the country was brimming with "self-confidence." But, also as a result of these tools, there came 1929 and the Great Depression. Unfortunately both of these mechanisms are with us today in aggravated form. And great self confidence, which persisted in the market and among the public into 1931, didn't help one whit when the fundamental realities took over. But the problem is not simply history. There are very good reasons why monetary inflation cannot bring endless prosperity. In the first place, even if there were no price inflation, monetary inflation is a bad proposition. For monetary inflation is counterfeiting, plain and simple. As in counterfeiting, the creation of new money simply diverts resources from producers, who have gotten their money honestly, to the early recipients of the new
money—to the counterfeiters, and to those on whom they spend their money. Counterfeiting is a method of taxation and redistribution— from producers to counterfeiters and to those early in the chain when counterfeiters spend their money and the money gets respent. Even if prices do not increase, this does not alleviate the coercive shift in income and wealth that takes place. As a matter of fact, some economists have interpreted price inflation as a desperate method by which the public, suffering from monetary inflation, tries to recoup its command of economic resources by raising prices at least as fast, if not faster, than the government prints new money. Second, if new money is created via bank loans to business, as much of it is, the money inevitably distorts the pattern of productive investments. The fundamental insight of the "Austrian," or Misesian, theory of the business cycle is that monetary inflation via loans to business causes overinvestment in capital goods, especially in such areas as construction, long-term investments, machine tools, and industrial commodities. On the other hand, there is a relative underinvestment in consumer goods industries. And since stock prices and real-estate prices are titles to capital goods, there tends as well to be an excessive boom in the stock and real-estate markets. It is not necessary for consumer prices to go up, and therefore to register as price inflation. And this is precisely what happened in the 1920s, fooling economists and financiers unfamiliar with Austrian analysis, and lulling them into the belief that no great crash or recession would be possible. The rest is history. So, the fact that prices have remained stable recently does not mean that we will not reap the whirlwind of recession and crash. But why didn't prices rise in the 1920s? Because the enormous increase in productivity and the supply of goods offset the increase of money. This offset did not, however, prevent a crash from developing, even though it did avert price inflation. Our good fortune, unfortunately, is not due to increased productivity.
Productivity growth has been minimal since the 1970s, and real income and the standard of living have barely increased since that time. The offsets to price inflation in the 1980s have been very different. At first, during the Reagan administration, a severe depression developed in 1981 and continued into 1983, of course dragging down the price inflation rate. Recovery was slow at first, and in the later years, three special factors held down price inflation. An enormous balance of trade deficit of $150 billion was eagerly enhanced by foreign investors in American dollars, which kept the dollar unprecedentedly high, and therefore import prices low, despite the huge deficit. Second, and unusually, a flood of cash dollars stayed overseas, in hyperinflating countries of Asia and Latin America, to serve as underground money in place of the increasingly worthless domestic currency. And third, the well-known collapse of the OPEC cartel at last brought down oil and petroleum product prices to free-market levels. But all of these offsets were obviously one-shot, and rapidly came to an end. In fact, the dollar declined in value, compared to foreign currencies, by about 30 percent in the year following the "recovery." We are left with the fourth offset to price inflation, the increased willingness by the public to hold money rather than spend it, as the public has become convinced that the Reagan administration has discovered the secrets to an economic miracle in which prices will never rise again. But the public has not been deeply convinced of this, because real interest rates (interest rates in money minus the inflation rate) are at the highest level in our history. And interest rates are strongly affected by people's expectations of future price inflation; the higher the expectation, the higher the interest rate. We may therefore expect a resumption of price inflation before long, and, as the public begins to wake up to the humbug nature of the "economic miracle," we may expect that inflation to accelerate. Z
80 BANK CRISIS!
here has been a veritable revolution in the attitude of the nation's economists, as well as the public, toward our banking system. Ever since 1933, it was a stern dogma—a virtual article of faith—among economic textbook authors, financial writers, and all Establishment economists from Keynesians to Friedmanites, that our commercial banking system was super-safe. Because of the wise Establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933, that dread scourge— the bank run—was a thing of the reactionary past. Depositors are now safe because the FDIC "insures," that is, guarantees, all bank deposits. Those of us who kept warning that the banking system was inherently unsound and even insolvent were considered nuts and crackpots, not in tune with the new dispensation. But since the collapse of the S & Ls, a catastrophe destined to cost the taxpayers between a half-trillion and a trillion-anda-half dollars, this Pollyanna attitude has changed. It is true that by liquidating the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation into the FDIC, the Establishment has fallen back on the FDIC, its last line of defense, but the old assurance is gone. All the pundits and moguls are clearly whistling past the graveyard. In 1985, however, the bank-run—supposedly consigned to bad memories and old movies on television—was back in force—replete with all the old phenomena: night-long lines waiting for the bank to open, mendacious assurances by the bank's directors that the bank was safe and everyone should go home, insistence by the public on getting their money out of the bank, and subsequent rapid collapse. As in 1932–33, the governors of the respective states closed down the banks to prevent them from having to pay their sworn debts.
The bank runs began with S & Ls in Ohio and then Maryland that were insured by private insurers. Runs returned again this January among Rhode Island credit unions that were "insured" by private firms. And a few days later, the Bank of New England, after announcing severe losses that rendered it insolvent, experienced massive bank runs up to billions of dollars, during which period Chairman Lawrence K. Fish rushed around to different branches falsely assuring customers that their money was safe. Finally, to save the bank the FDIC took it over and is in the highly expensive process of bailing it out. A fascinating phenomenon appeared in these modern as well as the older bank runs: when one "unsound" bank was subjected to a fatal run, this had a domino effect on all the other banks in the area, so that they were brought low and annihilated by bank runs. As a befuddled Paul Samuelson, Mr. Establishment Economics, admitted to the Wall Street Journal after this recent bout, "I didn't think I'd live to see again the day when there are actually bank runs. And when good banks have runs on them because some unlucky and bad banks fail . . . we're back in a time warp." A time warp indeed: just as the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe has put us back to 1945 or even 1914, banks are once again at risk. What is the reason for this crisis? We all know that the real estate collapse is bringing down the value of bank assets. But there is no "run" on real estate. Values simply fall, which is hardly the same thing as everyone failing and going insolvent. Even if bank loans are faulty and asset values come down, there is no need on that ground for all banks in a region to fail. Put more pointedly, why does this domino process affect only banks, and not real estate, publishing, oil, or any other industry that may get into trouble? Why are what Samuelson and other economists call "good" banks so all-fired vulnerable, and then in what sense are they really "good"? The answer is that the "bad" banks are vulnerable to the familiar charges: they made reckless loans, or they overinvested
in Brazilian bonds, or their managers were crooks. In any case, their poor loans put their assets into shaky shape or made them actually insolvent. The "good" banks committed none of these sins; their loans were sensible. And yet, they too, can fall to a run almost as readily as the bad banks. Clearly, the "good" banks are in reality only slightly less unsound than the bad ones. There therefore must be something about all banks—commercial, savings, S & L, and credit union—which make them inherently unsound. And that something is very simple although almost never mentioned: fractional-reserve banking. All these forms of banks issue deposits that are contractually redeemable at par upon the demand of the depositor. Only if all the deposits were backed 100 percent by cash at all times (or, what is the equivalent nowadays, by a demand deposit of the bank at the Fed which is redeemable in cash on demand) can the banks fulfill these contractual obligations. Instead of this sound, non-inflationary policy of 100 percent reserves, all of these banks are both allowed and encouraged by government policy to keep reserves that are only a fraction of their deposits, ranging from 10 percent for commercial banks to only a couple of percent for the other banking forms. This means that commercial banks inflate the money supply tenfold over their reserves a policy that results in our system of permanent inflation, periodic boom-bust cycles, and bank runs when the public begins to realize the inherent insolvency of the entire banking system. That is why, unlike any other industry, the continued existence of the banking system rests so heavily on "public confidence," and why the Establishment feels it has to issue statements that it would have to admit privately were bald lies. It is also why economists and financial writers from all parts of the ideological spectrum rushed to say that the FDIC "had to" bail out all the depositors of the Bank of New England, not just those who were "insured" up to $100,000 per deposit account. The FDIC had to perform this bailout, everyone said, because "otherwise the financial system would collapse." That is,
everyone would find out that the entire fractional-reserve system is held together by lies and smoke and mirrors; that is, by an Establishment con. Once the public found out that their money is not in the banks, and that the FDIC has no money either, the banking system would quickly collapse. Indeed, even financial writers are worried since the FDIC has less than 0.7 percent of deposits they "insure," estimated soon be down to only 0.2 percent of deposits. Amusingly enough, the "safe" level is held to be 1.5 percent! The banking system, in short, is a house of cards, the FDIC as well as the banks themselves. Many free-market advocates wonder: why is it that I am a champion of free markets, privatization, and deregulation everywhere else, but not in the banking system? The answer should now be clear: Banking is not a legitimate industry, providing legitimate service, so long as it continues to be a system of fractional-reserve banking: that is, the fraudulent making of contracts that it is impossible to honor. Private deposit insurance—the proposal of the "free-banking" advocates—is patently absurd. Private deposit insurance agencies are the first to collapse, since everyone knows they haven't got the money. Besides, the "free bankers" don't answer the question why, if banking is as legitimate as every other industry, it needs this sort of "insurance"? What other industry tries to insure itself? The only reason the FDIC is still standing while the FSLIC and private insurance companies have collapsed, is because the people believe that, even though it technically doesn't have the money, if push came to shove, the Federal Reserve would simply print the cash and give it to the FDIC. The FDIC in turn would give it to the banks, not even burdening the taxpayer as the government has done in the recent bailouts. After all, isn't the FDIC backed by "full faith and credit" of the federal government, whatever that may mean? Yes, the FDIC could, in the last analysis, print all the cash and give it to the banks, under cover of some emergency decree or
statute. But . . . there's a hitch. If it does so, this means that all the trillion or so dollars of bank deposits would be turned into cash. The problem, however, is that if the cash is redeposited in the banks, their reserves would increase by that hypothetical trillion, and the banks could then multiply new money immediately by 10–20 trillion, depending upon their reserve requirements. And that, of course, would be unbelievably inflationary, and would hurl us immediately into 1923 German-style hyperinflation. And that is why no one in the Establishment wants to discuss this ultimate failsafe solution. It is also why it would be far better to suffer a one-shot deflationary contraction of the fraudulent fractional-reserve banking system, and go back to a sound system of 100 percent reserves. Z
ANATOMY OF THE BANK RUN
t was a scene familiar to any nostalgia buff: all-night lines waiting for the banks (first in Ohio, then in Maryland) to open; pompous but mendacious assurances by the bankers that all is well and that the people should go home; a stubborn insistence by depositors to get their money out; and the consequent closing of the banks by government, while at the same time the banks were permitted to stay in existence and collect the debts due them by their borrowers. In other words, instead of government protecting private property and enforcing voluntary contracts, it deliberately violated the property of the depositors by barring them from retrieving their own money from the banks. All this was, of course, a replay of the early 1930s: the last era of massive runs on banks. On the surface the weakness was the fact that the failed banks were insured by private or state deposit insurance agencies, whereas the banks that easily withstood the First published in September 1985.
storm were insured by the federal government (FDIC for commercial banks; FSLIC for savings and loan banks). But why? What is the magic elixir possessed by the federal government that neither private firms nor states can muster? The defenders of the private insurance agencies noted that they were technically in better financial shape than FSLIC or FDIC, since they had greater reserves per deposit dollar insured. How is it that private firms, so far superior to government in all other operations, should be so defective in this one area? Is there something unique about money that requires federal control? The answer to this puzzle lies in the anguished statements of the savings and loan banks in Ohio and in Maryland, after the first of their number went under because of spectacularly unsound loans. "What a pity," they in effect complained, "that the failure of this one unsound bank should drag the sound banks down with them!" But in what sense is a bank "sound" when one whisper of doom, one faltering of public confidence, should quickly bring the bank down? In what other industry does a mere rumor or hint of doubt swiftly bring down a mighty and seemingly solid firm? What is there about banking that public confidence should play such a decisive and overwhelmingly important role? The answer lies in the nature of our banking system, in the fact that both commercial banks and thrift banks (mutual-savings and savings-and-loan) have been systematically engaging in fractional-reserve banking: that is, they have far less cash on hand than there are demand claims to cash outstanding. For commercial banks, the reserve fraction is now about 10 percent; for the thrifts it is far less. This means that the depositor who thinks he has $10,000 in a bank is misled; in a proportionate sense, there is only, say, $1,000 or less there. And yet, both the checking depositor and the savings depositor think that they can withdraw their money at any time on demand. Obviously, such a system, which is considered fraud when practiced by other businesses, rests on a confidence trick: that is, it can only work so long as the bulk of
depositors do not catch on to the scare and try to get their money out. The confidence is essential, and also misguided. That is why once the public catches on, and bank runs begin, they are irresistible and cannot be stopped. We now see why private enterprise works so badly in the deposit insurance business. For private enterprise only works in a business that is legitimate and useful, where needs are being fulfilled. It is impossible to "insure" a firm, even less so an industry, that is inherently insolvent. Fractional reserve banks, being inherently insolvent, are uninsurable. What, then, is the magic potion of the federal government? Why does everyone trust the FDIC and FSLIC even though their reserve ratios are lower than private agencies, and though they too have only a very small fraction of total insured deposits in cash to stem any bank run? The answer is really quite simple: because everyone realizes, and realizes correctly, that only the federal government—and not the states or private firms—can print legal tender dollars. Everyone knows that, in case of a bank run, the U.S. Treasury would simply order the Fed to print enough cash to bail out any depositors who want it. The Fed has the unlimited power to print dollars, and it is this unlimited power to inflate that stands behind the current fractional-reserve banking system. Yes, the FDIC and FSLIC "work," but only because the unlimited monopoly power to print money can "work" to bail out any firm or person on earth. For it was precisely bank runs, as severe as they were that, before 1933, kept the banking system under check, and prevented any substantial amount of inflation. But now bank runs—at least for the overwhelming majority of banks under federal deposit insurance—are over, and we have been paying and will continue to pay the horrendous price of saving the banks: chronic and unlimited inflation. Putting an end to inflation requires not only the abolition of the Fed but also the abolition of the FDIC and FSLIC. At long last, banks would be treated like any firm in any other industry.
In short, if they can't meet their contractual obligations they will be required to go under and liquidate. It would be instructive to see how many banks would survive if the massive governmental props were finally taken away. Z
82 Q & A ON THE S & L MESS Q. When is a tax not a tax? A. When it's a "fee." It was only a question of time before we would discover what form of creative semantics President Bush would use to wiggle out of his "read my lips" pledge (bolstered by the Richard Darman "walks like a duck" corollary) never ever to raise taxes. Unfortunately, it took only a couple of weeks to discover the answer. No, it wasn't "revenue enhancement" or "equity" or "closing of loopholes" this time; it was the good old chestnut, the "fee." When Secretary of the Treasury Brady came up with the illfated "fee" proposal for all bank depositors to bail out the failed, insolvent S & L industry, President Bush likened it to the user fee the federal government charges for people to enter Yellowstone Park. But the federal government—unfortunately—owns Yellowstone and, as its owner, may arguably charge a fee for its use without it being labeled a "tax" (although even here problems can be raised since the government does not have the same philosophical or economic status as would a private owner). But on what basis can someone's use of his own money to deposit in an allegedly private savings and loan bank be called a "fee"? To whom, and for what? No, in the heartwarming firestorm of protest that arose, from the general public, and from all politicians and political observers, it was clear that to everyone except the Bush
administration, the proposed levy on savers looked, talked, and waddled very much like a tax-duck. Q. When is insurance not insurance? A. When you are trying to "insure" an industry that is already bankrupt. Sometimes, the tax that is supposedly not a tax is called, not a "fee" but an "insurance premium." When the barrage of public protest virtually sank the "fee" on savers, the Bush administration began to backpedal and to shift its proposal to a levy on other banks that are not yet officially insolvent, this new tax on banks to be termed a higher "insurance premium." But there are far more problems here than creative semantics. The very concept of "insurance" is fallacious. To "insure" a fractional-reserve banking system, whether it be the deposits of commercial banks, or of savings and loan banks, is absurd and impossible. It is very much like "insuring" the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Insurance is only an appropriate term and a feasible concept when there are certain near-measurable risks that can be pooled over large numbers of cases: fire, accident, disease, etc. But an entrepreneurial firm or industry cannot be "insured," since the entrepreneur is undertaking the sort of risks that precisely cannot be measured or pooled, and hence cannot be insured against. All the more is this true for an industry that is inherently and philosophically bankrupt anyway: fractional-reserve banking. Fractional-reserve S & L banking is pyramided dangerously on top of the fractional-reserve commercial banking system. The S & Ls use their deposits in commercial banks as their own reserves. Fractional reserve banks are philosophically bankrupt because they are engaged in a gigantic con-game: pretending that your deposits are there to be redeemed at any time you wish, while actually lending them out to earn interest. It is because fractional reserves are a giant con that these banks rely almost totally on public "confidence," and that is why
President Bush rushed to assure S & L depositors that their money is safe and that they should not be worried. The entire industry rests on gulling the public, and making them think that their money is safe and that everything is OK; fractional-reserve banking is the only industry in the country that can and will collapse as soon as that "confidence" falls apart. Once the public realizes that the whole industry is a scam, the jig is up, and it goes crashing down; in short, the whole operation is done with mirrors, and falls apart once the public finds out the score. The whole point of "insurance," then, is not to insure, but to swindle the public into placing its confidence where it does not belong. A few years ago, private deposit insurance fell apart in Ohio and Maryland because one or two big banks failed, and the public started to take their money out (which was not there) because their confidence was shaken. And now that one-third of the S & L industry is officially bankrupt—and yet allowed to continue operations—and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) is officially bankrupt as well, the tottering banking system is left with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC, which "insures" commercial banks, is still officially solvent. It is only in better shape than its sister FSLIC, however, because everyone perceives that behind the FDIC stands the unlimited power of the Federal Reserve to print money. Q. Why did deregulation fail in the case of the S & Ls? Doesn't this violate the rule that free enterprise always works better than regulation? A. The S & L industry is no free-market industry. It was virtually created, cartelized, and subsidized by the federal government. Formerly the small "building and loan" industry in the 1920s, the thrifts were totally transformed into the government-created and cartelized S & L industry by legislation of the early New Deal. The industry was organized under Federal Home Loan Banks and governed by a Federal Home Loan Board, which cartelized the industry, poured in reserves, and
inflated the nation's money supply by generating subsidized cheap credit and mortgages to the nation's housing and realestate industry. FSLIC was the Federal Home Board's form of "insurance" subsidy to the industry. Furthermore, the S & Ls persuaded the Federal Reserve to cartelize the industry still further by imposing low maximum interest rates that they would have to pay their gulled and hapless depositors. Since the average person, from the 1930s through the 1970s, had few other outlets for their savings than the S & Ls, their savings were coercively channeled into low-interest deposits, guaranteeing the S & Ls a hefty profit as they loaned out the money for higher-interest mortgages. In this way, the exploited depositors were left out in the cold to see their assets decimated by continuing inflation. The dam burst in the late 1970s, however, with the invention of the money-market mutual fund, which allowed the fleeced S & L depositors to take out their money in droves and put it into the funds paying market interest rates. The thrifts began to go bankrupt, and they were forced to clamor for elimination of the cartelized low rates to depositors, otherwise they would have gone under from money-market fund competition. But then, in order to compete with the high-yield funds, the S & Ls had to get out of low-yield mortgages, and go into swinging, speculative, and high-risk assets. The federal government obliged by "deregulating" the assets and loans of the S & Ls. But, of course, this was phony deregulation, since the FSLIC continued to guarantee the S & Ls' liabilities: their deposits. An industry that finds its assets unregulated while its liabilities are guaranteed by the federal government may be, in the short-run, at least, in a happy position; but it can in no sense be called an example of a free-enterprise industry. As a result of nearly a decade of wild speculative loans, official S & L bankruptcy has now piled up, to the tune of at least $100 billion. Q. How will the federal government get the funds to bail out the S & Ls and FSLIC, and, down the road, the FDIC?
A. There are three ways the federal government can bail out the S & Ls: increasing taxes, borrowing, or printing money and handing it over. It has already floated the lead balloon of raising "fees" on the depositing public, which is not only an outrageous tax on the public to bail out their own exploiters, but is also a massive tax on savings, which will decrease our relatively low amount of savings still further. On borrowing, it faces the much ballyhooed Gramm-Rudman obstacle, so the government is borrowing to bail out the S & Ls by floating special bonds that would not count in the federal budget. An example of creative accounting: if you want to balance a budget, spend money and don't count it in the budget! Q. So why doesn't the Fed simply print the money and give it to the S & Ls? A. It could easily do so, and the perception of the Fed's unlimited power to print provides the crucial support for the entire system. But there is a grave problem. Suppose that the ultimate bailout were $200 billion. After much hullaballoo and crisis management, the Fed simply printed $200 billion and handed it over to the S & L depositors, in the course of liquidating the thrifts. This in itself would not be inflationary, since the $200 billion of increased currency would only replace $200 billion in disappeared S & L deposits. But the big catch is the next step. If the public then takes this cash, and redeposits it in the commercial banking system, as they probably would, the banks would then enjoy an increase of $200 billion in reserves, which would then generate an immediate and enormously inflationary increase of about $2 trillion in the money supply. Therein lies the rub. Q. What's the solution to the S & L mess? A. What the government should do, if it had the guts, is to "fess up" that the S & Ls are broke, that its own "insurance" fund is broke, and therefore, that since the government has no money which it does not take from the taxpayer, that the S & Ls
should be allowed to go under and the mass of their depositors to lose their non-existent funds. In a genuine free-market economy, no one may exploit anyone else in order to acquire an ironclad guarantee against loss. The depositors must be allowed to go under along with the S & Ls. The momentary pain will be more than offset by the salutary lessons these depositors will have learned: don't trust the government, and don't trust fractional-reserve banking. One hopes that the depositors in fractional-reserve commercial banks will profit from this example and get their money out posthaste. All the commentators prate that the government "has to" borrow or tax to raise funds to pay off the S & L depositors. There is no "has to" about it; we live in a world of free will and free choice. Eventually, the only way to avoid similar messes is to scrap the current inflationist and cartelized system and move to a regime of truly sound money. That means a dollar defined as, and redeemable in, a specified weight of gold coin, and a banking system that keeps its cash or gold reserves 100 percent of its demand liabilities. Z
83 INFLATION REDUX nflation is back. Or rather, since inflation never really left, inflation is back, with a vengeance. After being driven down by the severe recession of 1981–82 from over 13 percent in 1980 to 3 percent in 1983, and even falling to 1 percent in 1986, consumer prices in the last few years have begun to accelerate upward. Back up to 4–5 percent in the last two years, price inflation finally
First published in May 1989.
drove its way into public consciousness in January 1989, rising at an annual rate of 7.2 percent. Austrians and other hard-money economists have been chided for the last several years: the money supply increased by about 13 percent in 1985 and 1986; why didn't inflation follow suit? The reason is that, unlike Chicago School monetarists, Austrians are not mechanists. Austrians do not believe in fixed leads and lags. After the money supply is increased, prices do not rise automatically; the resulting inflation depends on human choices and the public's decisions to hold or not to hold money. Such decisions depend on the insight and the expectations of individuals, and there is no way by which such perceptions and choices can be charted by economists in advance. As people began to spend their money, and the special factors such as the collapse of OPEC and the more expensive dollar began to disappear or work through their effects in the economy, inflation has begun to accelerate in response. The resumption and escalation of inflation in the last few years has inexorably drawn interest rates ever higher in response. The Federal Reserve, ever timorous and fearful about clamping down too tightly on money and precipitating a recession, allowed interest rates to rise only very gradually in reaction to inflation. In addition, Alan Greenspan has been talking a tough line on inflation so as to hold down inflationary expectations and thereby keep down interest yields on long-term bonds. But by insisting on gradualism, the Fed has only managed to prolong the agony for the market, and to make sure that interest rates, along with consumer prices, can only increase in the foreseeable future. Most of the nation's economists and financial experts are, as usual, caught short by the escalating inflation, and can make little sense out of the proceedings. One of the few perceptive responses was that of Donald Ratajczak of Georgia State University. Ratajczak scoffed: "The Fed always follows gradualism, and it never works. And you have to ask after a while, Don't they read their own history?"
Whatever the Fed does, it unerringly makes matters worse. First it pumps in a great deal of new money because, in the depth of recession, prices go up very little in response. Emboldened by this "economic miracle," it pumps more and more new money into the system. Then, when prices finally start accelerating, it tries to prolong the inevitable and thereby only succeeds in delaying market adjustments. Apart from a few exceptions, moreover, the nation's economists prove to be duds in anticipating the new inflation. In fact, it was only recently that many economists began to opine that the economy had undergone some sort of mysterious "structural change," and that, as a result, inflation was no longer possible. No sooner do such views begin to take hold, than the economy moves to belie the grandiose new doctrine. Ironically, despite the gyrations and interventions of the Fed and other government authorities, recession is inevitable once an inflationary boom has been set into motion, and will occur after the inflationary boom stops or slows down. As investment economist Giulio Martino states: "We've never had a soft landing, where the Fed brought inflation down without a recession." We can see matters particularly clearly if we rely on M-A (for Austrian), rather than on the various Ms issued by the Fed which are statistical artifacts devoid of real meaning. After increasing rapidly for several years, the money supply remained flat from April to August 1987, long enough to help precipitate the great stock market crash of October. Then, M-A rose by about 2.5 percent per year, increasing from $1,905 billion in August 1987 to $1,948 billion in July 1988. Since July, however, this modest increase has been reversed, and the money supply remained level until the end of the year, then fell sharply to $1,897 billion by the end of January 1989. From the middle of 1988, then, until the end of January 1989, the total money supply, M-A, fell in absolute terms by no less than an annual rate of 5.2 percent. The last time M-A fell that sharply was in 1979–80, precipitating the last great recession.
This is not an argument for the Fed to expand money again in panic. Quite the contrary. Once an inflationary boom is launched, a recession is not only inevitable but is also the only way of correcting the distortions of the boom and returning the economy to health. The quicker a recession comes the better, and the more it is allowed to perform its corrective work, the sooner full recovery will arrive. Z
84 INFLATION AND THE SPIN DOCTORS
e are all too familiar with the phenomenon of the "spin doctors," those political agents who rush to provide the media with the proper "spin" after each campaign poll, speech, or debate. What we sometimes fail to realize is that the Establishment has its spin doctors in the economic realm as well. For every piece of bad economic news, there is a scramble to provide a pleasantly soothing interpretation. One perennial favorite is our permanent state of inflation. During the halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s, the Fed and the other monetary authorities believed that inflation was out of control if it went above 2 percent a year. But such is the narcotizing effect of habit and desensitization that nowadays our standard 4 percent rate is held to be equivalent to inflation having disappeared. In fact, the implication is that we have no need to worry so long as inflation stays below the dread "double digit," reached for the first time in peacetime during the inflationary recessions of the early and late 1970s. Well, in January 1990, the cost of living index at least reached well over double-digit proportions. During that month, the cost of living shot up by 1.1 percent, which amounts to more
than 13 percent per year, reaching the disturbing inflationary peaks of the 1970s. Was there any grave concern? Did the Fed and the administration, at long last, reach for the panic button? Certainly not, for the economic spin doctors were quick to leap to their tasks. You see, if you take out the fastest rising price categories—food and energy—things don't look so bad. Food went up by 1.8 percent in January—an annual rise of almost 22 percent; while energy prices went up by no less than 5.1 percent—an annual increase of over 61 percent. But that's OK, because the culprit was the record cold snap in December, which drove food and vegetable prices up by 10.2 percent the following month (an annual rise of over 122 percent), and pushed up heating oil prices by 26.3 percent (an annual increase of over 315 percent). Take out those volatile (though important) categories of food and energy, then, and we get a far more satisfactory "core rate" (defined as consumer price movements minus food and energy) of "only" 0.6 percent for January, an annual rise of 7.5 percent. This, the Establishment admitted, is definitely cause for concern, but it is, after all, well under the baleful levels of doubledigit. But, we must remember, there are often cold snaps during the winter, and the allegedly random effects of the weather always seem to work more strongly in the inflationary than in the deflationary direction. The concoction of the "core rate" is a plausible-seeming example of a racketeering general principle: if you want to make inflation go away, simply take out the price categories that are rising most rapidly. Lop off enough prices, and you can make it seem that there is no inflation at all, ever. Find some excuse for taking out all the rising categories, call whatever is left the "base rate," and presto-changeo! inflation is gone forever. Thus, during the early years of the Reagan administration, housing prices were going up by an embarrassing degree, and so they were simply taken out of the index, on the excuse that
consumers pay annual rents, actual or imputed, and at that point rents had not yet caught up to the increases in the prices of housing. During the infamous German hyperinflation of 1923, for another example, there were respected Establishment economists who maintained that there was no inflation in Germany at all, but rather deflation, since prices in terms of gold (which was no longer redeemable for marks) were going down! Unfortunately, the poor benighted consumers are paying through the nose in higher prices for all the goods in the index (and even more for goods that never get on the index, such as brand-name products and books), even including houses, food, and energy. We consumers don't have the privilege of paying only for "core" goods; nor, unfortunately, do we enjoy the luxury of paying in gold. Since even the core rate is getting disturbingly high, the Establishment economists are beginning to look around for explanations. One old candidate for blame has therefore resurfaced, with several economists pointing out that wage rates went up by a disquietingly high 5.0 percent last year; but since prices went up by the now traditional 4.5 percent, this hardly seems a major point of worry. Wage rates have been lagging behind price increases for years. The real culprit for the accelerating inflation is the one candidate that the Establishment always tries its best to avoid fingering: the money supply created by the federal government itself. After years of the government's creating new money and pouring it into the economy, the people are now spending that money, and hence driving prices upward. But the last group the federal government wants to blame is itself; besides, money creation is too pleasant for the creator and his beneficiaries to give up without a struggle. And only when the power to create money, that is, to counterfeit, is taken totally out of the hands of government will the curse of inflation truly disappear forever. Z
85 ALAN GREENSPAN: A MINORITY REPORT ON THE FED CHAIRMAN
he press is resounding with acclaim for the accession to Power of Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Fed; economists from right, left, and center weigh in with hosannas for Alan's greatness, acumen, and unparalleled insights into the "numbers." The only reservation seems to be that Alan might not enjoy the enormous power and reverence accorded to his predecessor, for he does not have the height of a basketball player, is not bald, and does not smoke imposing cigars. The astute observer might feel that anyone accorded such unanimous applause from the Establishment couldn't be all good, and in this case he would be right on the mark. I knew Alan 30 years ago, and have followed his career with interest ever since. I found particularly remarkable the recent statements in the press that Greenspan's economic consulting firm of TownsendGreenspan might go under, because it turns out that what the firm really sells is not its econometric forecasting models, or its famous numbers, but Greenspan himself, and his gift for saying absolutely nothing at great length and in rococo syntax with no clearcut position of any kind. As to his eminence as a forecaster, he ruefully admitted that a pension fund managing firm he founded a few years ago just folded for lack of ability to apply the forecasting where it counted: when investment funds were on the line. Greenspan's real qualification is that he can be trusted never to rock the Establishment's boat. He has long positioned himself in the very middle of the economic spectrum. He is, like
most other long-time Republican economists, a conservative Keynesian, which in these days is almost indistinguishable from the liberal Keynesians in the Democratic camp. In fact, his views are virtually the same as Paul Volcker, also a conservative Keynesian. Which means that he wants moderate deficits and tax increases, and will loudly worry about inflation as he pours on increases in the money supply. There is one thing, however, that makes Greenspan unique, and that sets him off from his Establishment buddies. And that is that he is a follower of Ayn Rand, and therefore "philosophically" believes in laissez-faire and even the gold standard. But as the New York Times and other important media hastened to assure us, Alan only believes in laissez-faire "on the high philosophical level." In practice, in the policies he advocates, he is a centrist like everyone else because he is a "pragmatist." As an alleged "laissez-faire pragmatist," at no time in his prominent 20-year career in politics has he ever advocated anything that even remotely smacks of laissez-faire, or even any approach toward it. For Greenspan, laissez-faire is not a lodestar, a standard, and a guide by which to set one's course; instead, it is simply a curiosity kept in the closet, totally divorced from his concrete policy conclusions. Thus, Greenspan is only in favor of the gold standard if all conditions are right: if the budget is balanced, trade is free, inflation is licked, everyone has the right philosophy, etc. In the same way, he might say he only favors free trade if all conditions are right: if the budget is balanced, unions are weak, we have a gold standard, the right philosophy, etc. In short, never are one's "high philosophical principles" applied to one's actions. It becomes almost piquant for the Establishment to have this man in its camp. Over the years, Greenspan has, for example, supported President Ford's imbecilic Whip Inflation Now buttons when he was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Much worse is the fact that this "high philosophic" adherent of laissezfaire saved the racketeering Social Security program in 1982,
just when the general public began to realize that the program was bankrupt and there was a good chance of finally slaughtering this great sacred cow of American politics. Greenspan stepped in as head of a "bipartisan" (i.e., conservative and liberal centrists) Social Security Commission, and "saved" the system from bankruptcy by slapping on higher Social Security taxes. Alan is a long-time member of the famed Trilateral Commission, the Rockefeller-dominated pinnacle of the financialpolitical power elite in this country. And as he assumes his post as head of the Fed, he leaves his honored place on the board of directors of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Morgan Guaranty Trust. Yes, the Establishment has good reason to sleep soundly with Greenspan at our monetary helm. And as icing on the cake, they know that Greenspan's "philosophical" Randianism will undoubtedly fool many free-market advocates into thinking that a champion of their cause now perches high in the seats of power. Z
THE MYSTERIOUS FED
lan Greenspan has received his foreordained reappointment as chairman of the Fed, to the smug satisfaction and contentment of the entire financial Establishment. For them, Greenspan's still in his heaven, and all's right with the world. No one seems to wonder at the mysterious process by which each succeeding Fed chairman instantly becomes universally revered and indispensable to the soundness of the dollar, to the banking and financial system, and to the prosperity of the economy. When it looked for a while that the great Paul Volcker might not be reappointed as Fed chairman, the financial press went into a paroxysm of agony: no, no, without the mighty Volcker
at the helm, the dollar, the economy, nay even the world, would fall apart. And yet, when Volcker finally left the scene years later, the nation, the economy, and the world, somehow did not fall apart; in fact, ever since, none of those who once danced around Volcker for every nugget of wit and wisdom, seem to care any longer that Paul Volcker is still alive. What was Volcker's mysterious power? Was it his towering, commanding presence? His pomposity and charisma? His strong cigars? It turns out that these forces really played no role, since Alan Greenspan, now allegedly the Indispensable Man, enjoys none of Volcker's qualities of personality and presence. Greenspan, a nerd with the charisma of a wet mackerel, drones on in an uninspired monotone. So what makes him indispensable now? He is supposed to be highly "knowledgeable," but of course there are hundreds of possible Fed chairmen who would know at least as much. So if it is not qualities of personality or intellect, what makes all Fed chairmen so indispensable, so widely beloved? To paraphrase the famous answer of Sir Edmond Hilary, who was asked why he persisted in climbing Mt. Everest, it is because the Fed chairman is there. The very existence of the office makes its holder automatically wonderful, revered, deeply essential to the world economy, etc. Anyone in that office, up to and including Lassie, would receive precisely the same hagiographic treatment. And anyone out of office would be equally forgotten; if Greenspan should ever leave the Fed, he will be just as ignored as he was before. It's too bad that people aren't more suspicious: that they don't ask what's wrong with an economy, or a dollar, that supposedly depends on the existence of one man. For the answer is that there's lots wrong. The health of Sony or Honda depends on the quality of their product, on the continuing satisfaction of their consumers. No one particularly cares about the personal qualities of the head of the company. In the case of the Fed, the acolytes of the alleged personal powers of the chairman are never specific about what exactly he does, except for maintaining
the "confidence" of the public or the market, in the dollar or the banking system. The air of majesty and mystery woven around the Fed chairman is deliberate, precisely because no one knows his function and no one consumes the Fed's "product." What would we think of a company where the president and his P.R. men were constantly urging the public: "Please, please. Have confidence in our product—our Sonys, Fords, etc." Wouldn't we think that there was something fishy about such an enterprise? On the market, confidence stems from tried and tested consumer satisfaction with the product. The proclaimed fact that our banking system relies so massively on our "confidence" demonstrates that such confidence is sadly misplaced. Mystery, appeals to confidence, lauding the alleged qualities of the head: all this amounts to a con-game. Volcker, Greenspan, and their handlers are tricksters pulling a Wizard of Oz routine. The mystery, the tricks, are necessary, because the fractional-reserve banking system over which the Fed presides is bankrupt. Not just the S & Ls and the FDIC are bankrupt, but the entire banking system is insolvent. Why? Because the money that we are supposed to be able to call upon in our bank deposit accounts is simply not there. Or only about 10 percent of that money is there. The mystery and the confidence trick of the Fed rests on its function: which is that of a banking cartel organized and enforced by the federal government in the form of the Fed. The Fed continually enters the "open market" to buy government securities. With what does the Fed pay for those bonds? With nothing, simply with checking accounts created out of thin air. Every time the Fed creates $1 million of checkbook money to buy government bonds, this $1 million quickly finds its way into the "reserves" of the banks, which then pyramid $10 million more of bank deposits, newly created out of thin air. And if someone sensibly wants cash instead of these open book deposits, why that's okay, because the Fed just prints the cash which immediately become standard "dollars" (Federal
Reserve notes) which pay for this system. But even these fiat paper tickets only back 10 percent of our bank deposits. It is interesting that, of the rulers of the Fed, the only ones that seem to be worried about the inflationary nature of the system are those Fed regional bank presidents who hail from outside the major areas of bank cartels. The regional presidents are elected by the local bankers themselves, the nominal owners of the Fed. Thus, the Fed presidents from top cartel areas such as New York or Chicago, or the older financial elites from Philadelphia and Boston, tend to be pro-inflation "doves," whereas the relatively anti-inflation "hawks" within the Fed come from the periphery outside the major cartel centers: e.g., those from Minneapolis, Richmond, Cleveland, Dallas, or St. Louis. Surely, this constellation of forces is no coincidence. Of course, anyone who thinks that these regional bank presidents are insufferable anti-inflation "hawks" ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till they meet some Misesians! Z
87 FIRST STEP BACK TO GOLD
eptember 1986 was an historic month in the history of United States monetary policy. For it is the first month in over 50 years—thanks to the heroic leadership of Ron Paul during his four terms in Congress—that the United States Treasury minted a genuine gold coin. Gold coins were the standard money in the United States until Franklin Roosevelt repudiated the gold standard and confiscated the gold coins Americans possessed in 1933. Not only were these gold coins confiscated, under cover of the depression emergency, but possession not only of gold coins but of all gold (with the exception of designated amounts grudgingly allowed
to collectors, dentists, jewelers, and industrial users) was prohibited. During the 1970s, Congress made possession of gold by Americans legal, and now the Treasury itself acknowledges at least some monetary use by minting its own gold coins. We have come a long way, in only a decade, from total outlawry to Treasury minting. It is true that the political motives for the new coin were not all of the purest. One of them was a way of trying to attract the gold coin business from the South African krugerrands, which somehow acquired a taint of apartheid by their mere production in South Africa. But the important thing is that gold is at least partially back in monetary use, and also that the public has a chance to see, look at, and invest in gold coins. One of the ways by which government was able to weaken the gold standard, even before 1933, was to discourage its broad circulation as coins, and to convince the public that all the gold should be safely tucked away in the banks, in the form of bullion, rather than in general use as money in the form of coins. Since Americans were not using coins directly as money by 1933, it was relatively easy for the government to confiscate their coins without raising very much of an opposition. The new American Eagle coin is a very convenient one for possible widespread use in the future. It usefully weighs exactly one troy ounce, and the front of the coin bears the familiar Saint-Gaudens design for the goddess Liberty that had been used on American gold coins from 1907 until 1933. But while the minting of the new American Eagle coin is an excellent first step on the road back to sound money, much more needs to be done. It is important not to rest on our laurels. For one thing, even though gold coins are now legal, the U.S. government has never relinquished its possession of the confiscated coins, nor given them back to their rightful owners, the possessors of U.S. dollars. So it is vitally important to denationalize the U.S. gold stock by returning it to private hands.
Second, there is what can only be considered a grisly joke perpetrated on us by the U.S. Treasury. The one-ounce gold coin is designated, like the pre-1933 coins, as "legal tender," but only at $50. In other words, if you owe someone $500, you can legally pay your creditor in ten one-ounce coins. But of course you would only do so if you were an idiot, since on the market gold is now worth approximately $420 an ounce. At the designated rate, who would choose to pay their creditors in $4,200 of gold to discharge a $500 debt? The phony, artificially low gold price, is of course designed by the U.S. Treasury so as to make sure that no one would use these gold coins as money, that is, to make payments and discharge debt. Suppose, for example, that the government designated the one-ounce coin at a bit higher than the market price, say at $500. Then, everyone would rush to exchange their dollars for gold coins, and gold would swiftly replace dollars in circulation. All this is a pleasant fantasy, of course, but even this superior system would not solve the major problem: what to do about the Federal Reserve and the banking system. To solve that problem, it would not be enough merely to find a way to get the gold out of the hands of the Treasury. For that gold is technically owned by the Federal Reserve Banks, although kept in trust for the Fed by the Treasury at Fort Knox and other depositories. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve has the absolute monopoly on the printing of dollars, and that monopoly would remain even if people began to trade in dollars for Treasury gold coins. It is indeed important to denationalize gold—to get it out of Fort Knox and into the hands of the people. But it is just as, if not more, important to denationalize the dollar—that is, to tie the name "dollar" firmly and irretrievably to a fixed weight of gold. Every piece of gold at Fort Knox would be tied to the dollar, and then, and only then, the Federal Reserve System could be swiftly abolished, and the gold poured back into the hands of the public at the fixed dollar weights. To accomplish this task,
those who wish to return the gold of the nation and the dollar from the government to the people will have to agree on the fixed weight. It is best to pick the initial definition of the gold dollar at the most convenient rate. Certainly $50 an ounce of gold is not it. There are good arguments for the current market price, for higher than the current price, and for a price sufficiently high (or a dollar weight sufficiently low) so as to enable the Fed, upon liquidation, to pay off not only its own debts but also all bank demand deposits one-for-one in gold (which would require a gold price of approximately $1,600 per ounce). But within those parameters, it almost doesn't matter what price is chosen, so long as these reforms are effected as soon as possible, and the country returns to sound money. Z
FIXED-RATE FICTIONS
overnments, especially including the U.S. government, seem to be congenitally incapable of keeping their mitts off any part of the economy. Government, aided and abetted by its host of apologists among intellectuals and policy wonks, likes to regard itself as a deus ex machina (a "god out of the machine") that surveys its subjects with Olympian benevolence and omniscience, and then repeatedly descends to earth to fix up the numerous "market failures" that mere people, in their ignorance, persist in committing. The fact that history is a black record of continual gross failure by this "god," and that economic theory explains why it must be so, makes no impression on official political discourse. Every nation-state, for example, is continually tempted to intervene to fix its exchange rates, the rates of its fiat paper
money in terms of the scores of other moneys issued by all the other governments in the world. Governments don't know, and don't want to know, that the only successful fixing of exchange rates occurred, not coincidentally, in the era of the gold standard. In that era, money was a market commodity, produced on the market rather than manufactured ad lib by a government or a central bank. Fixed exchange rates worked because these national money units—the dollar, the pound, the lira, the mark, etc.—were not independent entities. Rather each was defined—as a certain weight of gold. Like all definitions such as the yard, the ton, etc., the point of the definition was that, once set, it was fixed. Thus, for example, if, as was roughly the case in the nineteenth century, "the dollar" was defined as 1/20 of a gold ounce, "the pound" as 1/4 of a gold ounce, and "the French franc" as 1/100 of a gold ounce, the "exchange rates" were simply proportional gold weights of the various currency units, so that the pound would automatically be worth $5, the franc would automatically be worth 20 cents, etc. The United States dropped the gold standard in 1933, with the last international vestiges discarded in 1971. After the whole world followed, each national currency became a separate and independent entity from all the others. Therefore a "market" developed immediately among them, as a market will always develop among different tradable goods. If these exchange markets are left alone by governments, then exchange rates will fluctuate freely. They will fluctuate in accordance with the supplies and demands for each currency in terms of the others, and the day-to-day rates will, as in the case of all other goods, "clear the market" so as to equate supply and demand, and therefore assure that there will be no shortages or unsold surpluses of any of the moneys. Fluctuating fiat moneys, as the world has discovered, once again since 1971, are unsatisfactory. They cripple the advantages of international money and virtually return the world to barter. They fail to provide the check against inflation by governments
and central banks once supplied by the stern necessity of redeeming their monetary issues in gold. What the world has failed to grasp is that there is one thing much worse than fluctuating fiat moneys: and that is fiat money where governments try to fix the exchange rates. For, as in the case of any price control, governments will invariably fix their rates either above or below the free-market rate. Whichever route they take, government fixing will create undesirable consequences, will cause unnecessary monetary crises, and, in the long run, will end up in ignominious failure. One crucial point is that government fixing of exchange rates will inevitably set "Gresham's Law" to work: that is, the money artificially undervalued by the government (set at a price too low by the government) will tend to disappear from the market ("a shortage"), while money overvalued by government (price set too high) will tend to pour into circulation and constitute a "surplus." The Clinton administration, which seems to have a homing instinct for economic fallacy, has been as bumbling and inconsistent in monetary policy as in all other areas. Thus, until recently, the administration, absurdly worried about a seemingly grave (but actually non-existent) balance of payments "deficit," has tried to push down the exchange rate of the dollar to stimulate exports and restrict imports. There is no way, however that government can ever find and set some sort of "ideal" exchange rate. A cheaper dollar encourages exports all right, but the administration eventually came to realize that there is an inevitable downside: namely, that import prices are higher, which removes competition that will keep domestic prices down. Instead of learning the lesson that there is no ideal exchange rate apart from determination by the free market, the Clinton administration, as is its wont, reversed itself abruptly, and orchestrated a multi-billion dollar campaign by the Fed and other major central banks to prop up the sinking dollar, as against the German mark and the Japanese yen. The dollar rate
rose slightly, and the media congratulated Clinton for propping up the dollar. Overlooked in the hosannahs are several intractable problems. First, billions in taxpayers' money, here and abroad, are being devoted to distorting market exchange rates. Second, since the exchange rate is being coercively propped up, such "successes" cannot be repeated for long. How long before the Fed runs out of marks and yen with which to keep up the dollar? How long before Germany, Japan, and other countries tire of inflating their currencies to keep the dollar artificially high? If the Clinton administration persists, even in the face of these consequences, in trying to hold the dollar artificially high, it will have to meet the developing mark and yen "shortages" by imposing exchange controls and mark-and-yen-rationing on American citizens. In the meantime, one of the first bitter fruits of Nafta has already appeared. Like all other modern "free-trade" agreements, Nafta serves as a backchannel to international currency regulation and fixed exchange rates. One of the unheralded aspects of Nafta was joint government action in propping up each others' exchange rates. In practice, this means artificial overvaluation of the Mexican peso, which has been dropping sharply on the market, in response to Mexican inflation and political instability. Thus, Nafta originally set up a "temporary" $6 billion credit pool to aid mutual overvaluation of exchange rates. With the peso slipping badly, the Nafta governments made the credit pool permanent and raised it to $8.8 billion. Moreover, the three Nafta countries created a new North American Financial Group, consisting of the respective finance ministers and central bank chairmen, to "oversee economic and financial issues affecting the North American partners." Robert D. Hormats, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, hailed the new arrangement as "a logical progression from trade and investment cooperation between the three countries to greater monetary and fiscal cooperation." Well,
that's one way to look at it. Another way is to point out that this is one more step by the U.S. government toward arrangements that will distort exchange rates, create monetary crises and shortages, and waste taxpayers' money and economic resources. Worst of all, the U.S. is marching inexorably toward economic regulation and planning by regional, and even world, governmental bureaucracies, out of control and accountable to none of the subject peoples anywhere on the globe. Z
Economics Beyond the Borders
PROTECTIONISM AND THE DESTRUCTION OF PROSPERITY
rotectionism, often refuted and seemingly abandoned, has returned, and with a vengeance. The Japanese, who bounced back from grievous losses in World War II to astound the world by producing innovative, high-quality products at low prices, are serving as the convenient butt of protectionist propaganda. Memories of wartime myths prove a heady brew, as protectionists warn about this new "Japanese imperialism," even "worse than Pearl Harbor." This "imperialism" turns out to consist of selling Americans wonderful TV sets, autos, microchips, etc., at prices more than competitive with American firms. Is this "flood" of Japanese products really a menace, to be combatted by the U.S. government? Or is the new Japan a godsend to American consumers? In taking our stand on this issue, we should recognize that all government action means coercion, so that calling upon the U.S. government to intervene means urging it to use force and violence to restrain peaceful trade. One trusts that the protectionists
First published as a monograph in 1986. 355
are not willing to pursue their logic of force to the ultimate in the form of another Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
KEEP YOUR EYE
As we unravel the tangled web of protectionist argument, we should keep our eye on two essential points: (1) protectionism means force in restraint of trade; and (2) the key is what happens to the consumer. Invariably, we will find that the protectionists are out to cripple, exploit, and impose severe losses not only on foreign consumers but especially on Americans. And since each and every one of us is a consumer, this means that protectionism is out to mulct all of us for the benefit of a specially privileged, subsidized few—and an inefficient few at that: people who cannot make it in a free and unhampered market. Take, for example, the alleged Japanese menace. All trade is mutually beneficial to both parties—in this case Japanese producers and American consumers—otherwise they would not engage in the exchange. In trying to stop this trade, protectionists are trying to stop American consumers from enjoying high living standards by buying cheap and high-quality Japanese products. Instead, we are to be forced by government to return to the inefficient, higher-priced products we have already rejected. In short, inefficient producers are trying to deprive all of us of products we desire so that we will have to turn to inefficient firms. American consumers are to be plundered.
The best way to look at tariffs or import quotas or other protectionist restraints is to forget about political boundaries. Political boundaries of nations may be important for other reasons, but they have no economic meaning whatever. Suppose, for example, that each of the United States were a separate nation. Then we would hear a lot of protectionist bellyaching that we are now fortunately spared. Think of the howls by highpriced New York or Rhode Island textile manufacturers who
would then be complaining about the "unfair," "cheap labor" competition from various low-type "foreigners" from Tennessee or North Carolina, or vice versa. Fortunately, the absurdity of worrying about the balance of payments is made evident by focusing on interstate trade. For nobody worries about the balance of payments between New York and New Jersey, or, for that matter, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, because there are no customs officials recording such trade and such balances. If we think about it, it is clear that a call by New York firms for a tariff against North Carolina is a pure ripoff of New York (as well as North Carolina) consumers, a naked grab for coerced special privilege by less efficient business firms. If the 50 states were separate nations, the protectionists would then be able to use the trappings of patriotism, and distrust of foreigners, to camouflage and get away with their looting the consumers of their own region. Fortunately, inter-state tariffs are unconstitutional. But even with this clear barrier, and even without being able to wrap themselves in the cloak of nationalism, protectionists have been able to impose interstate tariffs in another guise. Part of the drive for continuing increases in the federal minimum-wage law is to impose a protectionist devise against lower-wage, lower-laborcost competition from North Carolina and other southern states against their New England and New York competitors. During the 1966 Congressional battle over a higher federal minimum wage, for example, the late Senator Jacob Javits (RNY) freely admitted that one of his main reasons for supporting the bill was to cripple the southern competitors of New York textile firms. Since southern wages are generally lower than in the north, the business firms hardest hit by an increased minimum wage (and the workers struck by unemployment) will be located in the south. Another way in which interstate trade restrictions have been imposed has been in the fashionable name of "safety." Government-organized state milk cartels in New York, for example,
have prevented importation of milk from nearby New Jersey under the patently spurious grounds that the trip across the Hudson would render New Jersey milk "unsafe." If tariffs and restraints on trade are good for a country, then why not indeed for a state or region? The principle is precisely the same. In America's first great depression, the Panic of 1819, Detroit was a tiny frontier town of only a few hundred people. Yet protectionist cries arose—fortunately not fulfilled—to prohibit all "imports" from outside of Detroit, and citizens were exhorted to buy only Detroit. If this nonsense had been put into effect, general starvation and death would have ended all other economic problems for Detroiters. So why not restrict and even prohibit trade, i.e., "imports," into a city, or a neighborhood, or even on a block, or, to boil it down to its logical conclusion, to one family? Why shouldn't the Jones family issue a decree that from now on, no member of the family can buy any goods or services produced outside the family house? Starvation would quickly wipe out this ludicrous drive for self-sufficiency. And yet we must realize that this absurdity is inherent in the logic of protectionism. Standard protectionism is just as preposterous, but the rhetoric of nationalism and national boundaries has been able to obscure this vital fact. The upshot is that protectionism is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense, destructive of all economic prosperity. We are not, if we were ever, a world of self-sufficient farmers. The market economy is one vast latticework throughout the world, in which each individual, each region, each country, produces what he or it is best at, most relatively efficient in, and exchanges that product for the goods and services of others. Without the division of labor and the trade based upon that division, the entire world would starve. Coerced restraints on trade—such as protectionism—cripple, hobble, and destroy trade, the source of life and prosperity. Protectionism is simply a plea that consumers, as well as general prosperity, be hurt so as to confer permanent special privilege upon groups of less
efficient producers, at the expense of more competent firms and of consumers. But it is a peculiarly destructive kind of bailout, because it permanently shackles trade under the cloak of patriotism.
THE NEGATIVE RAILROAD Protectionism is also peculiarly destructive because it acts as a coerced and artificial increase in the cost of transportation between regions. One of the great features of the Industrial Revolution, one of the ways in which it brought prosperity to the starving masses, was by reducing drastically the cost of transportation. The development of railroads in the early nineteenth century, for example, meant that for the first time in the history of the human race, goods could be transported cheaply over land. Before that, water—rivers and oceans—was the only economically viable means of transport. By making land transport accessible and cheap, railroads allowed interregional land transportation to break up expensive inefficient local monopolies. The result was an enormous improvement in living standards for all consumers. And what the protectionists want to do is lay an axe to this wondrous principle of progress. It is no wonder that Frédéric Bastiat, the great French laissez-faire economist of the mid-nineteenth century, called a tariff a "negative railroad." Protectionists are just as economically destructive as if they were physically chopping up railroads, or planes, or ships, and forcing us to revert to the costly transport of the past—mountain trails, rafts, or sailing ships.
"FAIR" TRADE Let us now turn to some of the leading protectionist arguments. Take, for example, the standard complaint that while the protectionist "welcomes competition," this competition must be "fair." Whenever someone starts talking about "fair competition" or indeed, about "fairness" in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked. For the
genuinely "fair" is simply the voluntary terms of exchange, mutually agreed upon by buyer and seller. As most of the medieval scholastics were able to figure out, there is no "just" (or "fair") price outside of the market price. So what could be "unfair" about the free-market price? One common protectionist charge is that it is "unfair" for an American firm to compete with, say, a Taiwanese firm which needs to pay only one-half the wages of the American competitor. The U.S. government is called upon to step in and "equalize" the wage rates by imposing an equivalent tariff upon the Taiwanese. But does this mean that consumers can never patronize low-cost firms because it is "unfair" for them to have lower costs than inefficient competitors? This is the same argument that would be used by a New York firm trying to cripple its North Carolina competitor. What the protectionists don't bother to explain is why U.S. wage rates are so much higher than Taiwan. They are not imposed by Providence. Wage rates are high in the U.S. because American employers have bid these rates up. Like all other prices on the market, wage rates are determined by supply and demand, and the increased demand by U.S. employers has bid wages up. What determines this demand? The "marginal productivity" of labor. The demand for any factor of production, including labor, is constituted by the productivity of that factor, the amount of revenue that the worker, or the pound of cement or acre of land, is expected to bring to the brim. The more productive the factory, the greater the demand by employers, and the higher its price or wage rate. American labor is more costly than Taiwanese because it is far more productive. What makes it productive? To some extent, the comparative qualities of labor, skill, and education. But most of the difference is not due to the personal qualities of the laborers themselves, but to the fact that the American laborer, on the whole, is equipped with more and better capital equipment than his Taiwanese counterparts. The more and better the capital investment per worker, the greater
the worker's productivity, and therefore the higher the wage rate. In short, if the American wage rate is twice that of the Taiwanese, it is because the American laborer is more heavily capitalized, is equipped with more and better tools, and is therefore, on the average, twice as productive. In a sense, I suppose, it is not "fair" for the American worker to make more than the Taiwanese, not because of his personal qualities, but because savers and investors have supplied him with more tools. But a wage rate is determined not just by personal quality but also by relative scarcity, and in the United States the worker is far scarcer compared to capital than he is in Taiwan. Putting it another way, the fact that American wage rates are on the average twice that of the Taiwanese, does not make the cost of labor in the U.S. twice that of Taiwan. Since U.S. labor is twice as productive, this means that the double wage rate in the U.S. is offset by the double productivity, so that the cost of labor per unit product in the U.S. and Taiwan tends, on the average, to be the same. One of the major protectionist fallacies is to confuse the price of labor (wage rates) with its cost, which also depends on its relative productivity. Thus, the problem faced by American employers is not really with the "cheap labor" in Taiwan, because "expensive labor" in the U.S. is precisely the result of the bidding for scarce labor by U.S. employers. The problem faced by less efficient U.S. textile or auto firms is not so much cheap labor in Taiwan or Japan, but the fact that other U.S. industries are efficient enough to afford it, because they bid wages that high in the first place. So, by imposing protective tariffs and quotas to save, bail out, and keep in place less efficient U.S. textile or auto or microchip firms, the protectionists are not only injuring the American consumer. They are also harming efficient U.S. firms and industries, which are prevented from employing resources now locked into incompetent firms, and who could otherwise be able to expand and sell their efficient products at home and abroad.
"DUMPING" Another contradictory line of protectionist assault on the free market asserts that the problem is not so much the low costs enjoyed by foreign firms, as the "unfairness" of selling their products "below costs" to American consumers, and thereby engaging in the pernicious and sinful practice of "dumping." By such dumping they are able to exert unfair advantage over American firms who presumably never engage in such practices and make sure that their prices are always high enough to cover costs. But if selling below costs is such a powerful weapon, why isn't it ever pursued by business firms within a country? Our first response to this charge is, once again, to keep our eye on consumers in general and on American consumers in particular. Why should it be a matter of complaint when consumers so clearly benefit? Suppose, for example, that Sony is willing to injure American competitors by selling TV sets to Americans for a penny apiece. Shouldn't we rejoice at such an absurd policy of suffering severe losses by subsidizing us, the American consumers? And shouldn't our response be: "Come on, Sony, subsidize us some more!" As far as consumers are concerned, the more "dumping" that takes place, the better. But what of the poor American TV firms, whose sales will suffer so long as Sony is willing to virtually give their sets away? Well, surely, the sensible policy for RCA, Zenith, etc. would be to hold back production and sales until Sony drives itself into bankruptcy. But suppose that the worst happens, and RCA, Zenith, etc. are themselves driven into bankruptcy by the Sony price war? Well, in that case, we the consumers will still be better off, since the plants of the bankrupt firms, which would still be in existence, would be picked up for a song at auction, and the American buyers at auction would be able to enter the TV business and outcompete Sony because they now enjoy far lower capital costs. For decades, indeed, opponents of the free market have claimed that many businesses gained their powerful status on
the market by what is called "predatory price-cutting," that is, by driving their smaller competitors into bankruptcy by selling their goods below cost, and then reaping the reward of their unfair methods by raising their prices and thereby charging "monopoly prices" to the consumers. The claim is that while consumers may gain in the short run by price wars, "dumping," and selling below costs, they lose in the long run from the alleged monopoly. But, as we have seen, economic theory shows that this would be a mug's game, losing money for the "dumping" firms, and never really achieving a monopoly price. And sure enough, historical investigation has not turned up a single case where predatory pricing, when tried, was successful, and there are actually very few cases where it has even been tried. Another charge claims that Japanese or other foreign firms can afford to engage in dumping because their governments are willing to subsidize their losses. But again, we should still welcome such an absurd policy. If the Japanese government is really willing to waste scarce resources subsidizing American purchases of Sony's, so much the better! Their policy would be just as self-defeating as if the losses were private. There is yet another problem with the charge of "dumping," even when it is made by economists or other alleged "experts" sitting on impartial tariff commissions and government bureaus. There is no way whatever that outside observers, be they economists, businessmen, or other experts, can decide what some other firm's "costs" may be. "Costs" are not objective entities that can be gauged or measured. Costs are subjective to the businessman himself, and they vary continually, depending on the businessman's time horizon or the stage of production or selling process he happens to be dealing with at any given time. Suppose, for example, a fruit dealer has purchased a case of pears for $20, amounting to $1 a pound. He hopes and expects to sell those pears for $1.50 a pound. But something has happened to the pear market, and he finds it impossible to sell most of the pears at anything near that price. In fact, he finds that he must sell the pears at whatever price he can get before they
become overripe. Suppose he finds that he can only sell his stock of pears at 70 cents a pound. The outside observer might say that the fruit dealer has, perhaps "unfairly," sold his pears "below costs," figuring that the dealer's costs were $1 a pound.
"INFANT" INDUSTRIES Another protectionist fallacy held that the government should provide a temporary protective tariff to aid, or to bring into being, an "infant industry." Then, when the industry was well-established, the government would and should remove the tariff and toss the now "mature" industry into the competitive swim. The theory is fallacious, and the policy has proved disastrous in practice. For there is no more need for government to protect a new, young, industry from foreign competition than there is to protect it from domestic competition. In the last few decades, the "infant" plastics, television, and computer industries made out very well without such protection. Any government subsidizing of a new industry will funnel too many resources into that industry as compared to older firms, and will also inaugurate distortions that may persist and render the firm or industry permanently inefficient and vulnerable to competition. As a result, "infant-industry" tariffs have tended to become permanent, regardless of the "maturity" of the industry. The proponents were carried away by a misleading biological analogy to "infants" who need adult care. But a business firm is not a person, young or old.
OLDER INDUSTRIES Indeed, in recent years, older industries that are notoriously inefficient have been using what might be called a "senileindustry" argument for protectionism. Steel, auto, and other outcompeted industries have been complaining that they "need a breathing space" to retool and become competitive with foreign rivals, and that this breather could be provided by several years
of tariffs or import quotas. This argument is just as full of holes as the hoary infant-industry approach, except that it will be even more difficult to figure out when the "senile" industry will have become magically rejuvenated. In fact, the steel industry has been inefficient ever since its inception, and its chronological age seems to make no difference. The first protectionist movement in the U.S. was launched in 1820, headed by the Pennsylvania iron (later iron and steel) industry, artificially force-fed by the War of 1812 and already in grave danger from far more efficient foreign competitors.
THE NON-PROBLEM
A final set of arguments, or rather alarms, center on the mysteries of the balance of payments. Protectionists focus on the horrors of imports being greater than exports, implying that if market forces continued unchecked, Americans might wind up buying everything from abroad, while selling foreigners nothing, so that American consumers will have engorged themselves to the permanent ruin of American business firms. But if the exports really fell to somewhere near zero, where in the world would Americans still find the money to purchase foreign products? The balance of payments, as we said earlier, is a pseudoproblem created by the existence of customs statistics. During the day of the gold standard, a deficit in the national balance of payments was a problem, but only because of the nature of the fractional-reserve banking system. If U.S. banks, spurred on by the Fed or previous forms of central banks, inflated money and credit, the American inflation would lead to higher prices in the U.S., and this would discourage exports and encourage imports. The resulting deficit had to be paid for in some way, and during the gold standard era this meant being paid for in gold, the international money. So as bank credit expanded, gold began to flow out of the country, which put the fractional reserve banks in even shakier shape. To meet the threat to their solvency posed by the gold outflow, the banks eventually were forced to contract credit, precipitating a recession and
reversing the balance of payment deficits, thus bringing gold back into the country. But now, in the fiat-money era, balance of payments deficits are truly meaningless. For gold is no longer a "balancing item." In effect, there is no deficit in the balance of payments. It is true that in the last few years, imports have been greater than exports by $150 billion or so per year. But no gold flowed out of the country. Neither did dollars "leak" out. The alleged "deficit" was paid for by foreigners investing the equivalent amount of money in American dollars: in real estate, capital goods, U.S. securities, and bank accounts. In effect, in the last couple of years, foreigners have been investing enough of their own funds in dollars to keep the dollar high, enabling us to purchase cheap imports. Instead of worrying and complaining about this development, we should rejoice that foreign investors are willing to finance our cheap imports. The only problem is that this bonanza is already coming to an end, with the dollar becoming cheaper and exports more expensive. We conclude that the sheaf of protectionist arguments, many plausible at first glance, are really a tissue of egregious fallacies. They betray a complete ignorance of the most basic economic analysis. Indeed, some of the arguments are almost embarrassing replicas of the most ridiculous claims of seventeenth-century mercantilism: for example, that it is somehow a calamitous problem that the U.S. has a balance of trade deficit, not overall, but merely with one specific country, e.g., Japan. Must we even relearn the rebuttals of the more sophisticated mercantilists of the eighteenth century: namely, that balances with individual countries will cancel each other out, and therefore that we should only concern ourselves with the overall balance? (Let alone realize that the overall balance is no problem either.) But we need not reread the economic literature to realize that the impetus for protectionism comes not from preposterous theories, but from the quest for coerced special privilege and restraint of trade at the expense of efficient competitors and consumers. In the host of special interests using the political
process to repress and loot the rest of us, the protectionists are among the most venerable. It is high time that we get them, once and for all, off our backs, and treat them with the righteous indignation they so richly deserve. Z
90 "FREE TRADE" IN PERSPECTIVE
here is no time like a presidential election year for truth to become buried under an avalanche of mendacious propaganda. No sooner did Patrick J. Buchanan enter the presidential race when the Bush administration, aided by its battalion of apologists in the media, attacked Buchanan as a "protectionist" violating the Bushian devotion to "free trade." Indeed, the esoterics of international trade have not played such a visible role in national elections for many decades, perhaps since the nineteenth century. The very idea of Bush administration dedication to free trade is patently laughable, its absurdity punctuated by the president's Asian trip in tandem with the highly-paid, grossly inefficient, professional Japan basher Lee Iacocca. For years, in fact, the administration has been doing its best to keep Japan from selling us high-quality, moderately priced cars, while also trying to force the hapless Japanese to purchase overpriced American lemons that they don't want to buy. This is "free trade"—now rechristened by President Bush "free and fair trade"? Indeed, the entire emphasis on trade deficits between two countries is a nightmarish fallacy already discarded by the sophisticated mercantilists of the seventeenth century. In addition to this patent duplicity, however, it is generally overlooked that there is far more to freedom of trade than not obstructing it via tariffs or import quotas. More importantly,
genuine freedom of trade must be, in addition, unregulated and unsubsidized. In addition to slapping on tariffs and quotas, the Bush administration has greatly intensified the regulations on American business that prevent them from competing or producing efficiently, either at home or abroad. Not only that: these intensified regulations are always pointed to as the administration's proudest—if not only—achievements: including the quota-imposing Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. But let us shift our focus from the Bush administration to the neoconservative columnists who infest the media, and who claim to be dedicated enemies of protectionism and advocates of pure and unrestricted freedom of trade. Here are some of the policies about which these "free traders" habitually wax enthusiastic: 1. Regional "free-trade" zones, embodied in the U.S.-Canada treaty, and in whatever "fast-track" Mexican treaty the president may come up with. It is blithely assumed that anyone skeptical of such treaties is a blankety-blank protectionist. And yet, such regional blocs can be dangerous. An example is the European Economic Community, highly vaunted by "free traders" as a noble example of a vast regional free-trade area. And yet, the reality is just the opposite. Externally, the EC can and does use its power to raise general tariffs with nations outside the bloc. But even internally, the result has increased trade restrictions and regulations inside the bloc. Thus, the EC has been building a burgeoning European super-government and bureaucracy in Brussels, that has often increased regulation throughout the area. One pernicious measure of the EC has been to require low-tax countries in Europe to raise their taxes so as to make sure that each country enjoys a "fair and level playing field" with the others. In the same way, minimum wage laws and other pernicious "social" measures have been imposed on relatively freer economies within the EC. Mrs. Thatcher's much-publicized opposition to Britain's entry into the EC was not simply paranoia or blind resistance to a noble "new Europe."
The same evils can befall the United States in any regional trade bloc, and giving the president a blank check to negotiate and virtually impose a treaty is hardly a favorable omen for the future. The major point is that genuine free trade requires no negotiations, treaties, super-power creations, or presidential jetting abroad. All it requires is for the United States to cut tariffs and quotas, as well as taxes and regulations. Period. And yes, unilaterally. No other nations or governments need get into the act. 2. Foreign aid. The neoconservative and Bushian "free traders" are invariably staunch supporters of massive foreign aid programs for the United States. And yet, since genuine free trade requires unsubsidized trade, these massive programs for export subsidies constitute an enormous interference with free trade that is never acknowledged, let alone defended by these alleged opponents of protectionism. The arguments for foreign aid keep changing over the years (from "reconstructing" Europe, to stopping Communism, to developing the Third World, to humanitarian relief of famine), but throughout the various twists and turns the essence of the process remains the same: a systematic racket by which money is seized from the American taxpayers, and handed over to the following groups: (1) the U.S. government bureaucracy, for its handling fee; (2) recipient foreign governments, whose wealth and power is strengthened vis-à-vis their own hapless subjects; and (3) last and foremost, the U.S. export firms and industries upon whom the foreign governments necessarily spend their purloined dollars. Apart from the questionable morality of looting you and me and other American taxpayers in order to subsidize U.S. export firms and their bankers, we must see the enormous distortion of trade that this system entails. 3. Cartelized World Paper Money. A far greater danger to trade than a couple of tariffs is the seemingly inexorable drive of the entire Keynesian Establishment (from left-Keynesian Democrats to conservative-Keynesian Bushians to neoconservatives)
for world collaboration and cartelization of central banks, moving toward what will effectively be world economic government, with a world central bank issuing world fiat paper money. This fulfillment of the long-time Keynesian dream will enable worldwide inflation, engineered and controlled by a world central bank. The European monetary unit would only be the first step in such a scheme. Once again: the distortion of trade to be imposed by worldwide control of money and banking is far more dangerous than a tariff or two, and far less easy to get rid of. In gauging the extent of free trade or protectionism among such presidential candidates as Pat Buchanan or President Bush or the neoconservative hero-in-waiting, Jack Kemp, we should consider that, unlike the other two, Buchanan favors the abolition of foreign aid. And while he has never pronounced on the world fiat money scheme, it is certain that as a professed "economic nationalist," he would strongly oppose that as well. We might also consider Buchanan's reply to George Will's charge of protectionism on the Brinkley TV program: "What you have to do, George, is take off the burdens of taxes, of regulations, from American business and industry, and then the United States can start to compete." Who in the public arena is closer to free trade than that? Z
91 THE NAFTA MYTH
mericans—or at least the American Establishment—may be the most gullible people on earth. When Gorbachev tried to sell his timid reforms as "market socialism," only the American Establishment cheered. The Soviet public immediately
spotted the phoniness and would have none of it. When the Polish Stalinist Oskar Lange touted "market socialism" for Poland, only American economists shouted huzzahs. The Polish public knew the score all too well. For some people, it seems, all you have to do to convince them of the free enterprise nature of something is to label it "market," and so we have the spawning of such grotesque creatures as "market socialists" or "market liberals." The word "freedom," of course, is also a grabber, and so another way to gain adherents in an age that exalts rhetoric over substance is simply to call yourself or your proposal "free market" or "free trade." Labels are often enough to nab the suckers. And so, among champions of free trade, the label "North American Free Trade Agreement" (Nafta) is supposed to command unquestioning assent. "But how can you be against free trade?" It's very easy. The folks who have brought us Nafta and presume to call it "free trade" are the same people who call government spending "investment," taxes "contributions," and raising taxes "deficit reduction." Let us not forget that the Communists, too, used to call their system "freedom." In the first place, genuine free trade doesn't require a treaty (or its deformed cousin, a "trade agreement"; Nafta is called a trade agreement so it can avoid the constitutional requirement of approval by two-thirds of the Senate). If the Establishment truly wants free trade, all it has to do is to repeal our numerous tariffs, import quotas, anti-"dumping" laws, and other American-imposed restrictions on trade. No foreign policy or foreign maneuvering is needed. If authentic free trade ever looms on the policy horizon, there'll be one sure way to tell. The government/media/bigbusiness complex will oppose it tooth and nail. We'll see a string of op-eds "warning" about the imminent return of the nineteenth century. Media pundits and academics will raise all the old canards against the free market, that it's exploitative and anarchic without government "coordination." The Establishment would
react to instituting true free trade about as enthusiastically as it would to repealing the income tax. In truth, the bipartisan Establishment's trumpeting of "free trade" since World War II fosters the opposite of genuine freedom of exchange. The Establishment's goals and tactics have been consistently those of free trade's traditional enemy, "mercantilism"—the system imposed by the nation-states of sixteenth to eighteenth century Europe. President Bush's infamous trip to Japan was only one instance: trade policy as a continuing system of maneuverings to try to force other countries to purchase more American exports. Whereas genuine free traders look at free markets and trade, domestic or international, from the point of view of the consumer (that is, all of us), the mercantilist, of the sixteenth century or today, looks at trade from the point of view of the power elite, big business in league with the government. Genuine free traders consider exports a means of paying for imports, in the same way that goods in general are produced in order to be sold to consumers. But the mercantilists want to privilege the government business elite at the expense of all consumers, be they domestic or foreign. In negotiations with Japan, for example, be they conducted by Reagan or Bush or Clinton, the point is to force Japan to buy more American products, for which the American government will graciously if reluctantly permit the Japanese to sell their products to American consumers. Imports are the price government pays to get other nations to accept our exports. Another crucial feature of post-World War II Establishment trade policy in the name of "free trade" is to push heavy subsidies of exports. A favorite method of subsidy has been the much beloved system of foreign aid, which, under the cover of "reconstructing Europe . . . stopping Communism," or "spreading democracy," is a racket by which the American taxpayers are forced to subsidize American export firms and industries as well as foreign governments who go along with this system. Nafta
represents a continuation of this system by enlisting the U.S. government and American taxpayers in this cause. Yet Nafta is more than just a big business trade deal. It is part of a very long campaign to integrate and cartelize government in order to entrench the interventionist mixed economy. In Europe, the campaign culminated in the Maastricht Treaty, the attempt to impose a single currency and central bank on Europe and force its relatively free economies to rachet up their regulatory and welfare states. In the United States, this has taken the form of transferring legislative and judicial authority away from the states and localities to the executive branch of the federal government. Nafta negotiations have pushed the envelope by centralizing government power continent-wide, thus further diminishing the ability of taxpayers to hinder the actions of their rulers. Thus the siren-song of Nafta is the same seductive tune by which the socialistic Eurocrats have tried to get Europeans to surrender to the superstatism of the European Community: wouldn't it be wonderful to have North America be one vast and mighty "free trade unit" like Europe? The reality is very different: socialistic intervention and planning by supernational Nafta Commission or Brussels bureaucrats accountable to no one. And just as Brussels has forced low-tax European countries to raise their taxes to the Euro-average or to expand their welfare state in the name of "fairness," a "level playing field," and "upward harmonization," so too Nafta Commissions are to be empowered to "upwardly harmonize," to ride roughshod over labor and other laws of American state governments. President Clinton's trade representative Mickey Kantor has crowed that, under Nafta, "no country in the agreement can lower its environmental standards—ever." Under Nafta, we will not be able to roll back or repeal the environmental and labor provisions of the welfare state because the treaty will have locked us in—forever.
In the present world, as a rule of thumb, it is best to oppose all treaties, absent the great Bricker Amendment to the Constitution, which could have passed Congress in the 1950s but was shot down by the Eisenhower administration. Unfortunately, under the Constitution, every treaty is considered "the supreme law of the land," and the Bricker Amendment would have prevented any treaty from overriding any pre-existing Constitutional rights. But if we must be wary of any treaty, we must be particularly hostile to a treaty that builds supranational structures, as does Nafta. The worst aspects of Nafta are the Clintonian side agreements, which have converted an unfortunate Bush treaty into a horror of international statism. We have the side agreements to thank for the supra-national Commissions and their coming "upward harmonization." The side agreements also push the foreign aid aspect of the Establishment's "free trade" hoax. They provide for the U.S. to pour an estimated $20 billion into Mexico for an "environmental cleanup" along the U.S.-Mexican border. In addition, the United States has informally agreed to pour billions into Mexican government coffers through the World Bank when and if Nafta is signed. As with any policy that benefits the government and its connected interests, the Establishment has gone all out in its propaganda efforts on behalf of Nafta. Its allied intellectuals have even formed networks to champion the cause of government centralization. Even if Nafta were a worthy treaty, this outpouring of effort by the government and its friends would raise suspicions. The public is rightly suspicious that this effort is related to the vast amount of money that the Mexican government and its allied special interests are spending on lobbying for Nafta. That money is, so to speak, the down payment on the $20 billion that the Mexicans hope to mulct from the American taxpayers once Nafta passes. Nafta advocates say we must sacrifice to "save" Mexican President Carlos Salinas and his allegedly wonderful "free-market"
policies. But surely Americans are justly tired of making eternal "sacrifices," of cutting their own throats, on behalf of cloudy foreign objectives which never seem to benefit them. If Nafta dies, Salinas and his party may fall. But what that means is that Mexico's vicious one-party rule by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) may at last come to an end after many corrupt decades. What's wrong with that? Why should such a fate cause our champions of "global democracy" to tremble? We should look at the supposed nobility of Carlos Salinas in the same way we look at the other ersatz heroes served up to us by the Establishment. How many Americans know, for example, that under Annex 602.3 of the Nafta treaty, the "free-market" Salinas government "reserves to itself" all exploration and use, all investment and provision, all refining and processing, all trade, transportation and distribution, of oil and natural gas? All private investment in and operation of oil and gas in Mexico, in other words, is to be prohibited. This is the government Americans have to sacrifice to preserve? Most English and German conservatives are fully aware of the dangers of the Brussels-Maastricht Eurocracy. They understand that when the people and institutions whose existence is devoted to promoting statism suddenly come out for freedom, something is amiss. American conservatives and free-marketers should also be aware of the equivalent dangers of Nafta. Z
92 IS THERE LIFE AFTER NAFTA?
he great historian Charles A. Beard used to talk about the vital gulf between "appearance" and "reality" that pervades our politics and our political system. Rarely has that gulf been as striking and as revealing as in the bitter and intense struggle over Nafta. On the surface, Nafta dealt with a few puny tariffs First published in February 1994.
covering a small fraction of American trade. So why the fuss and feathers? Why did the Clinton administration pull out all the stops, throwing caution to the winds by openly and shamelessly buying Congressional votes? And why the coming together of the entire Establishment: Democrats, Republicans, Big Business, Big Finance, Big Media, ex-Presidents and Secretaries of State, including the ubiquitous Henry Kissinger, and the last but surely not least, Big Economists and Nobel Laureates? What was going on here? Perhaps the most shocking performance was that of America's self-styled free-market economists, periodicals, and thinktanks. Surely it would have been legitimate for them to say, in response to those of us who denounced Nafta from a free-trade perspective: "Your concerns are legitimate, but taken all in all, we think that Nafta cuts more in favor of free trade than against." Surely that would be the behavior one would expect from one free-market economist to a colleague who differed on the issue. But with only one or two exceptions, this was not the response of the Nafta forces. From the time when Lew Rockwell first laid out the freemarket case against Nafta in the Los Angeles Times (10/19/92), the reaction has been hysteria. Consider what happened when the excellent analysts of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Jim Sheehan and Matt Hoffman, proved in meticulous detail that Nafta was a statist mockery of free trade. Instead of being persuaded, or considering their views soberly, other and larger free-market think-tanks inside the Beltway played vicious hardball, suitable for a political brawl rather than for a discussion of ideas. They put tremendous pressure on CEI, not only to suppress the Sheehan-Hoffman Report, but also to fire its authors. Fortunately, Fred Smith, head of CEI, firmly resisted these pressures. So what was the frenzy all about, from Clinton and Kissinger down to Beltway think-tanks? It was indeed not about trade, certainly not about "free" trade. As the Clinton administration and their Republican auxiliaries stressed as the vote went down
to the wire, the fight was about foreign policy, about the globalist policy that the United States has been pursuing since Woodrow Wilson, and certainly since World War II. It was about the Establishment-Keynesian dream of a New World Order. Nafta was a vital step down the road to that order. Politically, such an order means a United States totally committed to a form of world government, in which U.S./UN "police" forces dominate the world, and impose institutions to our liking around the globe. Economically, it means a global system devoted not to free trade but to managed, cartelized trade and production, the economy to be governed by an oligarchic ruling coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and Big Intellectuals/Big Media. On the vital currency front the New World Order is slated to fulfill the Keynesian dream: of a World Reserve Bank issuing world paper money ad lib, to make sure that all countries can inflate and enjoy easy money together, with no country's currency inflating more than the others, and thereby suffering declines in exchange rates or outflow of a reserve currency. Internationally coordinated fiat money inflation is the Keynesian goal. As for the shibboleths about "free trade," the "freedom" is strictly Orwellian. The Establishment's concept of "free" trade, since World War II, is exports subsidized by the taxpayers. The idea is to privilege American exports, either by foreign aid or by the international inflation which will pour more buying power into the hands of foreigners who will purchase American products. The U.S. business Establishment is willing to accept imports only as a bargaining chip to pressure foreigners into buying American exports. Within American business, the war over Nafta was a war between exporters, and the bankers who finance them, as against business firms that suffer from import competition. It was a contest which the domestic oriented firms and their union supporters were doomed to lose, since their arguments, by denouncing competition and "loss of jobs," were clearly both special pleading and economically ignorant. As a result, the
exporters and their financiers came across as wise statesmen, and their opponents appeared as both dumb and narrowminded. The truth is that the exporters were simply more sophisticated and better con artists; for one thing, they had in their camp the articulate economists and self-proclaimed champions of the free market. Well, the exporters and their bankers have, and have had for decades, the money and the power. And, unfortunately, in this world, if they have the money and the power, all too often the Big Intellectuals and Economists and Free-Market Champions will follow in their wake. The good news, on the other hand, is that Nafta is only the beginning of the struggle. The New World Order is a Utopian project. Not only is it statist and cartelist and opposed to genuine free trade and free enterprise; it cuts against the interests and the freedom of the broad mass of the people. Furthermore, it also cuts against the rising and rampant nationalisms that have been reawakened throughout the world upon the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Empire. The broad public in the U.S. and in other nations, coupled with renascent nationalisms, could well be enough to put the boots to the New World Order. All that is needed are intellectuals and leaders courageous enough to tell the truth. The truth can make us free; and the panic of the entire Establishment in the weeks before Nafta shows that they know what they will be up against once the public is on to their game. Z
"FAIRNESS" AND THE STEEL STEAL
henever anyone talks about "fairness," the average American had better look to his wallet. When social
pressure groups invoke "fairness," it means that American business must be saddled with quotas for mandatory hiring or promoting of myriad special interest groups, depending on who can get themselves organized and win the ear of the politicians. When businessmen talk of "fair trade" or "fair competition," it means that they are pressuring the government to use coercion to cartelize their industry, to restrict production, raise prices, and allow the flourishing of inefficient and uncompetitive practices. In business, the other guy, your competitor, if he is efficient and is successfully cutting into your business, is by definition engaging in "unfair competition" and "unfair trading practices." Such strictures, of course and again by definition, never seem to apply to the subsidies you may be receiving from government or to these very cartel policies that you are calling for. Of all the industries in the United States, the one that has most consistently and successfully run whining for special privilege to the U.S. government has been iron and steel. Since 1969, the iron and steel industry, facing new competition from European firms that had recovered from World War II, lobbied for and received from the U.S. a system of steel import quotas, which severely restricted steel imports, drove up steel prices sharply, and caused repeated shortages for American steel-using manufacturers. Such steel import quotas, strong-armed and enforced by the U.S. government, were referred to in Orwellian fashion as "voluntary restraint agreements," though agreed to under substantial duress by the foreign governments. These import quotas were always supposed to be temporary, to allow American steel companies to recover from whatever crises they claimed to have suffered, but the quotas of course kept being renewed. Finally, in the spring of 1992, they were allowed to lapse, but not because of an attack of free-trade fervor in the steel industry or in the "free trade" Bush administration. On the contrary, the steel industry decided that they had captured so much of the market share under cover of the quotas,
that they were ready to shift the form of their protection from import quotas to higher tariffs, since the quotas were no longer keeping out very much foreign steel. The Bush Commerce Department decided that a dozen countries, Mexico plus mainly European nations, were "unfairly" subsidizing their own steel industries, and that the tariffs against them must rise to offset this advantage. The fact that the U.S. steel companies are themselves heavily subsidized by the government (e.g., with special loans, development grants, and pension guarantees), did not of course enter into the equation. Tariffs on various forms of steel must now rise up to 90 percent. The result will be higher costs, restricted production, and higher prices imposed on a myriad of American steelusing industries, notably appliances, automobiles, and construction, which will harm the American consumer and hurt the competitiveness of American industry at home and abroad. Moreover, the Commerce Department and the U.S. government's ultimate decision-maker, the International Trade Commission, will rule on still higher steel tariffs, to offset the alleged "dumping" of steel by 20 foreign countries, that is selling at prices below what the U.S. government designates to be "fair market value"—in plain English, a "value" set not by the market but high enough to make it easy for inefficient U.S. companies to compete. This is not a new story for the steel industry, which has been a pernicious influence on American political life for nearly two centuries. During the War of 1812, the American iron industry, centered in Pennsylvania was able to take advantage of the cutoff of foreign trade during the war to expand and fill the place naturally taken by imports from England. After the war, however, the artificially swollen and inefficient Pennsylvania iron plants were unable to compete with imports from England. In response, the Pennsylvania iron industry established the first nationwide mass movement for a protective tariff, employing
the Philadelphia newspaper publisher and printer Matthew Carey to head the agitation; Carey was particularly interested in a protective tariff against foreign printers. A bill for a protective tariff was introduced in Congress by Rep. Henry Baldwin of Pittsburgh, himself an ironmaster (an older term for iron manufacturer). By the 1840s, the national Democratic Party was able to defeat the northern protectionists and establish freedom of trade. During the Civil War, however, the protectionist Republicans were able to use the virtual one-party Congress to drive through their entire national-statist economic program, including protective tariffs on iron and steel and other manufactures. Heading the protectionist forces and the Radical Republicans was Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, himself an ironmaster and interested in crushing the pro-free trade and anti-protectionist South. And every week at his Philadelphia salon, the venerable economist Henry C. Carey, son of Matthew and himself an ironmaster, instructed the Pennsylvania power elite at his "Carey Vespers," why they should favor fiat money and a depreciating greenback as well as a protective tariff on iron and steel. Carey showed the assembled Republican bigwigs, ironmasters, and propagandists, that expected future inflation is discounted far earlier in the foreign exchange market than in domestic sales, so that the dollar will weaken faster in foreign exchange markets under inflation than it will lose in purchasing power at home. So long as the inflation continues, then, the dollar depreciation will act like a second "tariff," encouraging exports as well as discouraging imports. The arguments of the steel industry differed from one century to the next. In the nineteenth century, their favorite was the "infant industry argument": how can a new, young, weak, struggling "infant" industry as in the United States, possibly compete with the well-established mature, and strong iron
industry in England without a few years, at least, of protection until the steel baby was strong enough to stand on its two feet? Of course, "infancy" for protectionists never ends, and the "temporary" period of support stretched on forever. By the postWorld War II era, in fact, the steel propagandists, switching their phony biological metaphors, were using what amounted to a "senescent industry argument": that the American steel industry was old and creaky, stuck with old equipment, and that they needed a "breathing space" of a few years to retool and rejuvenate. One argument is as fallacious as the other. In reality, protection is a subsidy for the inefficient and tends to perpetuate and aggravate the inefficiency, be the industry young, mature, or "old." A protective tariff or quota provides a shelter for inefficiency and mismanagement to multiply, and for the excessive bidding up of costs and pandering to steel unions. The result is a perpetually uncompetitive industry. In fact, the American steel industry has always been laggard and sluggish in adopting technological innovation—be it the nineteenth-century Bessemer process, or the twentieth-century oxygenation process. Only exposure to competition can make a firm or an industry competitive. As for "unfairly" low pricing or dumping, this is trumped-up nonsense by American firms who are being out-competed. But if a foreign country should be silly enough to engage in this practice, we should rush to take advantage of it rather than penalizing it. Suppose, for example, that Mexico, by some quirk, decides to "dump" steel by giving it away free, or charging a nominal penny a ton. Instead of barring these goodies, we should applaud as American buyers—in this case steel-using manufacturers—rush to buy these bargains so long as they might last. Until the inevitable day comes when Mexico goes bankrupt and reverses this nutty policy, the American buyers and the consumers will enjoy a bargain bonanza. "Dumping" can harm only the dumper; it always benefits the dumpee. Z
94 THE CRUSADE AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA
or many years, America's campuses have been sunk in political apathy. The values of the 1950s are supposed to be back, including concentration on one's career and lack of interest in social or political causes. But now, suddenly, it begins to seem like a replay of the late 1960s: demonstrations, placards, even sit-ins on campus. The issue is apartheid in South Africa, and the campaign hopes to bring down apartheid by pressuring colleges and universities to disinvest in South Africa. Coercion against South Africa is also being pursued on the legislative front, including drives to embargo that country as well as prohibit the importation of Krugerrands. I yield to no one in my abhorrence of the apartheid system, but it must never be forgotten what the road to Hell is paved with. Good intentions are scarcely enough, and we must always be careful that in trying to do good, we don't do harm instead. The object of the new crusade is presumably to help the oppressed blacks of South Africa. But what would be the impact of U.S. disinvestment? The demand for black workers in South Africa would fall, and the result would be loss of jobs and lower wage rates for the oppressed people of that country. Not only that: presumably the U.S. firms are among the highest-paying employers in South Africa, so that the impact on black wages and working conditions would be particularly severe. In short: the group we are most trying to help by our well-meaning intervention will be precisely the one to lose the most. As on so many other occasions, doing good for becomes doing harm to.
The same result would follow from the other legislative actions against South Africa. Prohibition of Krugerrands, for example, would injure, first and foremost, the black workers in the gold mining industry. And so on down the line. I suppose that demonstrating and crusading against apartheid gives American liberals a fine glow of moral righteousness. But have they really pondered the consequences? Some American black leaders are beginning to do so. A spokesman for the National Urban League concedes that "We do not favor disinvestment. . . . We believe that the workers would be the ones that would be hurt." And Ted Adams, executive director of the National Association of Blacks Within Government, warns that disinvestment would "come down hard on black people," and could wind up "throwing the baby out with the bath water." But other black leaders take a sterner view. A spokesman for Chicago Mayor Harold Washington admits "some concern that the most immediate effect of disinvestment may be felt by the laborers themselves," but then adds, on a curious note, "that's never an excuse not to take action." Michelle Kourouma, executive director of the National Conference of Black Mayors, explains the hard-line position: "How could it get any worse? We have nothing to lose and everything to gain: freedom." The profound flaw is an equivocation on the word "we," a collective term covering a multitude of sins. Unfortunately, it is not Ms. Kourouma or Mr. Washington or any American liberal who stands to lose by disinvestment; it is only the blacks in South Africa. It is all too easy for American liberals, secure in their wellpaid jobs and their freedom in the United States, to say, in effect, to the blacks of South Africa: "We're going to make you sacrifice for your own benefit." It is doubtful whether the blacks in South Africa will respond with the same enthusiasm. Unfortunately, they have nothing to say in the matter; once again, their lives will be the pawns in other people's political games.
How can we in the United States help South African blacks? There is no way that we can end the apartheid system. But one thing we can do is the exact opposite of the counsel of our misled crusaders. During the days of the national grape boycott, the economist Angus Black wrote that the only way for consumers to help the California grape workers was to buy as many grapes as they possibly could, thereby increasing the demand for grapes and raising the wage rate and employment of grape workers. Similarly, all we can do is to encourage as much as possible American investment in South Africa and the importation of Krugerrands. In that way, wages and employment, in relatively well-paid jobs, will improve for the black laborers. Free-market capitalism is a marvelous antidote for racism. In a free market, employers who refuse to hire productive black workers are hurting their own profits and the competitive position of their own company. It is only when the state steps in that the government can socialize the costs of racism and establish an apartheid system. The growth of capitalism in South Africa will do far more to end apartheid than the futile and counterproductive grandstanding of American liberals. Z
95 ARE DIAMONDS REALLY FOREVER?
he international diamond cartel, the most successful cartel in history, far more successful than the demonized OPEC, is at last falling on hard times. For more than a century, the powerful DeBeers Consolidated Mines, a South African corporation controlled by the Rothschild Bank in London, has managed to organize the cartel, restricting the supply of diamonds
on the market and raising the price far above what would have been market levels. It is not simply that DeBeers mines much of the world's diamonds; DeBeers has persuaded the world's diamond miners to market virtually all their diamonds through DeBeers's Central Selling Organization (CSO), which then grades, distributes, and sells all the rough diamonds to cutters and dealers further down on the road toward the consumer. Even an unchallenged cartel, of course, does not totally control its price or its market; even it is at the mercy of consumer demand. One of the reasons that diamond prices and profits are slumping is the current world recession. World demand, and particularly consumer demand in the U.S. for diamonds, has fallen sharply, with consumers buying fewer diamonds and downgrading their purchases to cheaper gems, which of course particularly hits the market in the expensive stones. But how could even this degree of cartel success occur in a free market? Economic theory and history both tell us that maintaining a cartel, for any length of time, is almost impossible on the free market, as the firms who restrict their supply are challenged by cartel members who secretly cut their prices in order to expand their share of the market as well as by new producers who enter the fray enticed by their higher profits attained by the cartelists. So, how could DeBeers maintain such a flourishing, century-long cartel on the free market? The answer is simple: the market has not been really free. In particular, in South Africa, the major center of world diamond production, there has been no free enterprise in diamond mining. The government long ago nationalized all diamond mines, and anyone who finds a diamond mine on his property discovers that the mine immediately becomes government property. The South African government then licenses mine operators who lease the mines from the government and, it so happened, that lo and behold!, the only licensees turned out to be either DeBeers itself or other firms who were willing to play ball with the DeBeers cartel. In short: the international diamond cartel
was only maintained and has only prospered because it was enforced by the South African government. And enforced to the hilt: for there were severe sanctions against any independent miners and merchants who tried to produce "illegal" diamonds, even though they were mined on what used to be private property. The South African government has invested considerable resources in vessels that constantly patrol the coast, firing on and apprehending the supposedly pernicious diamond "smugglers." Back in the pre-Gorbachev era, it was announced that Russia had discovered considerable diamond resources. For a while, there was fear among DeBeers and the cartelists that the Russians would break the international diamond cartel by selling in the open market abroad. Never fear, however. The Soviet government, as a professional monopolist itself, was happy to cut a deal with DeBeers and receive an allocation of their own quota of diamonds to sell to the CSO. But now the CSO and DeBeers are in trouble. The problem is not only the recession; the very structure of the cartel is at stake, with the problem centering on the African country of Angola. Not that the communist government (or formerly communist, but now quasicommunist, government) refuses to cooperate with the cartel. It always has. The problem is threefold. First, even though the Angolan civil war is over, the results have left the government powerless to control most of the country. Second, the end of the war has given independent wildcatters access to the Cuango River in northern Angola, a territory rich in diamonds. And third, the African drought has dried up the Cuango along with other rivers, leaving the rich alluvial diamond deposits in the beds and on the banks of the Cuango accessible to the eager prospectors. With the diamond deposits available and free of war, and the central government unable to enforce the cartel, 50,000 prospectors have happily poured into the Cuango Valley of Angola. Furthermore, the prospectors are being protected by a private army of demobilized but armed Angolan soldiers. As
one Johannesburg broker pointed out, "If you fly a patrol over the province you can get shot down by a missile. And it's a 100mile river. You can't put a fence around it." So far, DeBeers has been holding the line by buying up the "oversupply" caused by the influx of Angolan diamonds; this year, the cartel may be forced to buy no less than $500 million in "illegal" Angolan diamonds, twice as much as that country's official output. Consequently, DeBeers is taking heavy losses; as a result, Julian Ogilvie Thompson, the arrogant and aristocratic chairman of DeBeers, was forced to announce that the company was slashing its dividend, for only the second time since World War II. Immediately, DeBeers's shares plummeted by one-third, taking with it much of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Overall, DeBeers's CSO had to purchase $4.8 billion of rough diamonds in 1992, while being able to sell only $3.5 billion. This huge pileup of inventory could break the cartel price; to stave off such a perceived disaster, DeBeers ordered cartel members to cut back 25 percent on the diamonds they had already contracted to market through the cartel. Such a large cutback sets the stage for individual firms to sneak supplies into the market and evade the cartel restrictions. No wonder that Sir Harry Oppenheimer, the octogenarian head of DeBeers, decided to "vacation" in Russia at the end of August, presumably to persuade the Russians to resist any temptation to engage in freemarket competition in the diamond market. With luck, however, the forces of free competition—as well as the world's consumers of diamonds—may triumph. Z
OIL PRICES AGAIN
ometimes it seems that our entire apparatus of economic education: countless courses, students, professors, textbooks,
backed up—in the case of oil pricing—by a decade of experience in the 1970s, is a gigantic waste of time. Certainly it seems that way when we ponder the near-universal reaction to the Kuwait crisis. When Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and the Bush administration quickly organized an oil embargo and military action to try to restore the hereditary emirate, gasoline prices, wholesale and retail, began going up immediately. In two days, gasoline price rises throughout the country ranged from four to 17 cents a gallon. Immediately, hysteria hit. Wherever one turned—media pundits, the financial press, professional consumerists, politicians of all parties, the general public, even parts of the oil industry itself—the reaction was unanimous. The price increases were unacceptable, a "ripoff by Big Oil," they constituted evil "price gouging," and the cause was all too clear: "unconscionable greed." Not content with "desecrating" pristine beaches and blue water by wantonly dumping oil upon them, Big Oil, in the words of Edwin Rothschild (all over TV as energy policy director of the Naderite Citizen Action), had launched a "preemptive strike: they are doing to American consumers what Saddam Hussein did to Kuwait." Federal, state, and local governments hastily began investigations of the "gouging." Senator Stevens (R-AK) ominously predicted "gas lines by Christmas," and Senator Lieberman (D-CT), leading the anti-oil hawks in the Senate, declared "there is absolutely no reason consumers should already be paying more for oil and gas . . . it must be stopped." Under this bludgeoning, ARCO quickly announced a oneweek freeze of gasoline prices, and there was general talk of "voluntary" freezes by other oil companies. We are mired, once again, in a farrago of economic fallacies. Let us start with "greed." There is absolutely no evidence that Big Oil is any greedier than small oil, or that oil businesses are any greedier than any other firms. It is even less likely that oil
businessmen, whether big or small, were suddenly seized by a monumental intensification of greed on August 2. In fact, pricing on the market is not an act of will by sellers. Businessmen do not determine their selling prices on the basis of whether they feel greedy or "responsible" that morning. The entire apparatus of economic theory, built up over centuries, is devoted to demonstrating a great truth: that prices are set only by the demand of purchasers (how much of a good or service purchasers will buy at any given price), and by the supply or stock of the good. Prices are set so as to "clear the market" by equating supply and demand; at the market price the supply of a good will exactly equal the amount of the good that people are willing to buy or hold. If the demand for the good increases, purchases will bid the price up; if the supply increases, the price will fall. Demanders consist of consumers, whose purchases are determined by the values they place on the goods, and various producers or businessmen, whose demands are determined by how much they expect consumers to pay for the final product. Current production, and therefore future supply, will be determined by how much businessmen expect that consumers will be paying in the future for the final product. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, knowledgeable people in the oil market immediately and understandably forecast a future drop in the supply of oil. (In fact, as soon as Iraq began to mass troops on the Kuwait border a few weeks before the invasion, crude prices began to rise sharply, in expectation of a possible invasion.) Actions on the market, e.g., demands for the purchase or accumulation of oil, are not at all mechanistic: they are a function of what knowledgeable people on the market anticipate will happen. Far from being disruptive or "unconscionable," this sort of speculative demand performs an important economic function. If people were mechanistic and did not anticipate the future, a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil would disrupt the economy by causing a sudden drop in supply and a huge jump in prices.
Speculative anticipation eases this volatility by raising prices more gradually; then, if supply is sharply cut off, speculators can unload their oil or gasoline stocks at a profit and lower prices from what they would have been. In short, speculators, by anticipating the future, help to smooth fluctuations and to allocate oil or any other commodity to its most-valued uses, over time. The general public, media pundits, politicians, and even some businessmen, seem to have a mechanistic, cost-plus model of "just" pricing in their heads. It is all right, they concede, for each businessman to pay his costs of production and then add on some "reasonable" markup; but any price beyond that is morally condemned as excessive "greed." But cost of production has no direct influence on price; prices are only determined by supply and demand. Assume, for example, that manna from heaven, an extremely valuable product, falls on some piece of land in New Jersey. The manna (extremely scarce and useful) will command a high price even though its "cost" to the landowner was zero (or is limited to the costs of advertising and marketing his find). There is no guaranteed profit margin on the free market. A businessman may find that he can only sell his product below his costs, and thereby suffer losses; or that he can sell above costs, and enjoy a profit. The better he forecasts, the more profit he makes. That, in fact, is what entrepreneurship and our profit-and-loss system is all about. Ideas have consequences; and the danger is that we will repeat the calamities of the early and late 1970s. Then, too, suddenly higher prices (caused by current and anticipated supply cutoffs) were treated as moral failures on the part of oil men and combatted by maximum price controls imposed by government. Imposing controls to stop a price increase is like trying to cure a fever by pushing down the mercury on a thermometer. They work on the symptoms instead of the causes. As a result, controls do not stop price increases; they create consumer shortages, misallocations, and drive the price increases underground into black markets. The consumers wind up far worse off than
before. The consumer gas lines and shortages of both the early and late 1970s were caused by price controls; these gas lines (including the shooting of drivers who tried to muscle through the line) disappeared as if by magic as soon as gas prices were allowed to rise to clear the market and equate demand and supply. If the politicians and pundits have their way, there may well be gas lines by Christmas; but the cause will be they themselves, and not small or Big Oil. Z
97 WHY THE INTERVENTION IN ARABIA?
midst the near-universal hoopla for President Bush's massive intervention into the Arabian Peninsula, a few sober observers have pointed out the curious lack of clarity in Mr. Bush's strategic objective: is it to defend Saudi Arabia (and is that kingdom really under attack?); to kick Iraq out of Kuwait; to restore what Bush has oddly referred to as the "legitimate government" of Kuwait (made "legitimate" by what process?); to depose or murder Saddam Hussein (and to replace him with whom or what?); or to carpet-bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age? There has been even less discussion, however, about a somewhat different even more puzzling question: why, exactly, are we suddenly hip-deep into Saudi Arabia? Why the hysteria? Why the most massive military buildup since Vietnam, and the placing of almost our entire army, air force, navy, marines, and a chunk of reserves in this one spot on the globe where there is not even a U.S. treaty obligation? (1) Big guy, little guy. What is puzzling to some of us is crystal clear to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in "Operation Desert Shield." Growing testy under
media questioning, the general replied: "Don't you read the papers? You all know why we're here. A big guy beat up a little guy and we're here to stop it." The general was obviously using the Police Action metaphor. A big guy is beating up a little guy, and the cop on the corner intervenes to put a stop to the aggression. Unfortunately, on further analysis, the Police Action metaphor raises far more questions than it answers. Aside from the obvious problem: why is the U.S. the self-appointed international cop? The cops, seeing the bad guy flee and lose himself in his neighborhood, do not surround that neighborhood with massive force and starve out the entire neighborhood looking for the bad guy. Still less do cops carpet-bomb the area hoping the bad guy is killed in the process. Cops operate on the crucial principle that innocent civilians do not get killed or targeted in the course of trying to apprehend the guilty. Another crucial point: governments are not akin to individuals. If a big guy sets upon a little guy, the aggressor is invading his victim's right to his person and to his property. But governments cannot be assumed to be innocent individuals possessing just property rights in their territory. Government boundaries are not productive acquisitions, as is private property. They are almost always the result of previous aggressions and coercion by governments on both sides. We cannot assume that every existing state has the absolute right to "own" or control all the territory within its generally arbitrary borders. Another problem with the alleged principle of the U.S. cop defending all borders, especially those of little states: what about the big U.S. government's own invasion of decidedly little Panama only a short time ago? Who gets to put the manacles on the U.S.? The usual retort was that the U.S. was "restoring" free elections in Panama. An odd way to justify intervention against Iraq, however, since Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are each absolutist royal oligarchies that are at the furtherest possible pole from "democracy" or "free elections."
(2) Saddam Hussein is a very bad man, the "Butcher of Baghdad." Absolutely, but he was just as much a butcher only the other day when he was our gallant ally against the terrible threat posed to the Gulf by the fanatical Shiites of Iran. The fanatical Shiites are still there, by the way, but they—as well as the Dictator of Syria, Hafez Assad, the Butcher of Hama—seem to have been magically transformed into our gallant allies against Saddam Hussein. (3) But someday (three but more likely ten years) Saddam Hussein may acquire nuclear weapons. So what? The U.S. has nuclear weapons galore, the result of its late Cold War with the U.S.S.R., which also has a lot of nuclear weapons, and had them during the decades that they were our Implacable Enemy. So why is there far more hysteria now against Saddam than there ever was against the Soviet Union? Besides, Israel has had nuclear weapons for a long time, and India and Pakistan are at the point of war over Kashmir, and they each have nuclear arms. So why don't we worry about them? The appeal to high principle is not going to succeed as a coherent explanation for the American intervention. Many observers, therefore, have zeroed in on economics as the explanation. (4) The Oil War. Saddam, by invading Kuwait and threatening the rest of Arabia, poses the danger, as one media person put it, of being "king of the world's oil." But the oil explanation has invariably been posed as the U.S. defending the American consumer against an astronomical raising of oil prices by Iraq. Again, however, there are many problems with the Oil Price explanation. The same Establishment that now worries about higher oil prices as a "threat to the American way of life," treated OPEC's quadrupling of oil prices in the early 1970s when we were far more dependent on Gulf oil than we are now, with calm and fortitude. Why was there no U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia then to lower the price of oil? If there is so much concern for the consumer, why do so many politicians long to slap a huge 50 cents a gallon tax on the price gasoline?
Indeed, it is clear that the power of OPEC, like all cartels, is strictly limited by consumer demand, and that its power to raise the price of oil is far less than in the 1970s. Best estimates are that Saddam Hussein, even conquering the entire Gulf, could not raise the oil price above $25 a barrel. But the U.S., by its embargo, blockade, and continuing threats of war, has already managed to raise the price of crude to $40 a barrel! In fact, it would be more plausible to suppose that the aim of the massive Bush intervention has been to raise the price of oil, not to lower it. And considering Mr. Bush's vice presidential visit to Saudi Arabia specifically to urge them to raise prices, his long-time connections with Texas oil and with Big Oil generally, as well as Texas's slump in recent years, this hunch begins to look all too credible. But the likeliest explanation for the Bush intervention has not been raised at all. This view focuses not on the price of oil, but on its supply, and specifically on the profits to be made from that supply. For surely, as Joe Sobran has emphasized, Saddam does not intend to control oil in order to destroy either its supply or the world's customers whom he hopes will purchase that oil. The Rockefeller interest and other Western Big Oil companies have had intimate ties with the absolute royalties of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia ever since the 1930s. During that decade and World War II, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia granted a monopoly concession on all oil under his domain to the Rockefellercontrolled Aramco, while the $30 million in royalty payments for the concession was paid by the U.S. taxpayer. The Rockefeller-influenced U.S. Export-Import Bank obligingly paid another $25 million to Ibn Saud to construct a pleasure railroad from his main palace, and President Roosevelt made a secret appropriation out of war funds of $165 million to Aramco for pipeline construction across Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the U.S. Army was obligingly assigned to build an airfield and military base at Dhahran, near the Aramco Oilfields, after
which the multi-million dollar base was turned over, gratis, to Ibn Saud. It is true that Aramco was gradually "nationalized" by the Saudi monarchy during the 1970s, but that amounts merely to a shift in the terms of this cozy partnership: over half of Saudi oil is still turned over to the old Aramco consortium as management corporation for sale to the outside world. Plus Rockefeller's Mobil Oil, in addition to being a key part of Aramco, is engaged in two huge joint ventures with the Saudi government: an oil refinery and a petrochemical complex costing more than $1 billion each. Oil pipelines and refineries have to be constructed, and Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), part of Aramco, brought in its longtime associate, Bechtel, from the beginning in Saudi Arabia to perform construction. The well-connected Bechtel (which has provided cabinet secretaries George Schultz and Casper Weinberger to the federal government) is now busily building Jubail, a new $20 billion industrial city on the Persian Gulf, as well as several other large projects in Saudi Arabia. As for Kuwait, its emir granted a monopoly oil concession to Kuwait Oil Co., a partnership of Gulf Oil and British Petroleum, in the 1930s, and by now Kuwait's immensely wealthy ruling Sabah family owns a large chunk of British Petroleum, and also keeps enormous and most welcome deposits at Rockefeller-oriented Chase Manhattan and Citibank. Iraq, on the other hand, has long been a rogue oil country, in the sense of being outside the Rockefeller-Wall Street ambit. Thus, when the crisis struck on August 2, the big Wall Street banks, including Chase and Citibank, told reporters that they had virtually no loans outstanding, nor deposits owed, to Iraq. Hence, it may well be that Mr. Bush's war is an oil war all right, but not in the sense of a heroic battle on behalf of cheap oil for the American consumer. George Bush, before he ascended to the vice presidency, was a member of the executive committee of David Rockefeller's powerful Trilateral Commission. Mr. Bush's own oil exploration company, Zapata, was
funded by the Rockefeller family. So this Oil War may instead be a less-than-noble effort on behalf of Rockefeller control of Middle East. Z
98 A TRIP TO POLAND
n March 1986, I spent a fascinating week at a conference at a hotel in Mrogowo, in the lake country of northern Poland (formerly East Prussia). The conference, a broad-ranging symposium on "Economics and Social Change," was hosted by the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw, and sponsored by a group of English conservative and free-market scholars. Even though economically, as one of the Western participants noted, Poland is a "giant slum," its countryside, small towns, and cities in evident and grim decay, this gallant nation is intellectually the freest in the Eastern bloc. There is no other country in the Soviet orbit at which a conference of this sort could possibly be held. The only restriction was that the announced titles of the papers had to be ideologically neutral. But, once the conference ran that particular gauntlet, and the meeting was approved by the authorities, anyone could—and did—say whatever they wished. (In my case, I bowdlerized the title of my paper, "Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals in Social Change Towards Laissez-Faire," by discreetly omitting the last three words, although the actual content of the talk remained the same.) The first paper of the meeting was delivered by Professor Antony Flew, a distinguished English philosopher, who likes nothing better than to deliver—with intelligence and wit— zingers at the Left. Flew pulled no punches, pointing out the
importance and necessity of property rights and the free market. The fascinating thing was that no Polish eyebrow was raised, and no Polish scholar reacted in horror. Quite the contrary. And it was enormously inspiring to see every one of the 20-odd Polish scholars denouncing the government, even though it was obvious to every one of us that there was a government agent listening intently to the proceedings. (The agent—the travel guide and director of the trip—was obviously highly intelligent, and aware of what was going on.) The Poles ranged from libertarian to middle-of-the-road to dissident Marxist, but it was markedly evident that not one of them had any use whatsoever for the Communist regime. In addition to being opposed to Communism, none of the Polish scholars at the meeting had much use for any government. One told me, "of course, any act of government is done for the power and wealth of the government officials, and not for the public interest, common good, general welfare, or any other reasons offered." "Yes," I said, "but the government's propaganda always says that they perform these actions for the common good, etc." The Polish professor looked at me quizzically: "Who believes government propaganda?" I replied that, "unfortunately, in the United States, many people believe government propaganda." He was incredulous. The Polish scholars all knew English very well, a virtue that unfortunately we Westerners couldn't begin to reciprocate. Nevertheless, a real camaraderie developed. One amusing culture gap was the Polish waiters in our hotel (what passes for a "luxury hotel" in Poland is roughly equivalent to a low-end interstate motel in the U.S.) having to deal with the "kids" of the conference, two young English scholars who are insistent vegetarians. Poland is a land with a very high meat consumption per capita (the Communists never collectivized agriculture), but where meat is now rationed, and it was beyond the comprehension of the Polish waiters that two young privileged Westerners would keep calling for "more vegetables" while turning down top-grade beef and pork. Fortunately, there was always a Polish
professor nearby who could serve as interpreter for these outlandish requests. The most moving moment of the meeting came at the banquet on the final night, when the English sociologist who directed the conference, after thanking our Polish hosts, raised a glass and offered a heartfelt toast to "a free, sovereign, and Catholic Poland." Every one of us understood his intent, and everyone in that room, Protestants and unbelievers included, raised a glass and drank with fervor. Including the government agent. Z
99 PERU AND THE FREE MARKET
e had been widely touted by the American media as the savior of Peru from hyperinflation and from the dangers posed by the current socialistic Garcia regime as well as the fanatical Maoist-type guerrillas who call themselves "The Shining Path." Mario Vargas Llosa, tall, aristocratic, eminent avantgarde novelist and ex-leftist, was running for president of Peru. Vargas Llosa, trumpeted by the media, was a non-politician bound for inevitable victory on his free-market program. In the April presidential balloting, however, which Vargas was expected to sweep in a landslide forecast by the public opinion polls, the bubble burst. An unknown presidential candidate, Alberto Fujimori, operating with virtually no money out of a storefront in Lima, rose from a negligible amount of previous polls into a virtual tie with Vargas Llosa for first place. Fujimori may now win the runoff. What exactly happened on the road to the Peruvian free-market paradise? Vargas Llosa had been converted to the free market by the remarkable economist, Hernando de Soto, whose best-selling work, The Other Path, not only called for a free market, but First published in July 1990.
advocated a genuine "people's" free market based on private entrepreneurs, in contrast to Peru's (and other Latin American countries') unfortunate experiences with state capitalism that fosters privileged contractors and monopolists. In the early part of last year's presidential campaign, de Soto was one of Vargas's key campaign advisors. But de Soto soon broke with Vargas, denouncing him for selling out to the very state capitalism that de Soto had spent so many years denouncing. Vargas's shift was the beginning of his troubles. His statecapitalist policies aggravated the fact that Vargas Llosa is one of the wealthy, white minority of European descent—the Criollos (approximately 2.8 million out of a largely Indian and mixedIndian Peruvian population of 20 million)—who are the landlords and state capitalists of Peru and who are therefore cordially detested by the rest of the population. While Vargas Llosa surrounded himself with wealthy Criollos, he was visibly uneasy on the stump in Indian districts. Vargas sealed his doom when he embraced the "free-market," "anti-inflationist" policies of the new Brazilian president, Fernando Collor de Mello. His "free-market shock treatment" for the Brazilian economy has been widely heralded as a salutary if radical "strong-man" technique of ending that country's accelerating inflation. De Mello's policy may well be a "shock treatment," but it goes far beyond any shock administered by a free market. While there are some decontrol and privatization planks in the de Mello program, most of the shock is blatantly statist: including a massive increase in taxes, and, in particular, a Draconian deflationary program that freezes for many months everyone's bank account, thereby suddenly contracting the Brazilian money supply by 80 percent. Austrian economists have often been accused of being grim "deflationists" for wanting to allow insolvent fractional reserve banks (including S & Ls) to go bankrupt without a bailout. But this contraction is nothing compared to de Mello's arbitrary deflation of 80 percent. Far from being free market, the Brazilian
policy amounts to first engaging in a massive printing of money, then spending this newly-created money, driving up prices drastically, and then proclaiming a cure by confiscating the largest part of that money. In short, the Brazilian government has delivered to the country's economy a massive and lethal onetwo punch. On his promising to Peru the same treatment as de Mello had just given Brazil, it is no wonder that the Peruvian voters turned from Vargas in droves. In the meanwhile, Fujimori came up fast on the outside. A member of the small but highly respected Japanese-Peruvian community of 55,000 Fujimori found himself embraced by the country's Indians as a fellow ethnic oppressed by the hated ruling Criollo elite. The first Japanese were imported into Peru at the end of the nineteenth century to work as slaves on the coastal sugar plantations. The Japanese, however, rebelled within weeks, and moved to Lima, where they are now located. Fujimori's parents emigrated to Lima in the mid-1930s where his father, along with other Japanese, created hundreds of successful small businesses. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government pressured Peru to go to war with Japan, to confiscate Japanese-owned businesses, including the elder Fujimori's tire repair shop, and to ship almost 1,500 Japanese to internment in the U.S. Hence, the Peruvian Indians' embrace of Fujimori as a fellow non-white rising up against the Criollos. The fact that Fujimori's immigrant mother does not speak Spanish works in his favor with the Inca masses, who don't speak Spanish either; Spanish is the language of Vargas Llosa and the Criollo conquerors. Fujimori, by running a non-moneyed, grass-roots campaign, tapped this favorable sentiment. Moreover, his campaign slogan: "Work, Honesty, Technology," though a bit vague, resonated with the three key precepts of Inca law: don't be lazy, don't steal, don't lie. Fujimori also promised the Peruvians something far more concrete: that he would encourage massive private Japanese investment. As I write, the race is a toss-up. If Vargas loses, it will be because he deserves it. Z
A GOLD STANDARD FOR RUSSIA?
n their eagerness to desocialize in 1989, the Soviets called in Western economists and political scientists—trying to imbibe wisdom from the fount of capitalism. In this search for answers, the host of American and European Marxist academics were conspicuous by their absence. Having suffered under socialism for generations, the Soviets and East Europeans have had it up to here with Marxism; they hardly need instruction from starry-eyed Western naifs who have never been obliged to live under their Marxist ideal. One of the most fascinating exchanges with visiting Western firemen took place in an interview in Moscow between a representative of the Soviet Gosbank (the approximate equivalent of Russia's Central Bank) and Wayne Angell, a governor of the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. The interview, to be published in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia, was excerpted in the Wall Street Journal. The man from Gosbank was astounded to hear Mr. Angell strongly recommend an immediate return of Soviet Russia to the gold standard. It would, furthermore, not be a phony supply-side gold standard, but a genuine one. As Angell stated, "the first thing your government should do is define your monetary unit of account, the ruble, in terms of a fixed weight of gold and make it convertible at that weight to Soviet citizens, as well as to the rest of the world." Not that the Gosbank man was unfamiliar with the gold standard; it was just that he had imbibed conventional Western wisdom that the gold standard only be restored at some indistinct point in the far future, after all other economic ills had been neatly solved. Why, the Soviet financial expert asked Angell, should the gold standard be restored first?
Wayne Angell proceeded to a cogent explanation of the importance of a prompt return to gold. The ruble, he pointed out, is shot; it has no credibility anywhere. It has been systematically depreciated, inflated, and grossly overvalued by the Soviet authorities. Therefore, mark or even dollar convertibility is not enough for the ruble. To gain credibility, to become a truly hard money, Angell explained, the ruble must become what Angell, with remarkable candor, referred to as "honest money." "It is my belief," Angell continued, "that without an honest money, Soviet citizens cannot be expected to respond to the reforms," whereas a "gold-backed ruble would be seen as an honest money at home and would immediately trade as a convertible currency internationally." With the ruble backed solidly by gold, the dread problem of the inflationary "ruble overhang" would wither away. The Soviet public is anxious to get rid of ever-depreciating rubles as soon as consumer goods become available. But under a gold standard, the demand for rubles would greatly strengthen, and Soviets could wait to trade them for more consumer goods or Western products. More goods would be produced as Soviet workers and producers become eager to sell goods and services for newly worthwhile rubles. Without gold, however, Angell warned that the Soviet reform program might well collapse under the blows of rampant inflation and a progressively disintegrating ruble. The man from Gosbank was quick with the crucial question. If the gold standard is so vital, why don't the United States and other Western countries adopt it? Angell's reply was fascinating in its implications: that the dollar and other Western currencies "have at least a history of gold convertibility" which enabled them to continue through the Bretton Woods system and launch the present system of fluctuating fiat currencies. What, then, is Mr. Angell really saying? What is he really telling the Soviet central banker? He is saying that the United States and other Western governments have been able to get
away with imposing what he concedes to be dishonest money because of the remnants of association these currencies have had with gold. In contrast to the ruble, the dollar, the mark, etc., have still retained much of their credibility; in short, their governments are still able to con their publics, whereas the Soviet government is no longer able to do so. Hence, the Soviets must return to gold, whereas Western governments don't yet need to follow suit. They can still get away with dishonest money. It would have been instructive to ask Mr. Angell about the myriad of Third World countries, particularly in Latin America, who have been suffering from severe currency deterioration and hyperinflation. Aren't those currencies in nearly as bad shape as the ruble, and couldn't those countries use a prompt return to gold? And perhaps even we in the West don't have to be doomed to wait until we too are suffering from hyperinflation before we can enjoy the great benefits of an honest, stable, non-inflatable, money? Z
101 SHOULD WE BAIL OUT GORBY?
he debate over whether or to what extent we should bail out Gorby ($10 billion? $50 billion? $100 billion? Over how many years?) has almost universally been couched in false and misleading terms. The underlying concept seems to be that the United States government has, through some divine edict, become the wise and benign parent of the Soviet Union, which, in its turn, has for most of its career been a wild and unruly kid, but a kid that is now maturing and showing signs of taking its place as a responsible member of the family. It is supposed to be
up to the parent, engaged in a behavioristic reward/punishment form of raising said kid, to mete out a reward/punishment scheme so as to reward improvement and to punish (by rewarding less—it's a very progressive form of child-rearing) any regression back to the wild-kid state. And in tune with modern mores, the "rewards" are exclusively monetary; that is, to put a candid face on it, we are engaged in a process of bribing the kid to be good. And so the debate, within the circle of "parents" of the Soviet Union which all Americans have willy-nilly become, runs along these lines: Gorby did wonderfully, and freed Eastern Europe and began to free the Soviet Union; for this he should be rewarded copiously. On the other hand, Gorby slipped back for a while, and began to play with those bad companions the despotic Black Colonels, for which he should be punished (by withholding bribes); but recently, Gorby has gotten better. In addition to the nuanced complications of trying to figure out to what extent to reward Gorby and to what extent to withhold the rewards, there is an extra complication, due to the fact that Gorby and the USSR are, after all, not one and the same. If we reward Gorby heavily, will it discourage the more advanced reformers such as Yeltsin, or will it push Gorby more in their direction? On the other hand, if we punish Gorby, will this lead to the dread Black Colonels—the real despots—taking over, or will Yeltsin and the liberals take over instead? The U.S. Establishment, which worships the status quo ("stability") almost above all things, at least in foreign affairs, and fears change like the head of Medusa, of course plumps for Gorby all the way. Within this debate, too, everyone, even the most enthusiastic bailout advocates, recognize that the U.S. budget is limited, and that therefore there has to be some restraint upon the total handout. The result of all these complexities is that, as in most other areas of American life, our seemingly vibrant democracy
appears to be engaged in free and vigorous debate, but is really only parsing relatively trivial nuances within a basic, unargued, and implicitly assumed, paradigm: the U.S. as parent trying to find the precise formula for correcting previously unruly offspring. Unfortunately, the basic paradigm never gets discussed, and desperately needs airing and criticism. There are many fundamental flaws with this universally held paradigm. First, no one appointed us as parents of the Soviet Union. To be more specific, the United States, as rich and powerful as it is, is not God; its resources are strictly limited and, over recent years, have experienced ever narrower limits. Even if we wanted to and set out to do so, it is not in our power to cure all the ills of the world. There is no way we can stop or reverse the volcanoes, heal the sick, or resurrect the dead. It is not just that we are not responsible for Third World (or Second World) poverty; there is nothing we can do about it, except bankrupting and impoverishing ourselves. We can only serve as a beacon-light on how to get out of the mire. For the United States and Western Europe did not become relatively rich and prosperous by accident or by a trick of nature; we lifted ourselves by our bootstraps out of the nasty, brutish, and short lives common to mankind. We—or more precisely our ancestors—did it by devotion to property rights and the rule of law, and by providing the institutional means for a free and developing economy to flourish. The best indeed the only thing we can do for the impoverished Second and Third Worlds—is to tell them: look, here is how we became prosperous: by defending the rights of private property and free exchange, by allowing people to save and invest and keep their earnings. If you want to prosper, follow our forefathers: privatize and deregulate. Get your government off your backs and out of your lives. If we adopt this new (or rather, return to the original U.S.) paradigm, the whole question of bailing out Gorby looks very different. U.S. government aid can only be a reward for Gorby
and the rest of the neo-Communist nomenklatura. Regardless of rhetoric, such aid can only strengthen the State in the Soviet Union and therefore diminish and cripple the only hope for Russia and the other republics: the nascent and struggling private sector. Aid to Gorby, therefore, may be a reward for Gorby and his friends; but it is necessarily and ineluctably a harsh punishment for the peoples of the Soviet Union, because it can only delay and cripple their return, or advance, to a free economy. To paraphrase a famous statement of Dos Passos ("all right, we are two nations"): every country is really two nations, not one. From one nation—the people interacting voluntarily, in families, churches, science, culture, and the market economy— all blessings flow. The "second nation"—the State—produces nothing; it acts as a parasitic blight upon the first, productive nation: taxing, looting, inflating, controlling, propagandizing, murdering. In the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, the State grew so wildly as to virtually swallow up the first nation, and the parasite ended up virtually destroying its host. The Soviet people need a U.S. bailout of its own State apparatus like it needs—to use an old New York expression—a hole in the head, and quite literally. And while the American public, one hopes, resists the notion of foisting upon the Soviet Union more of what has brought it to its current sorry state, we might even turn our attention away from foreign woes and tyrannies, and focus again upon our own beloved State here at home. But then there is the seeming clincher in rebuttal: if we don't bail out Gorby, won't worse people come to power in the USSR? Well, who knows? In the first place, it is not given to us to decide the fate of the Soviet Union; that, after all, is up to the Soviets themselves. Again, the United States is not God. In the second place, since the future is uncertain, a post-Gorby Soviet Union could be better or worse. So if we can't predict the consequences, shouldn't we, for once, do what is right? Or is that too arcane a concept these days? Z
102 WELCOMING THE VIETNAMESE
rom its inception America was largely the land of the free, but there were a few exceptions. One was the blatant subsidies to the politically powerful maritime industry. Trying to protect what has long been a chronically inefficient industry from international competition, one of the initial actions of the first American Congress in 1789 was to pass the Jones Act, which protected both maritime owners and their top employees. The Jones Act provided that vessels of five or more tons in American waters had to be owned by U.S. citizens, and that only citizens could serve as masters or pilots of such vessels. Times have changed, and whatever national security considerations that might have required a fleet of private boats ready to assist the U. S. Navy, have long since disappeared. The Jones Act had long ago become a dead letter, but let a law remain on the books, and it can always be trotted out to be used as a club for protectionism. And that is what has happened with the Jones Act. Unfortunately, the latest victims of the Jones Act are Vietnamese immigrants who were welcomed as refugees from Communism, and who have proved to be thrifty, hard-working, and productive residents of the United States, working toward their citizenship. Unfortunately, too productive as fishermen for some of their inefficient Anglo competitors. In the early 1980s, Texas shrimpers attempted, by use of violence, to put Vietnamese-American competitors out of business. The latest outrage against Vietnamese-American fishermen has occurred in California, mainly in San Francisco, where Vietnamese-Americans, legal residents of the U.S., have pooled their resources to purchase boats, and have been engaged in
successful fishing of kingfish and hagfish for the past decade. In recent months, in response to complaints by Anglo competitors, the Coast Guard has been cracking down on the Vietnamese, citing the long-forgotten and long unenforced provisions of the Jones Act. While the Vietnamese-Americans have been willing to pay the $500 fine per citation to keep earning their livelihood, the Coast Guard now threatens to confiscate their boat-registration documents and thereby put them out of business. The fact that these are peaceful, legal, permanent residents makes all the more ridiculous the U.S. government's contention that they "present a clear and present threat to the national security." Dennis W. Hayashi of the Asian Law Caucus, who is an attorney for the Vietnamese fishermen, notes that all of them "are working toward citizenship. They were welcomed as political refugees. It is noxious to me that because they have not yet sworn allegiance to America there is an implication that they are untrustworthy." In the best tradition of Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake," the government replies that the Vietnamese are free to work on boats under five tons which would operate closer to shore. The problem is that the Vietnamese concentrate on fish that cater to Asian restaurants and fish shops, and that such kingfish and hagfish have to be caught in gill nets. So why not use gill nets in small boats closer to shore? Because here, in a classic governmental Catch-22 situation, our old friends the environmentalists have already been at work. Seven years ago the environmentalists persuaded California to outlaw the use of gill netting in less than 60 feet of water. Why? Because these nets were, willy-nilly, ensnaring migratory birds and marine mammals in their meshes. So, once again, the environmentalists, speaking for the interests of all conceivable species as against man, have won out against their proclaimed enemies, human beings. And so, seeking freedom and freedom of enterprise as victims of collectivism, the Vietnamese have been trapped by the
U.S. government as pawns of inefficient competitors on the one hand and anti-human environmentalists on the other. The Vietnamese-Americans are seeking justice in American courts, however, and perhaps they will obtain it. Z
The End of Collectivism
THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM
n 1988, we were living through the most significant and exciting event of the twentieth century: nothing less than the collapse of socialism. Before the rise of the new idea of socialism in the mid and late nineteenth century, the great struggle of social and political philosophy was crystal-clear. On one side was the exciting and liberating idea of classical liberalism, emerging since the seventeenth century: of free trade and free markets, individual liberty, separation of Church and State, minimal government, and international peace. This was the movement that ushered in and championed the Industrial Revolution, which, for the first time in human history, created an economy geared to the desires of and abundance for the great mass of consumers. On the other side were the forces of Tory statism, of the Old Order of Throne and Altar, of feudalism, absolutism, and mercantilism, of special privileges and cartels granted by Big Government, of war, and impoverishment for the mass of their subjects. In the field of ideas, and in action and in institutions, the classical liberals were rapidly on the way to winning this battle.
First published in October 1988. 413
The world had come to realize that freedom, and the growth of industry and standards of living for all, must go hand in hand. Then, in the nineteenth century, the onward march of freedom and classical liberalism was derailed by the growth of a new idea: socialism. Rather than rejecting industrialism and the welfare of the masses of people as the Tories had done, socialists professed that they could and would do far better by the masses and bring about "genuine freedom" by creating a State more coercive and totalitarian than the Tories had ever contemplated. Through "scientific" central planning, socialism could and would usher in a world of freedom and superabundance for all. The twentieth century put this triumphant idealism into practice, and so our century became the Age of Socialism. Half the world became fully and consistently socialist, and the other half came fairly close to that ideal. And now, after decades of calling themselves the wave of the future, and deriding all their opponents as hopelessly "reactionary" (i.e., not in tune with modern thinking), "paleolithic," and "Neanderthal," socialism, throughout the world, has been rapidly packing it in. For that is what glasnost and perestroika amount to. Ludwig von Mises, at the dawn of the Socialist Century, warned, in a famous article, that socialism simply could not work: that it could not run an industrial economy, and could not even satisfy the goals of the central planners themselves, much less of the mass of consumers in whose name they speak. For decades Mises was derided, and discredited, and various mathematical models were worked out in alleged "refutation" of his lucid and elegant demonstration. And now, in the leading socialist countries throughout the world: in Soviet Russia, in Hungary, in China, in Yugoslavia, governments are rushing to abandon socialism. Decentralization, markets, profit and loss tests, allowing inefficient firms to go bankrupt, all are being adopted. And why are the socialist countries willing to go through this enormous and truly revolutionary upheaval? Because they agree that Mises was right, after all, that
socialism doesn't work, and that only desocialized free markets can run a modern economy. Some are even willing to give up some political power, allow greater criticism, secret ballots and elections, and even, as in Soviet Estonia, to allow a one-and-one half party system, because they are implicitly conceding that Mises was right: that you can't have economic freedom and private property without intellectual and political freedom, that you can't have perestroika without glasnost. It is truly inspiring to see how freedom exerts its own "domino effect." Country after socialist country has been trying to top each other to see how far and how fast each one can go down the road of freedom and desocialization. But much of this gripping drama has been concealed from the American public because, for the last 40 years, our opinionmolders have told us that the only enemy is Communism. Our leaders have shifted the focus away from socialism itself to a variant that is different only because it is more militant and consistent. This has enabled modern liberals, who share many of the same statist ideas, to separate competing groups of socialists from the horrors of socialism in action. Thus, Trotskyites, Social Democrats, democratic socialists, or whatever, are able to pass themselves off as anti-Communist good guys, while the blame for the Gulag or Cambodian genocide is removed from socialism itself. Now it is clear that none of this will wash. The enemy of freedom, of prosperity, of truly rational economics is socialism period, and not only one specific group of socialists. As even the "socialist bloc" begins to throw in the towel, there are virtually no Russians or Chinese or Hungarians or Yugoslavs left who have any use for socialism. The only genuine socialists these days are intellectuals in the West who are enjoying a comfortable and even luxurious living within the supposed bastions of capitalism. Z
104 THE FREEDOM REVOLUTION
t is truly sobering these days to turn from a contemplation of American politics to world affairs. Among the hot issues in the United States has been the piteous complaint about the "martyrdom" of Jim Wright, Tony Coelho, and John Tower to the insidious advance of "excessive" ethics. If we tighten up ethics and crack down on graft and conflict of interest, the cry goes, how will we attract good people into government? The short answer, of course, is that we will indeed attract fewer crooks and grafters, but one wonders why this is something to complain about. And then in the midst of this petty argle-bargle at home comes truly amazing, wrenching, and soul-stirring news from abroad. For we are privileged to be living in the midst of a "revolutionary moment" in world history. History usually proceeds at a glacial pace, so glacial that often no institutional or political changes seem to be occurring at all. And then, wham! A piling up of a large number of other minor grievances and tensions reaches a certain point, and there is an explosion of radical social change. Changes begin to occur at so rapid a pace that old markets quickly dissolve. Social and political life shifts with blinding speed from stagnation to escalation and volatility. This is what it must have been like living through the French Revolution. I refer, of course, to the accelerating, revolutionary implosion of socialism-communism throughout the world. That is, to the freedom revolution. Political positions of leading actors change radically, almost from month to month. In Poland, General Jaruzelski, only a few years ago the hated symbol of repression, threatens to resign unless his colleagues in the communist government accede to free elections and to the pact with Solidarity.
On the other hand, in China, Deng Hsiao-ping, the architect of market reform ten years ago, became the mass murderer of unarmed Chinese people because he refuses to add personal and political freedom to economic reform, to add glasnost to this perestroika. Every day there is news that inspires and amazes. In Poland, the sweep by Solidarity of every contested race, and the defeat of unopposed Communist leaders by the simple, democratic device—unfortunately unavailable here—of crossing their names off the ballot. In Russia, they publish Solzhenitsyn, and a member of the elected Congress of Deputies gets on nationwide TV and denounces the KGB in the harshest possible terms—to a standing ovation. The KGB leader humbly promises to shape up. In the Baltic states, not only are all groups, from top Communists down-calling for independence from Soviet Russia, but also the Estonians come out for a free market, strictly limited government, and private property rights. In Hungary, numerous political parties spring up, most of them angrily rejecting the very concept of socialism. In the "socialist bloc" covering virtually half the world, there are no socialists left. What all groups are trying to do is to dismantle socialism and government controls as rapidly as possible; even the ruling elites certainly in Poland and Hungary—are trying to desocialize with as little pain to themselves as possible. In Hungary, for example, the ruling nomenklatura is trying to arrange desocialization so that they will emerge as among the leading capitalists on the old principle of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." We are also seeing the complete vindication of the point that Hayek shook the world with in The Road to Serfdom. Writing during World War II when socialism seemed inevitable everywhere, Hayek warned that, in the long run, political and economic freedom go hand in hand. In particular, that "democratic socialism" is a contradiction in terms. A socialist economy will inevitably be dictatorial.
It is clear now to everyone that political and economic freedom are inseparable. The Chinese tragedy has come about because the ruling elite thought that they could enjoy the benefits of economic freedom while depriving its citizens of freedom of speech or press or political assembly. The terrible massacre of June 4th at Tiananmen Square stemmed from the desire by Deng and his associates to flout that contradiction, to have their cake and eat it too. The unarmed Chinese masses in Beijing met their fate because they made the great mistake of trusting their government. They kept repeating again and again: "The People's Army cannot fire on the people." They ached for freedom, but they still remained seduced by the Communist congame that the "government is the people." Every Chinese has now had the terrible lesson of the blood of thousands of brave young innocents engraved in their hearts: "The government is never the people," even if it calls itself "the people's government." It has been reported that when the tanks of the butchers of the notorious 27th Army entered Tiananmen Square and crushed the Statue of Liberty, that a hundred unarmed students locked arms, faced the tanks, and sang the "Internationale" as the tanks sprayed them with bullets, and, as they fell, they were succeeded by another hundred who did the same thing, and met the same fate. Western leftists, however, cannot take any comfort from the contents of the song. For the "Internationale" is a stirring call for the oppressed masses to rise up against the tyrants of the ruling elite. The famous first stanza, which is all the students were undoubtedly able to sing, holds a crucial warning for the Chinese or for any other Communist elite that refuses to get out of the way of the freedom movement now shaking the socialist world: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth, For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth. No more tradition's chains shall bind us, Arise, ye slaves; no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations, We have been naught, we shall be all. Who can doubt, any more, that "justice thunders condemnation" of Deng and Mao and Pol Pot and Stalin and all the rest? And that the "new foundations" and "the better world in birth" is freedom? Z
105 HOW TO DESOCIALIZE?
veryone in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe wants to desocialize. They are convinced that socialism doesn't work, and are anxious to get, as quickly as possible, to a society of private property and a market economy. As Mieczyslaw Wilczek, Poland's leading private entrepreneur, and Communist minister of industry before the recent elections, put it: "There haven't been Communists in Poland for a long time. Nobody wants to hear about Marx and Lenin any more." In addition to coming out solidly for private ownership and denouncing unions, Wilczek attacked the concept of equality. He notes that some people are angry because he recently urged people to get rich. "And what was I to propose? That they get poorer perhaps?" And he was rejected by the Polish voters for being too attached to the Communist Party! East Europeans are eager for models and for the West to instruct them on how to speed up the process. How do they desocialize? Unfortunately, innumerable conservative institutions
and scholars have studied East European Communism in the past 40 years, but precious few have pondered how to put desocialization into effect. Lots of discussion of game theory and throw weights, but little for East European desocializers to latch onto. As one Hungarian recently put it, "There are many books in the West about the difficulties of seizing power, but no one talks about how to give up power." The problem is that one of the axioms of conservatism has been that once a country goes Communist, the process is irreversible, and the country enters a black hole, never to be recovered. But what if, as has indeed happened, the citizens, even the ruling elite, are sick of communism and socialism because they clearly don't work? So how can communist governments and their opposition desocialize? Some steps are obvious: legalize all black markets, including currency (and make each currency freely convertible at market rates), remove all price and production controls, drastically cut taxes, etc. But what to do about State enterprises and agencies, which are, after all, the bulk of activity in communist countries? The easy answer—sell them, either on contract or at auction—won't work here. For where will the money come from to buy virtually all enterprises from the government? And how can we ever say that the government deserves to collect virtually all the money in the realm by such a process. Telling individual managers to set their own prices is also not good enough; for the crucial step, acknowledged in Eastern Europe, is to transform State property into private property. So, some people and groups will have to be given that property? Who, and why? As Professor Paul Craig Roberts stated recently in a fascinating speech in Moscow to the USSR Academy of Sciences, there is only one way to convey government property into private hands. Ironically enough, by far the best path is to follow the old Marxist slogan: "All land to the peasants (including agricultural workers) and "all factories to the workers! . . . Returning" the State property to descendants of those expropriated in 1917
would be impracticable, since few of them exist or can be identified, and certainly the industries could be returned to no one, since they (in contrast to the land) were created by the Communist regime. But there is one big political and economic problem: what to do with the existing ruling elite, the nomenklatura? As the Polish opposition journalist Kostek Gebert recently put the choice" "You either kill them off, or you buy them off." Admittedly, killing off the old despotic ruling elites would be emotionally satisfying, but it is clear that the people on the spot, in Poland and Hungary, and soon in Russia, prefer the more peaceful buying them off to pursuing justice at the price of a bloody civil war. And it is also clear that this is precisely what the nomenklatura want. They want free markets and private ownership, but they of course want to make sure that the transition period assures them of coming out very handsomely in at least the initial distribution of capital. They want to start capitalism as affluent private entrepreneurs. Interestingly, Paul Craig Roberts, whom no one could ever accuse of being soft on communism or socialism, also recommends the more peaceful course: "Historically in these transformations ruling classes have had to be accommodated or overthrown. I would recommend that the Communist Party be accommodated." In practice what this means is that "ownership of the state factories should be divided between the ruling class and the factory workers, and stock certificates issued." His solution makes a great deal of sense. Alternatively, Roberts says that a national lottery could determine the ownership of the means of production, since whoever initial owners may be, an economy of private property will be far more efficient, and "resources will eventually find their way into the most efficient and productive hands." But the trouble here is that Roberts ignores the hunger for justice among most people, and particularly among victims of communism. A lottery distribution would be so flagrantly unjust that the ensuing private property system might never recover from
this initial blow. Furthermore, it does make a great deal of difference to everyone where they come out in such a lottery; most people in the real world cannot afford and do not wish to take such an Olympian view. In any case, Roberts has performed an important service in helping launch the discussion. It is about time that Western economists start tackling the crucial question of desocialization. Perhaps they might thereby help to advance one of the most welcome and exciting developments of the twentieth century. Z
106 A RADICAL PRESCRIPTION FOR THE SOCIALIST BLOC
t is generally agreed, both inside and outside Eastern Europe, that the only cure for their intensifying and grinding poverty is to abandon socialism and central planning, and to adopt private property rights and a free-market economy. But a critical problem is that Western conventional wisdom counsels going slowly, "phasing-in" freedom, rather than taking the alwaysreviled path of radical and comprehensive social change. Gradualism, and piecemeal change, is always held up as the sober, practical, responsible, and compassionate path of reform, avoiding the sudden shocks, painful dislocations, and unemployment brought on by radical change. In this, as in so many areas, however, the conventional wisdom is wrong. It is becoming ever clearer to East Europeans that the only practical and realistic path, the only path toward reform that truly works and works quickly, is the total abolition of socialism and statism across the board.
For one thing, as we have seen in the Soviet Union, gradual reform provides a convenient excuse to the vested interests, monopolists, and inefficient sluggards who are the beneficiaries of socialism, to change nothing at all. Combine this resistance with the standard bureaucratic inertia endemic under socialism, and meaningful change is reduced to mere rhetoric and lip service. But more fundamentally, since the market economy is an intricate, interconnected latticework, a seamless web, keeping some controls and not others creates more dislocations, and perpetuates them indefinitely. A striking case is the Soviet Union. The reformers wish to abolish all price controls, but they worry that this course, amidst an already inflationary environment, would greatly aggravate inflation. Unfortunately, the East Europeans, in their eagerness to absorb procapitalist literature, have imbibed Western economic fallacies that focus on price increases as "inflation" rather than on the monetary expansion which causes the increased prices. In Soviet Russia and in Poland, the governments have been pouring an enormous number of rubles and zlotys into circulation, which has increased price levels. In both countries, severe price controls have disguised the price inflation, and have also created massive shortages of goods. As in most other examples of price control, the authorities then tried to assuage consumers by imposing especially severe price controls on consumer necessities, such as soap, meat, citrus fruit, or fuel. As an inevitable result, these valued items end up in particularly short supply. If the governments went cold turkey and abolished all the controls, there would indeed be a large one-shot rise in most prices, particularly in consumer goods suffering most from the scarcity imposed by controls. But this would only be a one-shot increase, and not of the continuing and accelerating kind characteristic of monetary expansion. And, furthermore, what consolation is it for a consumer to have the price of an item be
cheap if he or she can't find it? Better to have a bar of soap cost ten rubles and be available than to cost two rubles and never appear. And, of course, the market price—say of ten rubles—is not at all arbitrary, but is determined by the demands of the consumers themselves. Total decontrol eliminates dislocations and restrictions at one fell swoop, and gives the free market the scope to release people's energies, increase production enormously, and direct resources away from misallocations and toward the satisfaction of consumers. It should never be forgotten that the "miracle" of West German recovery from the economic depths after World War II occurred because Ludwig Erhard and the West Germans dismantled the entire structure of price and wage controls at once and overnight, on the glorious day of July 7, 1949. In addition, the East European countries are starved for capital to develop their economy, and capital will only be supplied, whether by domestic savers or by foreign investors, when: (1) there is a genuine stock market, a market in shares of ownership titles to assets; and (2) the currency is genuinely convertible into hard currencies. Part of the immediate West German reform was to make the mark convertible into hard currencies. If all price controls should be removed immediately, and currencies made convertible and a full-fledged stock market established, what then should be done about the massive state-owned sector in the socialist bloc? A vital question, since the overwhelming bulk of capital assets in the socialist countries are state-owned. Many East Europeans now realize that it is hopeless to try to induce state enterprises to be efficient, or to pay attention to prices, costs, or profits. It is becoming clearer to everyone that Ludwig von Mises was right: only genuinely private firms, private owners of the means of production, can be truly responsive to profit-and-loss incentives. And moreover, the only genuine price system, reflecting costs and profit opportunities, arises from actual markets—from buying and selling by private owners of property.
Obviously, then, all state firms and operations should be privatized immediately—the sooner the better. But, unfortunately, many East Europeans committed to privatization are reluctant to push for this remedy because they complain that people don't have the money to purchase the mountain of capital assets, and that it seems almost impossible for the state to price such assets correctly. Unfortunately, these free-marketeers are not thinking radically enough. Not only may private citizens under socialism not have the money to buy state assets, but there is a serious question about what the state is supposed to do with all the money, as well as the moral question of why the state deserves to amass this money from its long-suffering subjects. The proper way to privatize is, once again, a radical one: allowing their present users to "homestead" these assets, for example, by granting prorata negotiable shares of ownership to workers in the various firms. After this one mighty stroke of universal privatization, prices of ownership shares on the market will fluctuate in accordance with the productivity and the success of the assets and the firms in question. Critics of homesteading typically denounce such an idea as a "giveaway" of "windfall gains" to the recipients. But in fact, the homesteaders have already created or taken these resources and lifted them into production, and any ensuing gains (or losses) will be the result of their own productive and entrepreneurial actions. Z
107 A SOCIALIST STOCK MARKET?
ven in the days before perestroika, socialism was never a monolith. Within the Communist countries, the spectrum of socialism ranged from the quasi-market, quasi-syndicalist Previously unpublished.
system of Yugoslavia to the centralized totalitarianism of neighboring Albania. One time I asked Professor von Mises, the great expert on the economics of socialism, at what point on this spectrum of statism would he designate a country as "socialist" or not. At that time, I wasn't sure that any definite criterion existed to make that sort of clear-cut judgment. And so I was pleasantly surprised at the clarity and decisiveness of Mises's answer. "A stock market," he answered promptly. A stock market is crucial to the existence of capitalism and private property. For it means that there is a functioning market in the exchange of private titles to the means of production. There can be no genuine private ownership of capital without a stock market: there can be no true socialism if such a market is allowed to exist.
And so it is particularly thrilling to see that in the headlong flight from central planning and socialism, several of the Communist countries are actually introducing, or preparing to introduce, a stock market. A prospect that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago! The process is already in its early stages in Communist China. And the Soviet Union is beginning to talk about introducing a stock market. Stock markets already exist in several cities in China. So far, however, they are pitiful fledglings. Although the Communist leadership now allows the expansion of private firms and permits them to issue stock, only a few companies have issued stock and they are, so far, much more like bonds. Stock dividends are fixed very much like interest on bonds, and, more importantly, there is no free pricing system in these stock markets; instead, there is rigid price-fixing of the shares by the central government. Even so these tiny stock markets are expanding, as state enterprises in China are selling off chunks of their shares to the public, while thousands of cooperatives are selling shares of ownership to their workers. Harry Harding of the Brookings
Institution comments that "the idea is to have enough public ownership so that they can say it's still socialist," while at the same time they "make the enterprises accountable to someone other than the state bureaucracy." Despite great reluctance, China and other Communist countries are anxious to induce productive savings from their citizens, and channel savings from jewelry and art, into capital investment. Another motive propelling China, Soviet Russia, and other Communist countries into establishing stock markets is the desire to attract foreign investors. But it is obvious to all, including the Communist leaders, that to attract foreign funds, the ruble and other Communist currencies must be removed from their current absurd controls and overvaluations, and become freely convertible into dollars and other Western currencies. It will take the Communist governments quite a while to bite this bullet, but they are definitely moving in this direction. As might be expected, the most radical advance toward free stock markets in the Communist countries has been in Hungary. A tiny stock market has been open in Budapest for some time, but on January 1, 1989, Hungary began to allow foreigners to invest in Hungarian stocks, even permitting foreigners to own up to 100 percent of a number of Hungarian firms, public and private. At first, these shares will be traded in the current tiny market, but within six months, Budapest is scheduled to open a functioning daily international stock exchange—the first in Eastern Europe since World War II. This first real stock exchange will have from ten to twenty companies listed at its opening, and will, unfortunately, also come with all the attendant trappings of an American stock exchange—including insider trading rules and a Hungarian type of Securities and Exchange Commission. Learning too well from the West! Particularly enthusiastic about the new development is Szigmond Jarai, deputy director of the Budapest Bank and chairman of the government committee supervising the establishment of
the daily stock exchange. Jarai declared that "the stock market is the heart of an effective economy. . . . We need to reduce our bureaucracy and free up entrepreneurs," he added, sounding, as the New York Times commented, "more like a Wall Street free-market enthusiast than an official of a Communist government." More freedom is coming soon. The Hungarian Parliament is considering a tax reform that would allow foreign equity investors to pay no Hungarian tax on either dividends or capital gains, and laws are being prepared allowing both Hungarians and foreign joint ventures to operate as stockbrokers. In addition, the way forward has been paved by the fact that Hungary already has in place the only bond market in Eastern Europe, as well as a system of bankruptcy laws so that insolvent firms can be forced out of business. There is, of course, a long way to go, even in Hungary. But plans are in the works to privatize large sectors of the Hungarian economy within the next two years, and there are increasing mutterings about making the Hungarian forint convertible into Western currencies. Even in benighted Poland, there are bills now in Parliament to allow private commercial banking, and to eliminate exchange controls over the Polish zloty. Not only is socialism cracking all over the world, but, using Mises's criterion, we might be able to throw our hats in the air very soon and proclaim that Hungary is no longer socialist. Z
108 THE GLORIOUS POSTWAR WORLD
very war in American history has been the occasion for a Great Leap Forward in the power of the State, a leap which, at best, could only be partly rolled back after the war.
A conflict as seemingly minor as the War of 1812 took the Jacksonians three decades to wash out of American life; and freedom was never able to recover fully from the Civil War and the two World Wars. After the two world wars in particular, statists had a seemingly irresistible argument: America should use the wonder and the glory, the united martial spirit, the singleness of national purpose, to wage wars at home against a battery of domestic ills. There are always problems aplenty at home against which to mobilize the national will: depression, poverty, injustice, what have you. And that mobilization necessarily means collectivism in action: increased federal power under the commander-in-chief. After the full-fledged War Collectivism of the first World War, a collectivism that joined Big Business, Big Labor, statist intellectuals, and technocrats under the aegis of Big Government, the youthful planners of that collectivism: the Bernard Baruchs, Herbert Hoovers, and Franklin Roosevelts, spent the rest of their lengthy lives striving to recapture those delightful days, and to fasten them permanently upon peace-time America. The institutions and the rhetoric of wartime collectivism were recaptured during the Hoover and Roosevelt New Deals to "combat" the Great Depression, often with the same institutions and the same people running them. Thus, Eugene Meyer's War Finance Corporation lending federal money to corporations, which had lingered on during the peacetime 1920s, was renamed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and enlarged by Hoover in 1932, with the same Eugene Meyer happily running the show, starting from the self-same offices in Washington, D.C. And then, World War II brought back the collectivist planning of World War I. Baruch's War Industries Board was reconstituted as the War Production Board of World War II, and was resurrected once more under General Electric's Charles E. Wilson during the Korean conflict. The War Labor Board, designed to privilege unions, set wages, and arbitrate disputes, inspired the National Labor Board in the early Roosevelt New Deal, to be succeeded by the
National Labor Relations Board under the Wagner Act and to be supplemented by a reprised War Labor Board during World War II. Particularly dangerous for an acceleration of statism are successful wars; while Korea and Vietnam led to an intensification of State power, they did not generate the lifelong nostalgia, the eagerness to recapture the glory days, of a successful war. No American war has been quite as successful as the Gulf War, particularly if we take the kill ratio of enemy to American, or that kill ratio per day. We would therefore expect a supercharged atmosphere of bringing the war home to domestic life. In a world where television seems to speed up public responses, that postwar domestic mobilization has already begun. This spirit of domestic war, appropriately enough, was launched by President Bush in his victory address before Congress on March 6, 1991: In the war just ended, there were clearcut objectives, timetables and, above all, an overriding imperative to achieve results. We must bring that same sense of self-discipline, that same sense of urgency, to the way we meet challenges here at home.
After summarizing some of his current domestic agenda, proposals for "reform and renewal" including "civil rights," highways, aviation, transportation, and a "crime package," and hailing the past year's "historic" Clean Air Act, his "landmark" Americans with Disabilities Act, and his Child Care Act as portents for the future, the president gave Congress a deadline: "If our forces could win the ground war in 100 hours, then surely the Congress can pass this legislation in 100 days." The president then noted that in his State of the Union address, five weeks before, he had posed this question to Congress: "If we can selflessly confront evil for the sake of good in a land so far away, then surely we can make this land all that it should be." By their victory, the president told us, our troops "transformed a nation at home." The president concluded that
"there is much that we must do at home and abroad." And we will do it. Hold on to your hats, and to your wallets and purses, Mr. and Ms. America, here we go again! Z
109 THE REVOLUTION COMES HOME
he election of 1994 was an unprecedented and smashing electoral expression of the popular revolution that had been building up for many months: a massive repudiation of President Clinton, the Clintonian Democratic Party, their persons and all of their works. It was a fitting followup to the string of revolutions against government and socialism in the former states and satellites of the Soviet Union. The anti-government revolution has come home at last. An intense and widescale loathing of President Clinton as a person fused with an ideological hatred of Washington D.C., the federal Leviathan, and centralized statism, to create a powerful and combustible combination in American politics. So massive was the repudiation that it even changed many state governments away from the Democrats and the Democratic ideology of government intervention in the lives and properties of Americans. Formerly effective attempts to alter the meaning of the elections by Clinton and media spin artists (e.g., that it was "anti-incumbent") were swept away as laughable by the patent facts of the electoral revolution. After Leon Trotsky was sent into exile by Stalin, he wrote a bitter book famously entitled The Revolution Betrayed. In the case of the Bolshevik Revolution, it took about 15 years for Stalin's alleged betrayal of the Leninist Revolution to take place. (Actually, despite the fascination of Western intellectuals with
the Stalin-Trotsky schism, it was far more an intra-Bolshevik personal and factional squabble than any sort of ideological betrayal.) In the case of the magnificent free-market revolution of November 1994, however, the betrayal began to occur almost immediately. Indeed it was inevitable, being built into the structure of current American politics. The basic problem is the lavishly over-praised "duopoly" two-party system, cemented in place by a combination of the single-district, winner-take-all procedure for legislatures, and the socialized ballot, adopted as a "progressive reform" in the 1890s. This reform permits the government to impose onerous restrictions on the public's access to the ballot, to the expression of its electoral will. Before the adoption of the socialized, or what used to be called "the Australian," ballot, voting was secret but was achieved by dropping a card supplied by one of the candidates into the box. There was no "ballot" to worry about. Because of the two-party system, the only way that the electorate of 1994 could express its revolutionary desire to throw out the hated Democrats was to vote Republican. Unfortunately, the controlling elites of the Republican Party have long had views very similar to those of the Democrats, thus depriving the American public of any genuine philosophical choice. The ideology common to the ruling elites of both parties is Welfarist, Corporatist Statism; whether it's called corporate "liberalism" or "conservatism" is largely a question of nuance and esthetics. Essentially, the corporate and media elites have long been engaging in a shell game in which the American public are the suckers. When the public is fed up with one party, the elites offer up an alleged alternative that only turns out to be more of the same. All is not hopeless however. The inner-tension with the system comes from the very fact that the public has been led to think there is a genuine choice, and that there are strong ideological differences between the two parties. As result, the rankand-file, both among the voting public and among the respective
party activists, tend to have clashing ideologies and to pour forth severely contrasting rhetoric. The rank-and-file, as well as party militants, tend to believe the rhetoric and to take it seriously. And while the American public, especially the conservatives, tend to be satisfied with the rhetoric of their political leaders and not to bother with the reality of their deeds, they are also more likely now to turn their attention to what is really going on, with the American public rising up angry against the ever-burgeoning Leviathan State fastened upon them by Washington, D.C. By this time, conservatives at the grass-roots have caught on to Robert Dole, who is now well-known for his accommodationist devotion to ever higher taxes and spending. The real danger is Newt Gingrich, who has cultivated a firebrand rhetoric that has seduced the conservative masses into placing trust in Newt to lead their revolution. Even rhetorically, Newt Gingrich is all too reminiscent of the erratic Clinton, blowing hot and cold, changing from day to day, one day calling for a revolution (what David Broder of the Washington Post recently called "the bad Newt"), alternating with pledges of "cooperation" with his alleged arch-enemy in the White House ("the good Newt"). The much-contested Gingrich "contract," for example, far from an expression of rollback of Big Government, is either trivial or phony. Let us go down some of the crucial aspects of the anti-central government revolution, and see how the Republican elites, including Gingrich, shape up. Taxes. Forget the piddling and minor cuts in capital-gains taxes, the increase of the child deduction, etc. The crucial point is that Gingrich and the other leaders are committed to the disastrous Bush-Clinton-bipartisan (a dread word that itself signifies duopoly and sellout of principle) concept of never reducing total government revenue, so that any tax cuts anywhere must be compensated by tax increases (or "fee" increases) somewhere else. In particular, until drastic cuts in the monstrous income tax are at least proposed, let alone passed, by the Republican elites,
the leadership's alleged embrace of small government will continue to be a fraud and a hoax. Repeal the Brady Bill and gun control in general. Not a word by the leadership or in the "contract." Repeal of affirmative action. Not a word. Deregulation, i.e., repeal of OSHA, the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act, etc. Not a word. Immigration control. On opposition to floods of illegal immigrants, immigration in general, or welfare for immigrants, not a word. Abolition of foreign aid. Not only not a word, but the entire Republican leadership, including Gingrich, is deeply committed to an American foreign policy of global intervention, economic and military. Withdrawal from the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc. Ditto, since the entire leadership is committed to a continuation of the global interventionist foreign policy both parties have pursued since World War II. Gatt and WTO. In this crucial drive toward managed world trade, with the public, insofar as they know anything about it, solidly against it, Gingrich, Dole, and the entire Republican Establishment are fervently for it, and heedless of the public's opposition. The exception is Jesse Helms, who has begun to rediscover his Old Right roots. Government spending. No real cuts advocated by the elites; instead, the contract pledges increased military spending in a world where the Soviet threat has disappeared. Again the public's desire for a foreign policy strictly in the national interest is thwarted. Abolition of the Federal Reserve. Ha! Abolition of the Department of Education, Energy, etc. Ha! Instead, the Republican elite serve up hoaxes such as the Balanced Budget Amendment, and increasing Executive power over
Congress with the line-item veto. There will be no real devolution of power to the states, or restoring the 10th amendment. So why isn't the situation hopeless? Because of angry antigovernment fervor at the grass roots. Because a lot of the new Republican Congressmen were not thought to have a chance of winning, and therefore were not stifled in their political cradles by the party elites. A lot of these freshmen backbenchers reflect the Hard Right sentiments of their constituency. If the public is alert and keeps up the pressure on the weakkneed and unprincipled party elites, they might be drummed into and kept in line. Furthermore, the revolution is a polarized reaction to the advent of Clinton and the Clintonian movement. What the professionally "bipartisan" elite wants above all is almost identical major parties. The elites dumped Bush for Clinton in '92 because they thought that Clinton was a safe and centrist "New Democrat." Instead, Bill, and especially Hillary, turned out to be Hard Left ideologues who pushed the entire political conflict in America many leagues leftward, too far for the centrist Social Democrats who want the political dialogue confined to such "moderate" Democrats as Al From and Al Gore in perpetual dialogue with "moderate" Republicans like George Bush and Bob Dole. Clinton's sharp move leftward upset the applecart and created a gap within which an antigovernment populism could develop and flourish. Clinton's move leftward polarized American political opinion, and generated a massive reaction in the opposite direction. Genuine libertarians and conservatives must keep up and intensify the pressure from below on the Republican leadership, give heart to the backbenchers, and threaten to walk out and sit home should the leadership follow its instincts and betray Republican principles to the Democrats. The peoples' revolution is not a one-shot proposition; it is an ongoing process, of which the grand sweep of November 1994 was a notable instance. The new populist revolution is
multi-pronged, and necessarily takes place both inside and outside the machinery of elections. Note the war for whatever is left of the soul of Slick Willie since the election. The Republocrat elites are pleading with Clinton to move toward the center and fuse a coalition with "moderate" Republicans. The main hope for liberty and small government paradoxically, is for Clinton to follow Hillary and the ideologues and go Left instead, appealing to his core constituency, and polarizing and mobilizing a still more intense and massive populist reaction against his rule. If that happens, Clinton will be left with Jesse Jackson and ACT-UP, while anti-tax, anti-regulation, antigovernment populism rises up and topples his rule. Z
110 THE TROUBLE WITH THE QUICK FIX
f conservatives and free-market economists are supposed to have one dominant virtue, it is a thoughtful awareness of the indirect and not just the immediate consequences of a public policy. In the spirit of Henry Hazlitt's "Broken Window Fallacy," they are supposed to bring a "look before we leap" attitude into political life. Instead, in recent years, friends and colleagues who should know better have been increasingly running after some Quick Fix or some flashy gimmick that will magically solve our problems and bring no ill consequences in its wake. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten the basic Misesian Law of Government: that government actions, even and perhaps especially Quick Fixes, are apt to get us into a worse mess than we are in already.
The basic flaw of the Quick Fix is to focus on one aspect of a problem, often the most politically catchy part, to the neglect of other important issues. Thus, the school voucher scheme focuses on the horrors of the public school to the neglect of such broader and more important questions as tax-supported education and government control of all schools, public and private; opposition to welfare concentrates on taxpayers paying people to be idle, to the neglect of the broader question of taxpayer subsidy period, whether recipients are idle or not. And we have mainly free-market economists to thank for the disastrous "Tax Reform Act" of 1986, which, in a Jacobin pursuit of equality and "fairness," closed the tax "loopholes" so successfully as to crush the housing market. In addition, and totally neglected, tax reform helped hasten the current Clinton health monstrosity by virtually eliminating deductions of uninsured medical payments from one's income tax, thereby creating the Problem of the Medically Uninsured. The current Quick Fix craze of free-market economists was the late, unlamented Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). It seems that every couple of years there is a Silly Season in Congress when this amendment pops up. Not only that; each successive incarnation of the BBA is worse than its predecessor. Pursuing an hysterical desire to pass any amendment, the limit on increasing taxes is progressively weakened. In the latest Simon amendment, a mere majority of Congress could "solve the problem of deficits" by increasing taxes. The unwisely narrow focus of the BBA is, of course, on "the deficit," as if the deficit is the root of all fiscal evil and must be stamped out by Any Means Necessary. But the broader and more important problem of Big Government is not the deficit; it is not even, as Milton Friedman has long emphasized, total government spending; it is government action period, which fiscally means all three interlocking items: deficits, government spending, and taxation. Big Government is a swollen, everexpanding and parasitic entity crushing the productive economy, the "private sector"; and the focus must be on rolling back,
as much and as "drastically" as possible, all three of these facets of the government budget. Looking at the BBA, then, the first obviously unfortunate consequence of focusing solely on the deficit is that it might well, and indeed would lead to drastic increases in taxation, and would do nothing about curbing government spending. The one fiscal thing worse than a deficit is higher taxes; imposing a BBA and raising taxes in order to combat deficits is akin to curing a patient of bronchitis by shooting him in the chest. There are many other things terribly wrong with a BBA. It can be overridden at any time by only a three-fifths vote of Congress; it ignores the fact that an increasing number of spending items can be and are simply placed "off budget" and would therefore not be subject to any limits; and it ignores the off-budget federal government spending of mandates on states or private firms, which can be conveniently chalked up to their budgets but not to the federal government. Moreover, the BBA is a total hoax; for it would not balance the budget at all. Ever since the mid-1970s, the federal budget process has focused not on the actual budget for any given year, but on estimated budgets over the next several years. The BBA would mandate a balance, not of the actual federal budget, but of Congressional estimates of next year's budget. And as any fool knows, it is all too easy to estimate anything you want, and to manipulate assumptions to get the desired result. Traditionally, government has always underestimated the expense of its future actions, and overestimated its revenue. Thus a BBA would not only increase the crippling tax burden on the American people; it would also perpetrate a cruel hoax on a public that want deficits ended and who would embrace an amendment that only gives the appearance, and not the reality, of ending the deficit. In short, a BBA would aid Big Government by relaxing public opposition to its expansion— which might, after all, be the point of the whole thing. There is a final, and totally neglected point that was emphasized by the leading opponent of the BBA, the much-maligned
Old Mr. Pork Barrel, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Pork Barreler or not, Senator Byrd was eloquent in stressing a vital constitutional issue: that Congress must retain its one vital power, the power of the purse. A BBA would take that power away from Congress, which for all its sins is at least accountable to the voting public, and put it into the hands of federal judges, an unelected, unaccountable, and unremovable body of oligarchs who have long been engaging in runaway expansion of their own power. As Senator Byrd put it in his opposition to the BBA, "The power of the purse belongs to the people. . . . It is vested in the branch that represents the people, elected by the people. Judges are not elected by the people." And speaking of Quick Fixes, there is a veritable nightmare coming down the pike. Libertarians have long pushed privatization of government activities, but, as all too often happens, even a good thing like privatization has suffered from becoming a fetish, a cherished object of an ideological movement, to the neglect of broader and more important considerations. Thus, we have seen in the former Soviet Union that a lot depends on the extent and the form of "privatization"; for example should we really cheer when the Communist managerial elite of the old steel, copper, etc. monopolies, suddenly become the "private" owners of these uneconomic complexes? Coming closer to home, we now find that our beloved Internal Revenue Service, backed by the Clinton administration, would like to engage in some privatization. It turns out it would be more efficient for the Treasury Department to contract out, to privatize, its collection of back taxes by bringing in private collection agencies to do the job. Hey, do we really want to make income tax collection more efficient by privatizing some or all of the tax agencies? Do we really want our lives and records combed through, our door broken down, by the peremptory orders of IBM or McDonald's "tax police"? Anyone who knows history will know that the most hated institution in pre-modern Europe was that
of the "tax farmers." The king used to get a lot of money quickly and save himself the costs of a giant bureaucracy by selling the right, or privilege, to collect taxes to some private firm, or "tax farmer." Can you imagine how intensely and bitterly the tax farmers, who lacked the cloak of sovereignty or legitimacy, were hated by the people? There are those who believe that the worse the despotism the better, in order to provoke a revolutionary backlash among the public. Well, privatizing tax collection might just do it. Z
Our Intellectual Debts
111 WILLIAM HAROLD HUTT: 1899–1988
n June 19, William Harold Hutt, one of the most productive and creative economists of this century, died in Irving, Texas, at the age of 89. Born in London, Hutt served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I, and then went to the London School of Economics, where he studied under the great free-market and hard-money economist Edwin Cannan. Hutt was graduated in 1924, and spent several years in publishing.
His first important scholarly publication remains virtually unknown today: an excellent and penetrating annotated bibliography, The Philosophy of Individualism: A Bibliography, which he wrote, aided by the eminent laissez-faire liberal Francis W. Hirst. The book was published anonymously by the Individualist Bookshop of London in 1927. The Philosophy of Individualism served, 30 years later, as the core of Henry Hazlitt's annotated bibliography, The Free Man's Library (Van Nostrand, 1956). From 1928 to 1965, Hutt taught economics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In his mid-60s, he came to the United States, taught at several universities, and then settled at the University of Dallas in 1971, where he taught for ten
First published in September 1988. 443
years, until the age of 82, an inspiration to a legion of students and colleagues. He continued to be an emeritus professor at Dallas until his death. The shameful neglect of Hutt's great contributions can be attributed to two main factors: (1) the fact that he taught in the intellectual backwater of South Africa, far from the great intellectual controversies in the profession; and (2) that he stood like a rock against the major fashions of our time, in particular interventionism, Keynesianism, and the general enthusiasm for labor unions. Hutt's first great contribution to economics was his concise and lucid The Theory of Collective Bargaining (P.S. King, 1930), which remains to this day the best book on the theory of wage determination. In this book, Hutt criticized many of the classical economists, and showed conclusively that unions cannot increase general wage rates, and that particular wage increases can only come at the expense of a dislocation of labor and a fall in wage rates of other workers. Ludwig von Mises wrote in the preface to the first American edition of Hutt's book: Professor Hutt's brilliant essay is not merely a contribution to the history of economic thought. It is rather a critical analysis of the arguments advanced by economists from Adam Smith down and by the spokesmen of the unions in favor of the thesis that unionism can raise wage rates above the market value without harm to anybody else than the exploiters.
In addition to his notable work in the theory of labor, Professor Hutt wrote two brilliant works in applied labor economics, i.e., labor history. His was the outstanding essay in the remarkable volume edited by F.A. Hayek, Capitalism and the Historians (University of Chicago, 1954). Here Hutt discussed the Factory Acts restricting child labor in early nineteenth-century Britain, demonstrating that these acts were based on mendacious testimony, and that the condition of children had been greatly improved by the Industrial Revolution.
In 1964, furthermore, the Institute of Economic Affairs in London published Hutt's innovative work, The Economics of the Colour Bar, in which he demonstrated that, contrary to myth, the South African system of apartheid was originated not by rural Afrikaners, but by Anglo unions, anxious to suppress the competition of Africans who were rising into the ranks of the foremen and skilled craftsmen. Indeed, he showed that industrial apartheid was imposed by a successful general strike in 1922 led by William H. Andrews, head of the Communist Party of South Africa under the slogan "Whites Unite and Fight for a Workers' World"! For his opposition to apartheid and advocacy of a free labor market, Professor Hutt's South African passport was withdrawn by the Department of Interior, in 1955, but was returned after criticism was raised in Parliament. In his further scholarly work on trade unions after World War II, Hutt emphasized the crucial empirical fact about labor unions: that they rest on the use and the threat of violence, particularly against replacement workers during strikes (universally smeared in the supposedly objective news media as "scabs"). If Professor Hutt sometimes went too far and advocated outlawing unions as monopolistic per se, as well as removing their enormous governmental privileges and licenses to commit violence, he was at least far closer to the mark than the Chicago School, who persist in regarding unions as legitimate if sometimes inefficient employment agencies hired by workers. William Hutt's other notable area of contribution was his defense of hard money and the free market's tendency to full employment, and his brilliant and superb critiques of Keynesian economics. In particular, we might cite his noteworthy The Theory of Idle Resources (Jonathan Cape, 1939) where he showed that Keynesian idle resources—unemployment and "excess capacity"— were simply cases of capacity withheld from the market by resource-owners, and not the result of insufficient market demand. Capacity can be withheld, furthermore, either because of government restrictionism holding up prices or wage rates, or because of expectations that restrictionist or inflationist policies will soon raise market prices.
In 1963, Hutt published a comprehensive if difficult critique of Keynesianism, Keynesianism, Retrospect and Prospect (Regnery, 1963), which, among other riches, contains the best criticism of the spurious "acceleration principle" ever written. A decade and a half later, a revision entitled The Keynesian Episode, A Reassessment (Liberty Press, 1979), which turned out to be largely a new book, presented a more easily accessible and updated critique of Keynesian doctrine. Finally, one of Hutt's great contributions to the history and the clarity of economic thought was his correctly titled A Rehabilitation of Say's Law (University Press, 1974), which rescued that great critic of underspending notions from Keynes's deliberate misrepresentation in The General Theory as well as from Say's inconstant friends in the economics profession. While he was not a full-fledged Austrian, Professor Hutt's methodology and analysis were very close to the Austrians, and he rightly considered himself a close sympathizer and supporter of the modern Austrian revival. Certainly he was closer to Misesian economics than the nominally "Austrian" nihilism of the later Professor Lachmann and his younger followers. But above all, Bill Hutt shall be remembered and honored for the unflagging kindliness and cheerfulness of his personality. All who came into contact with Bill Hutt admired and loved him, and all of us are poorer for his passing. Z
112 FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK: 1899–1992
he death of F.A. Hayek at the age of 92 marks the end of an era, the Mises-Hayek era. Converted from Fabian socialism by Ludwig von Mises's devastating critique, Socialism, in the early 1920s, Hayek took his place as the greatest of the
glittering generation of economists and social scientists who became followers of Mises in the Vienna of the 1920s, and who took part in Mises's famed weekly privatseminar held in his office at the Chamber of Commerce. In particular, Hayek elaborated Mises's brilliant business cycle theory, which demonstrated that boom-bust cycles are caused, not by mysterious defects inherent in industrial capitalism, but by the unfortunate inflationary bank credit expansion propelled by central banks. Mises founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research in 1927, and named Hayek as its first director. Hayek proceeded to develop and expand Mises's cycle theory, first in a book of the late 1920s, Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle. He was brought over to the London School of Economics in 1931 by an influential English Misesian, Lionel Robbins. Hayek gave a series of lectures on cycle theory that took the world of English economics by storm, and were published quickly in English as Prices and Production. Remaining at a permanent post at the London School, Hayek soon converted the leading young English economists to the Misesian-Austrian view of capital and business cycles, including such later renowned Keynesians as John R. Hicks, Abba Lerner, Nicholas Kaldor, and Kenneth E. Boulding. Indeed, in two lengthy review essays in 1931–32 of Keynes's widely trumpeted magnum opus, the two-volume Treatise on Money, Hayek was able to demolish that work and to send Keynes back to the drawing-board to concoct another economic "revolution." One of the reasons for the swift diffusion of Misesian views in England in the 1930s was that Mises had predicted the Great Depression, and that his business cycle theory provided an explanation for that harrowing event of the 1930s. Unfortunately, when Keynes came back with his later model, the General Theory in 1936, his brand new "revolution" swept the boards, swamping economic opinion, and converting or dragging along almost all the former Misesians in its wake.
England was then the prestigious center of world economic thought, and Keynes had behind him the eminence of Cambridge University, as well as his own stature in the intellectual community. Add to this Keynes's personal charm, and the fact that his allegedly revolutionary theory put the imprimatur of "economic science" behind statism and massive increases of government spending, and Keynesianism proved irresistible. Of all the Misesians who had been nurtured in Vienna and London, by the end of the 1930s only Mises and Hayek were left, as indomitable champions of the free market, and opponents of statism and deficit spending. In later years Hayek conceded that the worst mistake of his life was to fail to write the sort of devastating refutation of the General Theory that he had done for the Treatise, but he had concluded that there was no point in doing so, since Keynes changed his mind so often. Unfortunately, this time there was no demolition by Hayek to force him to do so. If the business cycle theory was swamped by the Keynesian model, so too was the Mises-Hayek critiques of socialism, which Hayek had also brought to London, and to which he had contributed in the 1930s. But this line of argument had been brought to an end, in the late 1930s, when most economists came to believe that socialist governments could easily engage in economic calculation by simply ordering their managers to act as if they were participating in a real market for resources and capital goods. During World War II, at a low point in the fortunes of human freedom and Austrian economics, in the midst of an era when it seemed that socialism and communism would inevitably triumph, Hayek published The Road to Serfdom (1944). It linked the statism of communism, social democracy, and fascism, and demonstrated that, just as people who are best suited for any given occupations will rise to the top in those pursuits, so under statism, "the worst" would inevitably rise to the top. Thanks to promotion efforts funded by J. Howard Pew of the then Pew-owned Sun Oil Company, The Road to Serfdom
became extraordinarily influential in American intellectual and academic life. In 1974, perhaps not coincidentally the year after his mentor Ludwig von Mises died, F.A. Hayek received the Nobel Prize. The first free-market economist to receive that honor, Hayek was accorded the prize explicitly for his elaboration of Misesian business cycle theory in the 1920s and '30s. Since both Mises and Hayek had by that time dropped down the Orwellian memory hole of the economics profession, many economists were sent scurrying to find out who this person Hayek might be, thus helping give rise to a renaissance of the Austrian School. Hayek's receipt of the Nobel at this time was deeply ironic, since after World War II his ideas began to diverge increasingly from those of Mises and thus acquire acclaim from latter-day Hayekians who are scarcely familiar with the work which had made Hayek eminent to begin with. To the extent that Hayek remained interested in cycle theory, he began to engage in shifting and contradictory deviations from the Misesian paradigm— ranging from calling for price-level stabilization, in direct contrast to his warning about the inflationary consequences of such measures during the 1920s; to blaming unions instead of bank credit for price inflation; to concocting bizarre schemes for individuals and banks to issue their own newly named currency. Increasingly, Hayek's interests shifted from economics to social and political philosophy. But here his approach differed strikingly from Mises's ventures into broader realms. Mises entire lifework is virtually a seamless web, a mighty architectonic, a system in which he added to and enriched monetary and cycle theory by wider economic political and social theories. But Hayek, instead of providing a more elaborate and developed system, kept changing his focus and viewpoint in a contradictory and muddled fashion. His major problem, and his major divergence from Mises, is that Hayek, instead of analyzing man as a rational, conscious, and purposive being, considered man to be irrational, acting virtually unconsciously and unknowingly.
Since Hayek was radically scornful of human reason, he could not, like John Locke or the Scholastics, elaborate a libertarian system of personal and property rights based on the insights of human reason into natural law. Nor could he, like Mises, emphasize man's rational insight into the vital importance of laissez-faire for the flourishing and even survival of the human race, or of foregoing any coercive intervention into the vast and interdependent network of the free-market economy. Instead, Hayek had to fall back on the importance of blindly obeying whatever social rules happened to have "evolved," and his only feeble argument against intervention was that the government was even more irrational, and was even more ignorant, than individuals in the market economy. It is sad commentary on academia and on intellectual life these days that Hayek's thought, possibly because of its very muddle, inconsistency, and contradictions, should have attracted far more scholarly dissertations than Mises's consistency and clarity. In the long run, however, it will be all too obvious that Mises has left us a grand intellectual and scientific system for the ages whereas Hayek's lasting contribution will boil down to what was acknowledged by the Nobel committee—his elaboration of Misesian cycle theory. In addition, Hayek must always be honored for having the courage to stand shoulder to shoulder with his mentor, in the dark days of the interwar and postwar years, against the twin evils of socialism and Keynesianism. Z
113 V. ORVAL WATTS: 1898–1993
. Orval Watts, one of the leading free-market economists of the World War II and post-war eras, died on March 30 this
year. When I first met him, in the winter of 1947, he was a leading economist at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), the only free-market organization and think-tank of that era. He was a pleasantly sardonic man in his late forties. Born in 1898 in Manitoba, Vernon Orval Willard Watts was graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1918, and went on to earn a master's and a doctor's degree in economics from Harvard University in its nobler, pre-Keynesian era. After teaching economics at various colleges, Orval was hired by Leonard Read in 1939 to be the economist for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, of which Leonard was executive director. Watts thereby became the first full-time economist to be employed by a chamber of commerce in the United States. Leonard Read had built up the Los Angeles Chamber into the largest municipal business organization in the world, and Read himself had been converted to the libertarian, free-market creed by a remarkable constituent of the Chamber: William C. Mullendore, head of the Southern California Edison Corporation. During World War II, Read, assisted by Watts, lent his remarkable organizing talents to making the Los Angeles Chamber a beacon of freedom in an increasingly collectivist world. When Read took the bold step of moving to Irvingtonon-Hudson in New York to set up FEE in 1946, he took Orval with him as his economic adviser. During World War II, Orval published his book Do We Want Free Enterprise? (1944). In his FEE years, he published several books, as well as writing numerous articles for free-market publications. His books included Away From Freedom (1952), a critique of Keynesianism; his pungent critique of unions, Union Monopoly (1954), and his perceptive attack on the United Nations, United Nations: Planned Tyranny (1955). He also served as economic counsel to Southern California Edison and several other companies in the Los Angeles area.
In 1963, at an age (65) when most men are thinking seriously of retirement, Orval resumed his teaching career, moving to the recently established Northwood University (then Northwood Institute), a free-market center of learning in Midland, Michigan. Orval, bless him, served as director of economic education and chairman of the Division of Social Studies at Northwood for 21 years, until he retired in 1984 at the age of 86. While at Northwood, he published an excellent anthology of free market vs. government intervention articles, Free Markets or Famine? (1967), as well as his final book Politics vs. Prosperity (1976). Orval Watts died in Palm Springs, California, this March, having just turned 95. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, a son, three daughters, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. We can see in the present world how vitally important history is for the values and self-definition of a family, a movement, or a nation. As a result, history has become a veritable cockpit of contending factions. Any movement that has no sense of its own history, that fails to acknowledge its own leaders and heroes, is not going to amount to very much, nor does it deserve a better fate. Z
114 LUDWIG VON MISES: 1881–1973
or those of us who have loved as well as revered Ludwig von Mises, words cannot express our great sense of loss: of this gracious, brilliant and wonderful man; this man of unblemished integrity; this courageous and lifelong fighter for human freedom; this all-encompassing scholar; this noble inspiration to us all. And above all this gentle and charming friend, this man who
First published in Human Events, October 20, 1973, p. 7
brought to the rest of us the living embodiment of the culture and the charm of pre-World War I Vienna. For Mises's death takes away from us not only a deeply revered friend and mentor, but it tolls the bell for the end of an era: the last living mark of that nobler, freer and far more civilized era of pre-1914 Europe. Mises's friends and students will know instinctively what I mean: for when I think of Ludwig Mises I think first of all of those landmark occasions when I had the privilege of afternoon tea at the Mises's: in a small apartment that virtually breathed the atmosphere of a long lost and far more civilized era. The graciousness of Mises's devoted wife Margit; the precious volumes that were the remains of a superb home library destroyed by the Nazis; but above all Mises himself, spinning in his inimitable way anecdotes of Old Vienna, tales of scholars past and present brilliant insights into economics, politics and social theory, and astute comments on the current scene. Readers of Mises's majestic, formidable and uncompromising works must have been often surprised to meet him in person. Perhaps they had formed the image of Ludwig Mises as cold, severe, austere, the logical scholar repelled by lesser mortals, bitter at the follies around him and at the long trail of wrongs and insults that he had suffered. They couldn't have been more wrong; for what they met was a mind of genius blended harmoniously with a personality of great sweetness and benevolence. Not once has any of us heard a harsh or bitter word escape from Mises's lips. Unfailingly gentle and courteous, Ludwig Mises was always there to encourage even the slightest signs of productivity or intelligence in his friends and students; always there for warmth as well as for the mastery of logic and reason that his works have long proclaimed him. And always there as an inspiration and as a constant star. For what a life this man lived! Ludwig Mises died soon after his 92nd birthday, and until near the end he led his life very much in the world, pouring forth a mighty stream of great and
immortal works, a fountainhead of energy and productivity as he taught continually at a university until the age of 87, as he flew tirelessly around the world to give papers and lectures on behalf of the free market and of sound economic science—a mighty structure of coherence and logic to which he contributed so much of his own creation. Ludwig Mises's steadfastness and courage in the face of treatment that would have shattered lesser men, was a never-ending wonder to us all. Once the literal toast of both the economics profession and of the world's leaders, Mises was to find, at the very height of his powers, his world shattered and betrayed. For as the world rushed headlong into the fallacies and evils of Keynesianism and statism, Mises's great insights and contributions were neglected and scorned, and the large majority of his eminent and formerly devoted students decided to bend with the new breeze. But shamefully neglected though he was, coming to America to a second-rate post and deprived of the opportunity to gather the best students, Ludwig Mises never once complained or wavered. He simply hewed to his great purpose, to carve out and elaborate the mighty structure of economics and social science that he alone had had the genius to see as a coherent whole; and to stand four-square for the individualism and the freedom that he realized was required if the human race was to survive and prosper. He was indeed a constant star that could not be deflected one iota from the body of truth which he was the first to see and to present to those who would only listen. And despite the odds, slowly but surely some of us began to gather around him, to learn and listen and derive sustenance from the glow of his person and his work. And in the last few years, as the ideas of liberty and the free market have begun to revive with increasing swiftness in America, his name and his ideas began to strike chords in us all and his greatness to become known to a new generation. Optimistic as he always was, I am confident that Mises was heartened by these signs of a new awakening of freedom and of
the sound economics which he had carved out and which was for so long forgotten. We could not, alas, recapture the spirit and the breadth and the erudition; the ineffable grace of Old Vienna. But I fervently hope that we were able to sweeten his days by at least a little. Of all the marvelous anecdotes that Mises used to tell I remember this one the most clearly, and perhaps it will convey a little of the wit and the spirit of Ludwig von Mises. Walking down the streets of Vienna with his friend, the great German philosopher Max Scheler, Scheler turned to Mises and asked, with some exasperation: "What is there in the climate of Vienna that breeds all these logical positivists [the dominant school of modern philosophy that Mises combatted all his life]?" With his characteristic shrug, Mises gently replied: "Well, after all, there are several million people living in Vienna, and among these there are only about a dozen logical positivists." But oh, Mises, now you are gone, and we have lost our guide, our Nestor, our friend. How will we carry on without you? But we have to carry on, because anything less would be a shameful betrayal of all that you have taught us, by the example of your noble life as much as by your immortal works. Bless you, Ludwig von Mises, and our deepest love goes with you. Z
115 MARGIT VON MISES: 1890–1993
argit von Mises died on June 25, just a week short of her 103rd birthday. While physically frail the last few years, Margit remained mentally alert until a few months before her death. Indeed, such a conventional phrase as "mentally alert" scarcely begins to describe Margit: down nearly to the end, she was sharp as a tack, vitally interested in the world and in
everyone around her. It was impossible to put anything over on her, as people often try to do with the elderly. Indeed, since the death of her husband Ludwig von Mises 20 years ago, one had the impression she could out think and outsmart everyone with whom she came into contact. After the death of her beloved Lu, Margit swung into action, to become an indefatigable one-woman "Mises industry." She dug up unpublished manuscripts of Lu's, had them translated and edited, and supervised their publication. She also supervised reprints and translations of Mises's published work. She was chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. And she was fervent in pressing the cause of her late husband, as well as the ideas of freedom and free markets to which he had devoted his life. She refused to let any slighting or denigration of Mises by his genuine or less-than-genuine admirers or disciples go unremarked or go unchastised. Margit's greatest achievement in the Mises industry was her wonderful memoir of her life together with Lu, a touching and romantic, as well as dramatic, story, on which she embarked after Lu's death in 1973, and which she published three years later (My Years with Ludwig von Mises, Arlington House 1976; CFE 1984). It is notable that, unlike necessarily stiff and formal biographies from outside observers, the memory of both Lu and Margit will be kept eternally alive in this lovely valentine to a devoted marriage. It is a blessing that Margit was able to spend her last days and months in her beloved apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side where she and Lu had lived since 1942. It was a cozy and elegant flat, filled with mementos, and, in recent decades, with a marvelous bust of Mises sculpted by a lady who became a family friend. For all friends of the Miseses, it is an apartment arousing memories of charming conversations, being plied with tasty sandwiches and cakes at tea parties, and of visits with Lu in his study. Margit was a remarkable woman, who inspired great devotion in friends, neighbors, doctors, and nurses alike. For Margit,
her physician, a distinguished cardiologist, thought nothing of making repeated house calls; indeed even her dentist, whom she went to for half-century, made house calls replete with drilling equipment. But although Margit was mostly bedridden the last couple of years, she had been hardier than most people around her. Like most Viennese, the Miseses were inveterate walkers and mountain-climbers; into her nineties, Margit could outwalk (or out-sprint!) people a half or a third her age. Indeed, at Margit's memorial service, her granddaughter talked with wonder about Margit's rapid walks that virtually put the granddaughter ("used to buses") under the table. One time, Margit was telling me that someone had asked her if there was anything in common between Lu, her first husband Ferdinand Sereny, and other men she had admired. "They were all elegant," she said. And elegance is a term that springs to mind about Lu, Margit, and other products of the courtly and marvelous age of Vienna before World War I. It applies to Lu, whom Margit says in her memoir would never allow himself to be caught without his jacket, even in the hottest and muggiest weather. And to Margit herself, an actress in her youth, who when I first met her in the 1950s, was so stunningly beautiful that I was convinced that Mises had married a child bride. Margit von Mises was the last of the Austrians, the last vestige of Old Vienna. And now Hayek is gone, and Margit is gone, and gone is that apartment on West End Avenue that held so many memories, and that held together and fostered so many of the luminaries of the Misesian movement: Larry and Bertha Fertig, Harry and Frances Hazlitt, J.B. and Ruth Matthews, Philip Cortney, Alfred and Ilse Schütz. It is vital that we keep faith with them, and honor their lives, lest they and their work and their cause be forgotten. Margit and Ludwig von Mises were a magnificent team. In contemplating their lives, all the fuss about "family values" and "feminism" seems absurdly banal. Those who knew Margit know that she was one of the strongest-minded women they
have ever met. And yet, despite or perhaps because of that fact, Margit was unsurpassed in devotion to Mises the person in life and in perpetuating his memory and his ideas after his death. We live in an age where everyone seems to be bending to the latest wind, anxious to maintain his status as "politically correct." Lu and Margit were of a different and far nobler cloth and of a different age. They followed their own convictions and their own star without even a thought of compromise of principle, let alone of surrender. The death of Margit von Mises, yes even at age 102, leaves us all poorer and diminished in spirit. Z
116 THE STORY OF THE MISES INSTITUTE
he Mises Institute comes at both economic scholarship and applied political philosophy from a very different perspective. It believes that "policy analysis" without principle is mere flim-flam and ad-hocery—murky political conclusions resting on foundations of sand. It also believes that policy analysis that does not rest on scholarly principles is scarcely worth the paper it is written on or the time and money devoted to it. In short, that the only worthwhile analysis of the contemporary political and economic scene rests consistently on firm scholarly principles. On the other hand, the Mises Institute challenges the alltoo-prevalent view that to be scholarly means never, ever to take an ideological position. On the contrary, to the Mises Institute, the very devotion to truth on which scholarship rests necessarily implies that truth must be pursued and applied wherever it may lead—including the realm of current affairs. Economic scholarship divorced from application is only emasculated intellectual
game-playing, just as public policy analysis without scholarship is chaos cut off from principle. And so we see the real point underlying the uniqueness of the Mises Institute's twin programs of scholarship and application: the artificial split between the two realms is healed at last. Scholarly principles are carried forward into the analysis of government and its machinations, just as contemporary political economy now rests on sound scholarly research. From first axioms to applications, both scholarship and applied economics are an integrated whole, at long last. And now, too, we see the real point behind the title of the Mises Institute. It is no accident that the Institute is the only organization in the United States that honors Ludwig von Mises in its title. For Ludwig von Mises, in his life and in his work, exemplified as no other man the fusion, the integration, of scholarly principle and principled application. Mises, one of the greatest intellects and scholars of the twentieth century, scorned any notion that scholarship should remain content with abstract theorizing and never, ever apply its principles to public policy. On the contrary, Mises always combined scholarship with policy conclusions. A man of high courage, a scholar with unusual integrity, Ludwig von Mises never knew any other way than pursuing truth to its ultimate conclusions, however unpopular or unpalatable. And, as a result, Ludwig von Mises was the greatest and most uncompromising champion of human freedom in the twentieth century. It is no wonder, then, that the timorous and the venal habitually shy away from the very name of Ludwig von Mises. For Mises scorned all obstacles and temptations in the pursuit of truth and freedom. In raising the proud banner of Ludwig von Mises, the Mises Institute has indeed set up a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The Mises Institute is expanding and flourishing as never before. The Review of Austrian Economics, a high level journal in the theory and applications of Austrian economics, is also the
only journal in the field. It serves to expand and develop the truths of Austrian economics. But it also nurtures Austrians, encourages new, young Austrians to read and write for the journal, and finds mature Austrians heretofore isolated and scattered in often lonely academic outposts, but who are now stimulated to write and submit articles. These men and women now know that they are not isolated, that they are part of a large and growing nationwide and even international movement. Any of us who remember what it was like to find even one other person who agreed with our seemingly eccentric views in favor of freedom and the free market will appreciate what I mean, and how vitally important has been the growing role of the Mises Institute. The Institute's comprehensive program in Austrian education also includes publishing and distributing working papers, books, and monographs, original and reprinted, and holding conferences on a variety of important economic topics, and later publishing the conference papers in book form. Its monthly policy letter, the Free Market, provides incisive commentary on the world of political economy from an Austrian perspective. Furthermore, the Mises Institute now has its academic headquarters at Auburn University, where M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics are being granted. The Mises Institute also provides a large number of graduate fellowships, both resident at Auburn University, and non-resident to promising young graduate students throughout the country. Last but emphatically not least, the Institute sponsors a phenomenally successful week-long summer conference in the Austrian School. This program, which features a remarkable faculty, has attracted the best young minds from the world over, and gained deserved recognition as the most rigorous and comprehensive program anywhere. Here, leading Austrian economists engage in intensive instruction and discussion with students in a lovely campus setting. Participants are literally the best, the brightest and the most eager budding Austrians. From there they go on to develop, graduate, and themselves teach as
Austrian scholars, or become businessmen or other opinion leaders imbued with the truth and the importance of Austrian and free-market economics. In addition, the Institute is unique in that instructors avoid the usual academic practice of giving a lecture and quickly retiring from the scene; instead, their attendance at all the lectures encourages fellowship and an esprit de corps among faculty and students. These friendships and associations may be lifelong, and they are vital for building any sort of vibrant or cohesive long-run movement for Austrian economics and the free society. The basic point of this glittering spectrum of activities is twofold: to advance the discipline, the expanding, integrated body of truth that is Austrian economics; and to build a flourishing movement of Austrian economists. No science, no discipline, develops in thin air, in the abstract; it must be nurtured and advanced by people, by individual men and women who talk to each other, write to and for each other, interact and help build the body of Austrian economics and the people who sustain it. The remarkable achievement of the Mises Institute can only be understood in the context of what preceded it, and of the conditions it faced when it began in 1982. In 1974, leading Mises student F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics, a startling change from previous Nobel awards, exclusively for mathematical Keynesians. 1974 was also the year after the death of the great modern Austrian theorist and champion of freedom, Ludwig von Mises. Hayek's prize sparked a veritable revival in this long-forgotten school of economic thought. For several years thereafter, annual scholarly week-long conferences gathered the leading Austrian economists of the day, as well as the brightest young students; and the papers delivered at these meetings became published volumes, reviving and advancing the Austrian approach. Austrian economics was being revived from 40 years of neglect imposed by the Keynesian Revolution—a
revolution that sent the contrasting and once flourishing school of Austrian economics down the Orwellian memory hole. In this burgeoning Austrian revival, there was one fixed point so obvious that it was virtually taken for granted: that the heart and soul of Austrianism was, is, and can only be Ludwig von Mises, this great creative mind who had launched, established and developed the twentieth-century Austrian School, and the man whose courage and devotion to unvarnished, uncompromised truth led him to be the outstanding battler for freedom and laissez-faire economics in our century. In his ideas, and in the glory of his personal example, Mises was an inspiration and a beaconlight for us all. But then, in the midst of this flourishing development, something began to go wrong. After the last successful conference in the summer of 1976, the annual high-level seminars disappeared. Proposals to solidify and expand the success of the boom by launching a scholarly Austrian journal, were repeatedly rebuffed. The elementary instructional summer seminars continued, but their tone began to change. Increasingly, we began to hear disturbing news of an odious new line being spread: Mises, they whispered, had been "too dogmatic . . . too extreme," he "thought he knew the truth," he "alienated people." Yes, of course, Mises was "dogmatic," i.e., he was totally devoted to truth and to freedom and free enterprise. Yes, indeed, Mises, even though the kindliest and most inspiring of men, "alienated people" all the time, that is, he systematically alienated collectivists, socialists, statists, and trimmers and opportunists of all stripes. And of course such charges were nothing new. Mises had been hit with these smears all of his valiant and indomitable life. The terribly disturbing thing was that the people mouthing these canards all knew better: for they had all been seemingly dedicated Misesians before and during the "boom" period. It soon became all too clear what game was afoot. Whether independently or in concert, the various people and groups
involved in this shift had made a conscious critical decision: they had come to the conclusion they should have understood long before, that praxeology, Austrian economics, uncompromising laissez-faire were popular neither with politicians nor with the Establishment. Nor were these views very "respectable" among mainstream academics. The small knot of wealthy donors decided that the route to money and power lay elsewhere, while many young scholars decided that the road to academic tenure was through cozying up to attitudes popular in academia instead of maintaining a commitment to often despised truth. But these trimmers did not wish to attack Mises or Austrianism directly; they knew that Ludwig von Mises was admired and literally beloved by a large number of businessmen and members of the intelligent public, and they did not want to alienate their existing or potential support. What to do? The same thing that was done by groups a century ago that captured the noble word "liberal" and twisted it to mean its opposite— statism and tyranny, instead of liberty. The same thing that was done when the meaning of the U.S. Constitution was changed from a document that restricted government power over the individual, to one that endorsed and legitimated such power. As the noted economic journalist Garet Garrett wrote about the New Deal: "Revolution within the form," keep the name Austrian, but change the content to its virtual opposite. Change the content from devotion to economic law and free markets, to a fuzzy nihilism, to a mushy acceptance of Mises's ancient foes: historicism, institutionalism, even Marxism and collectivism. All, no doubt, more "respectable" in many academic circles. And Mises? Instead of attacking him openly, ignore him, and once in a while intimate that Mises really, down deep, would have agreed with this new dispensation. Into this miasma, into this blight, at the point when the ideas of Ludwig von Mises were about to be lost to history for the second and last time, and when the very name of "Austrian" had been captured from within by its opposite, there entered the fledgling Mises Institute.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute began in the fall of 1982 with only an idea; it had no sugar daddies, no endowments, no billionaires to help it make its way in the world. In fact, the powers-that-be in what was now the Austrian "Establishment" tried their very worst to see that the Mises Institute did not succeed. The Mises Institute persisted, however, inspired by the light of truth and liberty, and gradually but surely we began to find friends and supporters who had a great love for Ludwig von Mises and the ideals and principles he fought for throughout his life. The Institute found that its hopes were justified: that there are indeed many more devoted champions of freedom and the free market in America. Our journal and conferences and centers and fellowships have flourished, and we were able to launch a scholarly but uncompromising assault on the nihilism and statism that had been sold to the unsuspecting world as "Austrian" economics. The result of this struggle has been highly gratifying. Thousands of students are exposed to the Austrian School as a radical alternative to mainstream theory. For the light of truth has prevailed over duplicity. There are no longer any viable competitors for the name of Austrian. The free market again has principled and courageous champions. Justice, for once, has triumphed. Not only is the Austrian economic revival flourishing as never before, but it is now developing soundly within a genuine Austrian framework. Above all, Austrian economics is once again, as it ever shall be, Misesian. Z
117 THE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION . . . AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
n a famous lyric of a generation ago, Bob Dylan twitted the then-dominant "bourgeois" culture, "it doesn't take a weatherman to know the way the wind blows." Indeed, and the significance of this phrase today has nothing to do with the group of crazed Stalinist youth who once called themselves "the Weathermen." The phrase, in fact, is all too relevant to the present day. It means this: you don't have to have to be a certified media pundit to understand the meaning of the glorious election of November 1994. In fact, it almost seems a requirement for a clear understanding of this election not to be a certified pundit. It certainly helps not to be a member of Clinton's cadre of professional spinners and spinsters. The election was not a repudiation of "incumbents." Not when not a single Republican incumbent lost in any Congressional, Senate, or gubernatorial seat. The election was manifestly not simply "anti-Congress," as George Stephanopoulos said. Many governorships and state legislatures experienced Murray Rothbard wrote this essay one week after the November 1994 election. It circulated privately as a Confidential Memo. It is first published in this book. 467
upheavals as well. The elections were not an expression of public anger that President Clinton's beloved goals were not being met fast enough by Congress, as Clinton himself claimed. All too many of his goals (in housing, labor, banking, and foreign policy, for example) were being realized through regulatory edict. No, the meaning of the truly revolutionary election of 1994 is clear to anyone who has eyes to see and is willing to use them: it was a massive and unprecedented public repudiation of President Clinton, his person, his personnel, his ideologies and programs, and all of his works; plus a repudiation of Clinton's Democrat Party; and, most fundamentally, a rejection of the designs, current and proposed, of the Leviathan he heads. In effect, the uprising of anti-Democrat and anti-Washington, D.C., sentiment throughout the country during 1994 found its expression at the polls in November in the only way feasible in the social context of a mass democracy: by a sweeping and unprecedented electoral revolution repudiating Democrats and electing Republicans. It was an event at least as significant for our future as those of 1985–1988 in the former Soviet Union and its satellites, which in retrospect revealed the internal crumbling of an empire. But if the popular revolution constitutes a repudiation of Clinton and Clintonism, what is the ideology being repudiated, and what principles are being affirmed? Again, it should be clear that what is being rejected is big government in general (its taxing, mandating, regulating, gun grabbing, and even its spending) and, in particular, its arrogant ambition to control the entire society from the political center. Voters and taxpayers are no longer persuaded of a supposed rationale for American-style central planning. On the positive side, the public is vigorously and fervently affirming its desire to re-limit and de-centralize government; to increase individual and community liberty; to reduce taxes, mandates, and government intrusion; to return to the cultural and social mores of pre-1960s America, and perhaps much earlier than that.
PROSPECTS?
Should we greet the November results with unalloyed joy? Partly, the answer is a matter of personal temperament, but there are guidelines that emerge from a realistic analysis of this new and exciting political development. In the first place, conservatives and libertarians should be joyful at the intense and widespread revolutionary sentiment throughout the country, ranging from small but numerous grassroots outfits usually to moderate professionals and academics. The repudiation of the Democrats at the polls and the rapid translation of general popular sentiment into electoral action is indeed a cause for celebration. But there are great problems and resistances ahead. It is vital that we prepare for them and be able to deal with them. Rolling back statism is not going to be easy. The Marxists used to point out, from long study of historical experience, that no ruling elite in history has ever voluntarily surrendered its power; or, more correctly, that a ruling elite has only been toppled when large sectors of that elite, for whatever reasons, have given up and decided that the system should be abandoned. We need to study the lessons of the most recent collapse of a ruling elite and its monstrous statist system, the Soviet Union and its satellite Communist states. There is both good news and at least cautionary bad news in the history of this collapse and of its continuing aftermath. The overwhelmingly good news, of course, is the crumbling of the collectivist U.S.S.R., even though buttressed by systemic terror and mass murder. Essentially, the Soviet Union imploded because it had lost the support, not only of the general public, but even of large sectors of the ruling elites themselves. The loss of support came, first, in the general loss of moral legitimacy, and of faith in Marxism, and then, out of recognition that the system wasn't working economically, even for much of the ruling Communist Party itself. The bad news, while scarcely offsetting the good, came from the way in which the transition from Communism to
freedom and free markets was bungled. Essentially there were two grave and interconnected errors. First, the reformers didn't move fast enough, worrying about social disruption, and not realizing that the faster the shift toward freedom and private ownership took place, the less would be the disturbances of the transition and the sooner economic and social recovery would take place. Second, in attempting to be congenial statesmen, as opposed to counter-revolutionaries, the reformers not only failed to punish the Communist rulers with, at the least, the loss of their livelihoods, they left them in place, insuring that the ruling "ex"-Communist elite would be able to resist fundamental change. In other words, except for the Czech Republic, where feisty free-market economist and Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus was able to drive through rapid change to a genuine free market, and, to some extent, in the Baltic states, the reformers were too nice, too eager for "reconciliation," too slow and cautious. The result was quasi-disastrous: for everyone gave lip service to the rhetoric of free markets and privatization, while in reality, as in Russia, prices were decontrolled while industry remained in monopoly government hands. As former Soviet economist and Mises Institute senior fellow Yuri Maltsev first pointed out, it was as if the U.S. Post Office maintained its postal monopoly, while suddenly being allowed to charge $2 for a first-class stamp: the result would be impoverishment for the public, and more money into the coffers of the State. This is the reverse of a shift to free markets and private property. Furthermore, when privatization finally did take place in Russia, too much of it was "privatization" into the hands of the old elites, which meant a system more like Communist rule flavored by "private" gangsterism, than any sort of free market. But, crucially, free markets and private enterprise took the blame among the bewildered Russian public.
BETRAYING
The imminent problem facing the new American Revolution is all too similar: that, while using the inspiring rhetoric of freedom, tax-cuts, decentralization, individualism, and a roll back to small government, the Republican Party elites will be performing deeds in precisely the opposite direction. In that way, the fair rhetoric of freedom and small government will be used, to powerful and potentially disastrous effect, as a cover for cementing big government in place, and even for advancing us in the direction of collectivism. This systematic betrayal was the precise meaning and function of the Reagan administration. So effective was Ronald Reagan as a rhetorician, though not a practitioner, of freedom and small government, that, to this day, most conservatives have still not cottoned on to the scam of the Reagan administration. For the "Reagan Revolution" was precisely a taking of the revolutionary, free-market, and small government spirit of the 1970s, and the other anti-government vote of 1980, and turning it into its opposite, without the public or even the activists of that revolution realizing what was going on. It was only the advent of George Bush, who continued the trend toward collectivism while virtually abandoning the Reaganite rhetoric, that finally awakened the conservative public. (Whether Ronald Reagan himself was aware of his role, or went along with it, is a matter for future biographers, and is irrelevant to the objective reality of what actually happened.) Are we merely being "cynical" (the latest self-serving Clintonian term), or only basing our cautionary warnings on one historical episode? No, we are simply looking at the activity and function of the Republican elites since World War II. Since World War II, and especially since the 1950s, the function of the Republican Party has been to be the "loyal . . . moderate," "bipartisan," pseudo-opposition to the collectivist and leftist program of the Democratic Party. Unlike the more apocalyptic and impatient Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks (or social
democrats, or corporate liberals, or "responsible" liberals, or "responsible" conservatives, or neoconservatives—the labels change, but the reality remains the same) try to preserve an illusion of free choice for the American public, including a twoparty system, and at least marginal freedom of speech and expression. The goal of these "responsible" or "enlightened" moderates has been to participate in the march to statism, while replacing the older American ideals of free markets, private property, and limited government with cloudy and noisy rhetoric about the glories of "democracy," as opposed to the one-party dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Indeed, "democracy" is so much the supposed overriding virtue that advancing "democracy" throughout the globe is now the sole justification for the "moderate," "bipartisan," Republicrat policy of global intervention, foreign aid, and trade mercantilism. Indeed, now that the collapse of the Soviet Union has eliminated the specter of a Soviet threat, what other excuse for such a policy remains? While everyone is familiar with the bipartisan, monopolycartel foreign policy that has been dominant since World War II, again pursued under various excuses (the Soviet threat, reconstruction of Europe, "helping" the Third World, "freetrade," the global economy, "global democracy," and always an inchoate but pervasive fear of a "return to isolationism"), Americans are less familiar with the fact that the dominant Republican policy during this entire era has been bipartisan in domestic affairs as well. If we look at the actual record and not the rhetoric, we will find that the function of the Democrat administrations (especially Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson), has been to advance the march to collectivism by Great Leaps Forward, and in the name of "liberalism"; while the function of the Republicans has been, in the name of opposition or small government or "conservatism," to fail to roll back any of these "social gains," and indeed, to engage in more big-government collectivizing of
their own (especially Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush). Indeed, it is arguable that Nixon did even more to advance big government than his earthy Texas predecessor.
THE ILLUSION
Why bother with maintaining a farcical two-party system, and especially why bother with small-government rhetoric for the Republicans? In the first place, the maintenance of some democratic choice, however illusory, is vital for all varieties of social democrats. They have long realized that a one-party dictatorship can and probably will become cordially hated, for its real or perceived failures, and will eventually be overthrown, possibly along with its entire power structure. Maintaining two parties means, on the other hand, that the public, growing weary of the evils of Democrat rule, can turn to out-of-power Republicans. And then, when they weary of the Republican alternative, they can turn once again to the eager Democrats waiting in the wings. And so, the ruling elites maintain a shell game, while the American public constitute the suckers, or the "marks" for the ruling con-artists. The true nature of the Republican ruling elite was revealed when Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination for President in 1964. Goldwater, or the ideologues and rank-andfile of his conservative movement, were, or at least seemed to be, genuinely radical, small government, and anti-Establishment, at least on domestic policy. The Goldwater nomination scared the Republican elites to such an extent that, led by Nelson Rockefeller, they openly supported Johnson for president. The shock to the elites came from the fact that the "moderates," using their domination of the media, finance, and big corporations, had been able to control the delegates at every Republican presidential convention since 1940, often in defiance of the manifest will of the rank-and-file (e.g., Willkie over Taft in 1940, Dewey over Taft in 1944, Dewey over Bricker in 1948, Eisenhower over Taft in 1952). Such was their power that
they did not, as usually happens with open party traitors, lose all their influence in the Republican Party thereafter. It was the specter of the stunning loss of Goldwater that probably accounts for the eagerness of Ronald Reagan or his conservative movement, upon securing the nomination in 1980, to agree to what looks very much like a rigged deal (or what John Randolph of Roanoke once famously called a "corrupt bargain"). The deal was this: the Republican elites would support their party's presidential choice, and guarantee the Reaganauts the trappings and perquisites of power, in return for Reaganaut agreement not to try seriously to roll back the Leviathan State against which they had so effectively campaigned. And after 12 years of enjoyment of power and its perquisites in the executive branch, the Official Conservative movement seemed to forget whatever principles it had.
THE PARASITIC ELITE So is our message unrelieved gloom? Is everything hopeless, are we all in the ineradicable grip of the ruling elite, and should we all just go home and forget the whole thing? Certainly not. Apart from the immorality of giving up, we have so far not mentioned the truly optimistic side of this equation. We can begin this way: even given the necessity of the elite maintaining two parties, why do they even have to indulge in radical rightist, small-government rhetoric? After all, the disjunction between rhetoric and reality can become embarrassing, even aggravating, and can eventually lose the elites the support of the party rank-and-file, as well as the general public. So why indulge in the rhetoric at all? Goldwater supporter Phyllis Schlafly famously called for a "choice, not an echo"; but why does the Establishment allow radical choices, even in rhetoric? The answer is that large sections of the public opposed the New Deal, as well as each of the advances to collectivism since
then. The rhetoric is not empty for much of the public, and certainly not for most of the activists of the Republican Party. They seriously believe the anti-big-government ideology. Similarly, much of the rank-and-file, and certainly the activist Democrats, are more openly, more eagerly, collectivist than the Democrat elite, or the Demopublican elite, would desire. Furthermore, since government interventionism doesn't work, since it is despotic, counter-productive, and destructive of the interests of the mass of the people, advancing collectivism will generate an increasingly hostile reaction among the public, what the media elites sneer at as a "backlash." In particular, collectivist, social democratic rule destroys the prosperity, the freedom, and the cultural, social, and ethical principles and practices of the mass of the American people, working and middle classes alike. Rule by the statist elite is not benign or simply a matter of who happens to be in office: it is rule by a growing army of leeches and parasites battening off the income and wealth of hard-working Americans, destroying their property, corrupting their customs and institutions, sneering at their religion. The ultimate result must be what happens whenever parasites multiply at the expense of a host: at first gradual descent into ruin, and then finally collapse. (And therefore, if anyone cares, destruction of the parasites themselves.) Hence, the ruling elite lives chronically in what the Marxists would call an "inner contradiction": it thrives by imposing increasing misery and impoverishment upon the great majority of the American people. The parasitic elite, even while ever increasing, has to comprise a minority of the population, otherwise the entire system would collapse very quickly. But the elite is ruling over, and demolishing, the very people, the very majority, who are supposed to keep these destructive elites perpetually in power by periodic exercise of their much-lauded "democratic" franchise. How do the elites get away with this, year after year, decade after decade, without suffering severe retribution at the polls?
THE RULING COALITION A crucial means of establishing and maintaining this domination is by co-opting, by bringing within the ruling elite, the opinion-moulding classes in society. These opinion-moulders are the professional shapers of opinion: theorists, academics, journalists and other media movers and shakers, script writers and directors, writers, pundits, think-tankers, consultants, agitators, and social therapists. There are two essential roles for these assorted and proliferating technocrats and intellectuals: to weave apologies for the statist regime, and to help staff the interventionist bureaucracy and to plan the system. The keys to any social or political movement are money, numbers, and ideas. The opinion-moulding classes, the technocrats and intellectuals supply the ideas, the propaganda, and the personnel to staff the new statist dispensation. The critical funding is supplied by figures in the power elite: various members of the wealthy or big business (usually corporate) classes. The very name "Rockefeller Republican" reflects this basic reality. While big-business leaders and firms can be highly productive servants of consumers in a free-market economy, they are also, all too often, seekers after subsidies, contracts, privileges, or cartels furnished by big government. Often, too, business lobbyists and leaders are the sparkplugs for the statist, interventionist system. What big businessmen get out of this unholy coalition on behalf of the super-state are subsidies and privileges from big government. What do intellectuals and opinion-moulders get out of it? An increasing number of cushy jobs in the bureaucracy, or in the government-subsidized sector, staffing the welfare-regulatory state, and apologizing for its policies, as well as propagandizing for them among the public. To put it bluntly, intellectuals, theorists, pundits, media elites, etc. get to live a life which they could not attain on the free market, but which they
can gain at taxpayer expense—along with the social prestige that goes with the munificent grants and salaries. This is not to deny that the intellectuals, therapists, media folk, et al., may be "sincere" ideologues and believers in the glorious coming age of egalitarian collectivism. Many of them are driven by the ancient Christian heresy, updated to secularist and New Age versions, of themselves as a cadre of Saints imposing upon the country and the world a communistic Kingdom of God on Earth. It is, in any event, difficult for an outsider to pronounce conclusively on anyone else's motivations. But it still cannot be a coincidence that the ideology of Left-liberal intellectuals coincides with their own vested economic interest in the money, jobs, and power that burgeoning collectivism brings them. In any case, any movement that so closely blends ideology and an economic interest in looting the public provides a powerful motivation indeed. Thus, the pro-state coalition consists of those who receive, or expect to receive, government checks and privileges. So far, we have pinpointed big business, intellectuals, technocrats, and the bureaucracy. But numbers, voters, are needed as well, and in the burgeoning and expanding state of today, the above groups are supplemented by other more numerous favored recipients of government largess: welfare clients and, especially in the last several decades, members of various minority social groups who are defined by the elites as being among the "victims" and the "oppressed." As more and more of the "oppressed" are discovered or invented by the Left, ever more of them receive subsidies, favorable regulations, and other badges of "victimhood" from the government. And as the "oppressed" expand in ever-widening circles, be they blacks, women, Hispanics, American Indians, the disabled, and on and on ad infinitum, the voting power of the Left is ever expanded, again at the expense of the American majority.
CONNING
Still, despite the growing number of receivers of government largess, the opinion-moulding elites must continue to perform their essential task of convincing or soft-soaping the oppressed majority into not realizing what is going on. The majority must be kept contented, and quiescent. Through control of the media, especially the national, "respectable" and respected media, the rulers attempt to persuade the deluded majority that all is well, that any voice except the "moderate" and "respectable" wings of both parties are dangerous "extremists" and loonies who must be shunned at all costs. The ruling elite and the media try their best to keep the country's tack on a "moderate . . . vital center"—the "center," of course, drifting neatly leftward decade after decade. "Extremes" of both Right and Left should be shunned, in the view of the Establishment. Its attitudes toward both extremes, however, are very different. The Right are reviled as crazed or evil reactionaries who want to go beyond the acceptable task of merely slowing down collectivist change. Instead, they actually want to "turn back the clock of history" and repeal or abolish big government. The Left, on the other hand, are more gently criticized as impatient and too radical, and who therefore would go too far too fast and provoke a dangerous counter-reaction from the ever-dangerous Right. The Left, in other words, is in danger of giving the show away.
THE ADVENT
Things were going smoothly for the vital center until the election of 1992. America was going through one of its periodic revulsions from the party in power, Bush was increasingly disliked, and the power elite, from the Rockefellers and Wall Street to the neoconservative pundits who infest our press and our TV screens, decided that it was time for another change. They engaged in a blistering propaganda campaign against Bush for his tax increases (the same people ignored Reagan's tax
increases) and excoriated him for selling out the voters' mandate for smaller government (at a Heritage Foundation event just before the election, for example, an employee carried a realistic and bloodied head of Bush around on a platter). Even more crucially, the elites assured the rest of us that Bill Clinton was an acceptable Moderate, a "New Democrat," at worst a centrist who would only supply a nuanced difference from the centrist Republican Bush, and, at best, a person whom Washington and New York moderates and conservatives and Wall Street could work with. But the ruling elite, whether Right-or Left-tinged, is neither omnipotent nor omniscient—they goof just like the rest of us. Instead of a moderate leftist, they got a driven, almost fanatical leftist administration, propelled by the president's almost maniacal energy, and the arrogant and self-righteous Hillary's scary blend of Hard Left ideology and implacable drive for power. The rapid and all-encompassing Clintonian shift leftward upset the Establishment's apple cart. The sudden Hard Left move, blended with an unprecedented nationwide reaction of loathing for Clinton's persona and character, opened up a gap in the center, and provoked an intense and widespread public detestation of Clinton and of big government generally. The public had been tipped over, and had had enough; it was fed up. An old friend reminds me that the Republicans could well have campaigned on the simple but highly effective slogan of their last great party victory of 1946: "Had Enough? Vote Republican!" In short, the right-wing populist, semi-libertarian, anti-big government revolution had been fully launched. What is the ruling elite to do now? It has a difficult task on its hands—a task which those genuinely devoted to the free market must be sure to make impossible. The ruling elite must do the following. First, it must make sure that, whatever their rhetoric, the Republican leadership in Congress (and its eventual presidential nominee) keep matters
nicely centrist and "moderate," and, however they dress it up, maintain and even advance the big-government program. Second, at least for the next two years, they must see to it that Clinton swings back to his earlier New Democrat trappings, and drops his Hard Left program. In this way, the newly triumphant centrists of both parties could engage once again in cozy collaboration, and the financial and media elites could sink back comfortably into their familiar smooth sailing, steadily advancing collectivistic groove.
THWARTING DEMOCRACY It is no accident that both of these courses of action imply the thwarting of democracy and democratic choice. There is no doubt that the Democratic Party base leftists, minorities, teacher unions, etc.—as well the party militants and activists, are clamoring for the continuation and even acceleration of Clinton's Hard Left program. On the other hand, the popular will, as expressed in the sweep of 1994, by the middle and working class majority, and certainly by the militants and activists of the Republican Party, is in favor of rolling back and toppling big government and the welfare state. Not only that, they are fed up, angry, and determined to do so: that is, they are in a revolutionary mood. Have you noticed how the social democratic elites, though eternally yammering about the vital importance of "democracy," American and global, quickly turn sour on a democratic choice whenever it is something they don't like? How quick they then are to thwart the democratic will, by media smears, calumny and outright coercive suppression. Since the ruling elite lives by fleecing and dominating the ruled, their economic interests must always be in opposition. But the fascinating feature of the American scene in recent decades has been the unprecedented conflict, the fundamental clash, between the ruling liberal/intellectual/business/bureaucratic elites on the one hand, and the mass of Americans on the
other. The conflict is not just on taxes and subsidies, but across the board socially, culturally, morally, aesthetically, religiously. In a penetrating article in the December 1994 Harper's, the late sociologist Christopher Lasch, presaging his imminent book, The Revolt of the Elites, points out how the American elites have been in fundamental revolt against virtually all the basic American values, customs, and traditions. Increasing realization of this clash by the American grass roots has fueled and accelerated the right-wing populist revolution, a revolution not only against Washington rule, taxes, and controls, but also against the entire panoply of attitudes and mores that the elite are trying to foist upon the recalcitrant American public. The public has finally caught on and is rising up angry.
PROP. 187: A CASE STUDY California's Proposition 187 provides a fascinating case study of the vital rift between the intellectual, business, and media elites, and the general public. There is the massive funding and propaganda the elites are willing to expend to thwart the desires of the people; the mobilizing of support by "oppressed" minorities; and finally, when all else fails, the willingness to wheel in the instruments of anti-democratic coercion to block, permanently if possible, the manifest will of the great majority of the American people. In short, "democracy" in action! In recent years, a flood of immigrants, largely illegal, has been inundating California, some from Asia but mainly from Mexico and other Latin American countries. These immigrants have dominated and transformed much of the culture, proving unassimilable and swamping tax-supported facilities such as medical care, the welfare rolls, and the public schools. In consequence, former immigration official Harold Ezell helped frame a ballot initiative, Prop. 187, which simply called for the abolition of all taxpayer funding for illegal immigrants in California.
Prop. 187 provided a clear-cut choice, an up-or-down referendum on the total abolition of a welfare program for an entire class of people who also happen to be lawbreakers. If we are right in our assessment of the electorate, such an initiative should gain the support of not only every conservative and libertarian, but of every sane American. Surely, illegals shouldn't be able to leach off the taxpayer. Support for Prop. 187 spread like wildfire, it got signatures galore, and it quickly spurted to a 2:1 lead in the polls, although its organized supporters were only a network of small, grassroots groups that no one had ever heard of. But every single one of the prominent, massively funded elite groups not only opposed Prop. 187, but also smeared it unmercifully. The smearbund included big media, big business, big unions, organized teachers, organized medicine, organized hospitals, social workers (the latter four groups of course benefitting from taxpayer funds channeled to them via the welfare-medical-public school support system), intellectuals, writers, academics, leftists, neoconservatives, etc. They denounced Prop. 187 grass-roots proponents as nativists, fascists, racists, xenophobes, Nazis, you name it, and even accused them of advocating poverty, starvation, and typhoid fever. Joining in this richly-funded campaign of hysteria and smear was the entire official libertarian (or Left-libertarian) movement, including virtually every "free-market" and "libertarian" think tank except the Mises Institute. The Libertarian Party of California weighed in too, taking the remarkable step of fiercely opposing a popular measure that would eliminate taxpayer funding of illegals, and implausibly promising that if enough illegals came here, they would eventually rise up and slash the welfare state. The once-consistently libertarian Orange County Register bitterly denounced Prop. 187 day after day, and vilified Orange County Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who had long been close to the Register and the libertarian movement, for
favoring Prop. 187. These editorials provoked an unprecedented number of angry letters from the tax-paying readership. For their part, the neoconservative and official libertarian think tanks joined the elite condemnation of Prop. 187. Working closely with Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, Cesar Conda of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution circulated a statement against the measure that was signed by individuals at the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Reason Foundation, and even the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Wall Street Journal denounced the initiative almost as savagely as did the Establishment liberal Los Angeles Times, while neoconservative presidential hopefuls Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett cut their own political throats by issuing a joint statement, from the center of the Leviathan, Washington, D.C., urging Californians to defeat the measure. This act was selfdestructive because Governor Pete Wilson, leading the rest of the California Republican Party, saved his political bacon by climbing early onto Prop. 187, and riding the issue to come from far behind to crush leftist Kathleen Brown. The case of the think tanks is a relatively easy puzzle to solve. The big foundations that make large grants to right-ofcenter organizations were emphatically against Prop. 187. Also having an influence was the desire for media plaudits and social acceptance in the D.C. hothouse, where one wrong answer leads to loss of respectability. But the interesting question is why did Kemp and Bennett join in the campaign against Prop. 187, and why do they continue to denounce it even after it has passed? After all, they could have said nothing; not being Californians, they could have stayed out of the fray. Reliable reports reveal that Kemp and Bennett were "persuaded" to take this foolhardy stand by the famed William Kristol, in dynastic and apostolic succession to his father Irving as godfather of the neoconservative movement.
It is intriguing to speculate on the means by which Kristol managed to work his persuasive wiles. Surely the inducement was not wholly intellectual; and surely Kemp and Bennett, especially in dealing with the godfather, have to keep their eye, not simply on their presidential ambitions, but also on the extremely lucrative and not very onerous institutional positions that they now enjoy. In the meantime, as per the usual pattern, the ruling elites were able to mobilize the "oppressed" sectors of the public against Prop. 187, so that blacks and groups that have been and will continue to be heavily immigrant, such as Asians and Jews, voted in clear if modest majorities against the measure. Voting overwhelmingly against Prop. 187, of course, were the Hispanics, who constitute the bulk of legal and illegal immigrants into that state, with many of the illegals voting illegally as well. Polarizing the situation further, Mexicans and other Hispanics demonstrated in large numbers, waving Mexican and other Latin American flags, brandishing signs in Spanish, and generally enraging white voters. Even the Mexican government weighed in, with the dictator Salinas and his successor Zedillo denouncing Prop. 187 as a "human rights violation." After a massive October blitz by the media and the other elites, media polls pronounced that Prop. 187 had moved from 2:1 in favor to neck-and-neck, explaining that "once the public had had a chance to examine Prop. 187, they now realized," and blah blah. When the smoke had cleared on election night, however, it turned out that after all the money and all the propaganda, Prop. 187 had passed by just about . . . 2:1! In short, either the media polls had lied, or, more likely, the public, sensing the media hostility and the ideological and cultural clash, simply lied to the pollsters. The final and most instructive single point about this saga is simply this: the elites, having lost abysmally despite their strenuous efforts, and having seen the democratic will go against them in no uncertain fashion, quickly turned to naked coercion. It took less than 24 hours after the election for a federal judge
to take out what will be a multi-year injunction, blocking any operation of Prop. 187, until at some future date, the federal judiciary should rule it unconstitutional. And, in a couple of years, no doubt the federal judicial despots, headed by the Supreme Court, will so declare.
SO MUCH
"DEMOCRACY"!
To liberals, neocons, official conservatives, and all elites, once the federal judiciary, in particular the venerated Supreme Court, speaks, everyone is supposed to shut up and swallow the result. But why? Because an independent judiciary and judicial review are supposed to be sacred, and supply wise checks and balances on other branches of government? But this is the greatest con, the biggest liberal shell game, of all. For the whole point of the Constitution was to bind the central government with chains of steel, to keep it tightly and strictly limited, so as to safeguard the rights and powers of the states, local communities, and individual Americans. In the early years of the American Republic, no political leader or statesman waited for the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution; and the Court did not have the monopoly of interpreting the Constitution or of enforcing it. Unfortunately, in practice, the federal judiciary is not "independent" at all. It is appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and is from the very beginning part of the federal government itself. But, as John C. Calhoun wisely warned in 1850, once we allow the Supreme Court to be the monopoly interpreter of governmental—and therefore of its own—power, eventual despotism by the federal government and its kept judiciary becomes inevitable. And that is precisely what has happened. From being the instrument of binding down and severely limiting the power of the federal Leviathan, the Supreme Court and the rest of the judiciary have twisted and totally transformed the Constitution into a "living" instrument and thereby a crucial tool of its own despotic and virtually absolute power over the lives of every American citizen.
One of the highly popular measures among the American people these days is term limits for state and federal legislatures. But the tragedy of the movement is its misplaced focus. Liberals are right, for once, when they point out that the public can "limit" legislative terms on their own, as they did gloriously in the November 1994 elections, by exercising their democratic will and throwing the rascals out. But of course liberals, like official conservatives, cleverly fail to focus on those areas of government that are in no way accountable to the American public, and who cannot be thrown out of office by democratic vote at the polls. It is these imperial, swollen, and tyrannical branches of government that desperately need term limits and that no one is doing anything about. Namely, the executive branch which, apart from the president himself by third-term limit, is locked permanently into civil service and who therefore cannot be kicked out by the voters; and, above all, the federal judges, who are there for fourteen years, or, in the case of the ruling Supreme Court oligarchy, fastened upon us for life. What we really need is not term limits for elected politicians, but the abolition of the civil service (which only began in the 1880s) and its alleged "merit system" of technocratic and bureaucratic elites; and, above all, elimination of the despotic judiciary.
WHY DEMOCRACY ANYWAY? Across the ideological spectrum, from leftist to liberal to neoconservative to official conservative, "democracy" has been treated as a shibboleth, as an ultimate moral absolute, virtually replacing all other moral principles including the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. But despite this universal adherence, as Mises Institute senior fellow David Gordon has pointed out, "virtually no argument is ever offered to support the desirability of . . . democracy, and the little that is available seems distressingly weak." The overriding imperative of
democracy is considered self-evident and sacred, apparently above discussion among mere mortals. What, in fact, is so great about democracy? Democracy is scarcely a virtue in itself, much less an overriding one, and not nearly as important as liberty, property rights, a free market, or strictly limited government. Democracy is simply a process, a means of selecting government rulers and policies. It has but one virtue, but this can indeed be an important one: it provides a peaceful means for the triumph of the popular will. Ballots, in the old phrase, can serve as a peaceful and nondisruptive "substitute for bullets." That is why it makes sense to exhort people who advocate a radical (in the sense of sharp, not necessarily leftist) change from the existing polity to "work within the system" to convince a majority of voters rather than to engage in violent revolution. When the voters desire radical change, therefore, it becomes vitally important to reflect that change quickly and smoothly in political institutions; blockage of that desire subverts the democratic process itself, and polarizes the situation so as to threaten or even bring about violent conflict in society. If ballots are indeed to be a substitute for bullets, then the ballots have to be allowed to work and take rapid effect. This is what makes the blockage of voter mandates such as Prop. 187 so dangerous and destructive. And yet, it is clear that the ruling elites, failing at the ballot box, are ready and eager to use anti-democratic means to suppress the desires of the voters. Prop. 187 is only one example. Another is the Gatt treaty setting up a World Trade Organization to impose global mercantilism, which was overwhelmingly opposed by the voters. It was brought to a vote in a repudiated and lame-duck Congress, by politicians who, as Mises Institute President Lew Rockwell pointed out, were virtually wearing price tags around their necks. No doubt that the federal judiciary would find nothing unconstitutional about this. But it is ready to manufacture all sorts of constitutional "rights" which appear nowhere in the
Constitution and are soundly opposed by the electorate. These include the right to an education, including the existence of well-funded public schools; the right of gays not to be discriminated against; civil rights, affirmative action, and on and on. Here we need deal only with the famous Roe v. Wade decision, in which the Supreme Court manufactured a federal "right" to abortion; ever since the founding of the Constitution, matters such as these were always considered part of the jurisdiction of state governments and the police power. The federal government is only supposed to deal with foreign affairs and disputes between states. As Washington Times columnist and Mises Institute adjunct scholar Samuel Francis has pointed out, the horror at anti-abortionists employing violence against abortion doctors and clinics is appropriate, but misses the crucial point: namely, that those who believe that abortion is murder and should be outlawed were told, like everyone else, to be peaceful and "work within" the democratic system. They did so, and persuaded voters and legislatures of a number of states to restrict or even outlaw abortion. But all of this has been for nought, because the unelected, unaccountable, life-tenured Supreme Court has pronounced abortion a federal right, thereby bypassing every state legislature, and everyone is now supposed to roll over and play dead. But in that case, aren't such antidemocratic pronouncements of the Supreme Court despots an open invitation to violence? In response to violence by a few anti-abortionists, the proabortion movement has come dangerously close to calling for suppression of free speech: since they claim that those who believe that abortion is murder are really responsible for the violence since they have created an ideological atmosphere, a "climate of hate," which sets the stage for violence. But the shoe, of course, is really on the other foot. The stage, the conditions for the violence, have been set, not by anti-abortion writers and theorists, but by the absolute tyrants on the
Supreme Court and those who weave apologetics for that absolute rule. It was not always thus. The truly democratic spirit of the Old Republic was much better expressed in the famous words of President Andrew Jackson about the leading big-government man of that epoch: "Mr. Justice Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
DO ABOUT
An essential ingredient of a truly effective revolution is that something must be done about the tyrannical judiciary. It is not enough, though vital, to advocate other essential legislative measures to roll back and abolish big government and the welfare state. The federal judiciary must be defanged for any of these programs to work. Assuming that public pressure and voting can gain working control of Congress, it must then proceed against the federal judiciary. How? Impeachment is much too slow and cumbersome a process, and can only be done judge by judge. A constitutional amendment, to be submitted by Congress or the required number of states, the favorite goal of the term limits and Prop. 187 movements, is better, but is also very slow and can be blocked by a minority of the people. The swiftest and most direct path would be for Congress to act, as it can without cumbersome amendments, to remove virtually the entire jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. Thus, if it is so desired, Congress can repeal the various federal judiciary acts and pass a new one returning the federal courts to their original very narrow and limited jurisdiction. And while, within the Constitution, Congress has to pay each Supreme Court member his existing salary, it can, using its appropriation power, strip the judges of all staff, clerks, buildings, perquisites, etc. Furthermore, the Constitution only mandates a Supreme Court; Congress can abolish the rest of the federal judiciary,
including the district and appeals courts, and thereby effectively crush the power of the Supreme Court by leaving it alone to try to handle all the thousands of cases that come annually before the federal courts. In a war between Congress and the federal courts, Congress possesses all the trump cards.
REVOLUTION ALREADY BEEN BETRAYED?
It took less than 24 hours for the great, peaceful, democratic, popular revolution against big government and all its works to be betrayed. Not just by the courts, but most strikingly by the leadership among Republican Congressmen and Senators now positioned to thwart the will of the new Republicans whom the public installed to carry out their wishes. The leadership was egged on by our old friend William Kristol, who, at every post-election speech, urged Republicans not to go on "kamikaze" or "suicide" missions against big government. Instead, he urged them to focus on institutional reforms, win symbolic victories against one or two programs, slowly build public support for new reforms, etc. And what should be the goal of all this tinkering and maneuvering? The goal, as he told an Empower America audience, is for Republicans to win back the White House in 1996. To Kristol and his friends, power for its own sake is the sole end of politics. What about limited government, liberty, property, and the like? Those are fine ideas to feed the conservative masses, but they have no relevance to "governing." While the rank-and-file of conservatives has long caught on to Bob "High Tax" Dole, the major and dangerous betrayer of the Revolution is Newt Gingrich, who often engages in fiery, revolutionary, rightist rhetoric while actually collaborating with and sidling up to the collectivist welfare state. In the eighties, his spending record was not especially conservative and, indeed, was below average for Republicans. Recall too that the major legislative victory of this self-proclaimed "free trader" was the
imposition of trade sanctions on South Africa, which he and Jack Kemp worked so hard for. Unfortunately, the conservative public is all too often taken in by mere rhetoric and fails to weigh the actual deeds of their political icons. So the danger is that Gingrich will succeed not only in betraying, but in conning the revolutionary public into thinking that they have already won and can shut up shop and go home. There are a few critical tests of whether Gingrich or his "contract" is really, in actual deed, keeping faith with the revolution or whether he, or the other Republican leaders, are betraying it. Taxes. Are tax rates, especially income taxes, substantially reduced (and, as soon as possible, abolished)? More important, is total tax revenue substantially reduced? Unfortunately, all the Republican leaders, including Gingrich, are still firmly committed to the axiom underlying the disastrous Bush-Democrat budget agreement of 1990: that any cut in tax revenue anywhere must be "balanced" by increased taxes, or "fees," or "contributions," somewhere else. So, in addition to big tax cuts in income taxes, no new or increased taxes should be proposed in any other area. Government Spending. There must be big cuts in federal government spending, and that means real cuts, "cut-cuts," and not "capping," cuts in the rate of growth of spending, cuts in projected increases, consolidations, spending transfers, and all the rest of the nonsense that has altered the meaning of the simple word "cut." So far, "revolutionary" Gingrich has only talked about capping some spending to allow "cost of living" increases and transferring spending responsibilities from one agency or level of government to another. But do I mean, horrors! cuts in defense, cuts in Social Security, cuts in Medicare, and all the rest? Yes, yes, and yes. It would be simplest and most effective to pass, say, an immediate, mandated 30 percent federal spending cut, to take effect in the first year. The slash would override any existing entitlements,
and the bureaucrats could work out their hysteria by deciding what should be cut within this 30 percent mandate. Deregulation. Deregulation of business and of individuals should be massive and immediate. There is no conceivable worthy argument for gradualism or "phasing in" in this area. It goes without saying that all unfunded mandates to states or individuals should be abolished forthwith. All "civil rights," disabilities "rights," regulations, etc. should be abolished. The same goes for any ballot or campaign regulations, let alone "reforms." Regulations and controls on labor relations, including the Norris-LaGuardia anti-injunction act and the sainted National Labor Relations Act, should be abolished. Privatization. A serious move should be made to privatize federal government operations, and if not, to turn them over to the states, or at least, to private competition. A clear example would be the losing, inefficient, backward Postal Service. Federal public lands is another excellent example. Divesting federal assets, in addition to being a great good in itself, and aiding the Western anti-federal land revolution, would also help lower government expenditures. Cutting the Bureaucracy. Again, capping, or slowing the rate of increase, of government employees, doesn't make a cut. There must be massive reductions, including abolition of entire useless and counterproductive government agencies. As a good start, how about abolishing the Departments of Energy, Education, HUD, Health and Human Services, and Commerce? And that means abolishing their functions as well. Otherwise, in a typical bureaucratic trick, the same functions would be shuffled to other existing departments or agencies. Racial Preferences and Gun Control. Every honest pollster has to admit that these two issues were crucially important in the election, especially among a segment of the white male population who had previously evinced little interest in politics. Any government that denies a person the right to defend himself against private and public intrusion, and also prevents students
and workers from realizing gains from their own hard work and study, is not a morally legitimate government. Yet at the urging of the Republican elite, the party has said nothing on these two issues. Gingrich himself has pledged not to repeal the Brady Bill, and the subject of civil-rights socialism is still banned from public discussion. Republicans are well positioned to break the ban, but the leadership is not interested in doing so. Ending Counterfeit Money. Money is the most important single feature of the economy, and one way in which the government finances its own deficits and creates perpetual inflation is through what is essentially the printing of counterfeit money. To end this critical and destructive feature of statism and government intervention, we must return to a sound, free-market money, which means a return to a gold-coin standard for the dollar and the abolition of another crucial despotic federal agency not subject to popular or Congressional control: the Federal Reserve System, by which the government cartelizes and subsidizes the banking system. Short of abolition of the Fed, its operations should be "capped" or frozen, that is, it should never be allowed to purchase more assets. Foreign Intervention, Including Foreign Aid and International Bureaucracies. Here is yet another case where all the "respectable" ruling elites, be they bureaucrats, academics, think tanks, big media, big business, banks, etc. are in total and admitted conflict with the general public. Under cover of the alleged necessity for "bipartisanship," the elites have imposed intervention, foreign aid, internationally managed trade, and approaches to world economic and even political government, against the wishes of the great majority of the American public. In every case, from the United Nations and the Marshall Plan to Nafta and Gatt, the Republican leadership has gone in lockstep with the Democrats. As a result, Clinton was able to wheel in every ex-president, regardless of party, to agitate for each new measure of his. And at each step of the way, the president and the elites have threatened disaster to the world if each
step is even delayed. And so far they have gotten away with it, despite the wishes of the public. Using the above checklist, and sticking to these guidelines, every reader can easily decide for himself whether Gingrich, Dole, et al. have betrayed, or have cleaved to, the popular antibig government, anti-Washington revolution. Forget such unenforceable diversions and gimmicks as the balanced-budget amendment, changing committee names, imposing new laws on Congress, or such relative trivia as the capital-gains tax cut, and look to real tax cuts, really balanced budgets, repealed regulations, and eliminated agencies. The clearest test of whether the revolution has already been betrayed is to look at the truly outrageous action of Gingrich and Dole in betraying not only the popular revolution, but even their own recent victory. For they have scrambled, not only to pass the Clinton-Bush Gatt/WTO, but also to defy their own voters by agreeing to rush it through a totally discredited, Democrat-run, lame-duck Congress. The usual media outlets were strangely silent on the views of the American public, but an independent poll showed that 75 percent of the people opposed what as essentially a criminal procedure. The disgusting spectacle of the defeated and discredited Tom Foley presiding over the shoving through of Gatt, with the help of Gingrich and Dole, and with the aid of the unconstitutional "fast track," was too much to bear. Foley is now lounging at home on the $123,804 pension he is "entitled" to for his years of government "service." Even after we kick them out of office, we can't stop these leeches from voting for global government schemes and sucking the blood of the taxpayer! In this shocking and abject surrender to the Executive, Congress agreed to cut its own throat by depriving itself (and all its constituents) of the power to discuss and amend this monstrous treaty and even to collude in calling it an "agreement," so they can violate the clear constitutional requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Senate.
The elites can generally count on liberals to support biggovernment legislation like Gatt, Nafta, and the rest of the mercantilist-managerial apparatus of global economic control. But we must not forget, as the Wall Street Journal bragged the day of the Senate vote, that "The House GOP has now provided the bulk of votes for Bill Clinton's two notable achievements— Nafta and Gatt." The rank and file is not at fault for these travesties of multinational statism. Many decent Republicans, including the others from Gingrich's state, voted against the treaty. But Gingrich will now use his power to punish such dissenters, and the incident will not be the last plunge taken by the Republican leadership into the politics of betrayal.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? The above assessment does not mean that there is no hope, that nothing can be done. On the contrary, what can and must be done is to mobilize the radical and revolutionary sentiment among the people. We need to translate the public's deeply held views into continuing pressure upon the government, especially on the Senators and Congressmen they have recently elected. Among the freshman Congressmen, in particular, there are many genuine rightists and populists who sincerely burn to roll back big government, and who are not beholden to the Gingriches and the Rockefellers of the Republican Establishment. The voters and their organizations, aided by the truly conservative members of Congress, could keep pressuring the political elites to start putting into effect, instead of blocking, the will of the very voters that put them into power. If not, they can be swept away. But nothing can be done without education. It is the crucially important task of conservative or libertarian intellectuals, think tanks, and opinion leaders such as the Mises Institute, to educate the public, businessmen, students, academics, journalists,
and politicians about the true nature of what is going on, and about the vicious nature of the bipartisan ruling elites. We must remember that the elites are a minority of the population; they have gotten away with their deceit and their misinformation because they have been in effective control of the institutional (media, intellectuals, etc.) channels that mould public opinion. Most of the public have already come to a healthy suspicion and distrust of all the elites, and of their tendency to deceive and betray. But this mood of healthy distrust is not enough; the public and the worthy people in the media, academia, and politics, also have to understand what is really going on. In particular, they have to realize what measures would fulfill the popular will and carry through its desired revolution; what measures could only divert and scuttle the revolution against big government; and why and how the ruling opinion moulders have been deceiving them. The Mises Institute, small as it is, is uniquely positioned to lead this education revolution. It is not beholden to government grants, big corporate interests, or even to the large foundations. That means it cannot be dictated to. Though relatively poor in overall resources, the Mises Institute possesses the most important assets of all: clarity of purpose and independence. In the 12 years of its existence, Lew Rockwell carefully guarded these two assets, relying entirely on the financial support of principled individuals and unconnected businesses, and he has done this to the astonishment and anger of Left-liberals, official conservatives, and the legions of politico-think-tankers and Left-intellectuals on the make. In all these tasks, the Mises Institute has already been extraordinarily effective. Standing virtually alone, and with severely limited resources, the Mises Institute has had a remarkably strong ideological impact. Just one example: the Mises Institute was first in print back in January with a sweeping denunciation of the World Trade Organization that not only exposed the present attempt to impose global trade management, but also
delved into its history, tracing the WTO back through the 1970s, the 1940s, and even back to Woodrow Wilson's "World Trade Tribunal." That article, along with the rest of the Mises Institute's work, defined the debate on the Right, Left, and center. Even one day before the House vote, an Associated Press story, in its section providing historical perspective, plagiarized from the Mises Institute virtually word for word. The Institute didn't win—although it gave Clinton and his allies in the Republican Party plenty of trouble—but it did mobilize the American people and make sure that the revolution against big government will continue and intensify. And at its intellectual head will be the Institute. By simply entering the public and intellectual debate from a principled and consistent libertarian and free-market perspective, the Mises Institute has already exposed the lies of that multitude of statists, would-be world planners, neo-Keynesian economists, left-over Marxists, and pretenders who dare to use such glorious words as "liberty . . . free markets," and "free trade" to connive at the exact opposite. The word "liberal" was stolen from us by the social democrats a long time ago. Now we are in danger of these other words being filched from us as well. Only light from those dedicated to the truth can dispel this fog. The Mises Institute has already been exerting the greatest ideological and political leverage per person and per dollar of any organization in this country. Any increase in its resources will be multiplied beyond measure in degree of impact. Those who stress the importance of ideas in society and politics tend to concentrate solely on the long-run, on future generations. All that is true and important and must never be forgotten. But ideas are not only for the ages; they are vitally important in the here-and-now. In times of revolutionary ferment in particular, social and political change tends to be sudden and swift. The elections of
November 1994 are only one striking example. The Mises Institute has a unique and glorious opportunity to make its ideas—of liberty, of free markets, of private property—count right now, and to help take back our glorious America from those who have betrayed its soul and its spirit. Z
Index Abortion, 149–50, 488–89 Abscam, 182–83 Absolutism, 413 Accountants, 226 ACT-UP, 436 Adams, Ted, 384 Affirmative action, 118, 434, 492–93 Affluent Society, The (Galbraith), 210 AFL-CIO, 135–136 Africa, 86, 152 Afrikaners, 495 Agricultural Labor Relations Act (California), 142 Agriculture, 81–82, 87–88, 108 Air conditioning, 98 Air traffic controllers, 194 Airline Deregulation Act, 193 Airlines, 18, 193ff. Airports, 193ff. Albania, 426 Alexander, Lamar, 80 Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, 183 Alinsky, Saul, 141 Allen, George, 164 Altman, Roger, 118 Aluminum industry, 121 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 149 American Eagle (coin), 345 American Enterprise Institute, 483 American Legion, 113 American Medical Association, 76 American Revolution, 161 "American System," 190–91 Americans with Disabilities Act, 368, 430 Amin, Idi, 222 Andrews, William H., 445 Angell, Wayne, 402–04 Angola, 387–88 Anti-Bank Vigilante Leagues, 291–92 Appalachia, 66 Aquaculture, 88–89
Arabian Peninsula, 392 Aramco, 395–96 ARCO, 389 Arizona, 221 Army, U.S., 395 Asia, 152 Assad, Hafez, 394 Auburn University, 460 Auschwitz, 190 Austrian Economics Newsletter, 460 Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, 447 Austrian School, 31, 165, 259 business cycle theory of, 180, 264, 319, 447 definition of money supply held by, 335 Ludwig Lachmann as nominal member, 446 on deficit, 268 on deflation, 400 on government spending cuts, 268 on inflation, 334 on mathematical economics, 28 on taxation, 236, 249, 267 policy during recession, 179, 267 praxeology as method of, 463 promoted by Mises Institute, 458ff. renaissance of, 499 Reagan administration and, 120 Review of Austrian Economics and, 459–60 statistical analysis and, 246 W.H. Hutt as sympathizer, 446 Automobiles, 202–05 Away From Freedom (Watts), 451
Babbitt, Bruce, 221–22 Babies, 151–52 Bacon, Francis his methodology, 244
500 Baker, James, 48, 109, 309, 316, 317 Balance of payments, 365–66 Balanced Budget Amendment, 112, 235ff., 437 Baldwin, Henry, 381 Balladur, Eduard, 303 Baltic states, 470 Bancor, 109, 295–96, 301, 315 Bank, banks, banking, 256ff., 277ff., 325ff. as channel for productive investment, 278 assets of, 321–22 cartels, 281 central, 109, 233, 276, 281ff., 296, 369–70 collapse of, 262–63 commercial, 279 corporate takeovers and, 183 credit, 11, 105–06, 172, 179–80, 252, 260–62. See also Inflation European Community and, 233 fractional-reserve, 261, 263, 280ff., 323–24, 326–27, 329, 333, 343–44, 400 "free," 280–81 in Poland, 428 in the Renaissance era, 278 loans, 34, 319 of France, 303 of New England 322, 323 100-percent reserve, or "giro," 279, 333 reserves, 11, 34, 172 run, 321–25, 325–27 taxation on, 328 See also Banking, investment Banking, investment as underwriters, 278 as politically-involved, 278–79 Bank of Amsterdam, 279 Bank of England, 281 Bank of Hamburg, 279 Barter, 271 Baruch, Bernard, 318, 429 Bastiat, Frédéric, 359 Beard, Charles A., 375 Bechtel, 396 Becker, Dan, 203 Becker, Gary, 118 Becker, Horace, 200 Beijing, 418 Belsen, 190 Bennett, Pauline, 93 Bennett, William, 482–84 Bentsen, Lloyd, 154–56
Making Economic Sense Berle, Adolf, 184 Bernstein, Edward M. 301, 315 Black, Angus, 385 Black, Hugo, 115 Black markets, 124, 130, 253, 391–92 Black Monday, 33, 36, 176ff. Blackstone Group, 118 Blue Cross, 74 Bolshevik Revolution, 431 Bond market, 173–76, 317–18, 428 Bonds, 173ff., 183, 191–92, 332, 343 junk, 183, 260 Treasury, 69, 173–75 Boston, 344 Bosworth, Barry, 127 Boulding, Kenneth E., 152, 447 Boycott. See Grapes Boyd, Steven R., 164 "Bracket creep," 24 Bradford, M.E., 166 Bradley, Bill, 434, 493 Brady Bill, 434, 493 Brady, Nicholas, 37, 328 Brazil, 172, 250252 Brennan, William, 114 Bretton Woods, 42, 109, 296–97, 300–01, 310, 315–16, 403 Brezhnev, Leonid, 119 Bricker Amendment, 374 Bricker, John, 473 Brinkley, David, 370 British Petroleum, 396 Broder, David, 363 Brookings Institution, 426–27 Brown, Jerry, 142 Brown, Kathleen, 483 Browne, Tom, 95 Brussels, 233, 305, 368, 373, 375 See also European Economic Community; Europe Buchanan, Patrick J., 164–65 on foreign aid, 369 on trade, 367 Budapest Bank, 427 Budget, federal, 22 agreement of 1990, 490 Bill Clinton and, 170 "cuts" as disingenuous, 23 debates over, 234ff. exclusion of "capital" items from, 238
Index Buffett, Howard, 173 Buffett, Warren, 173 Bundesbank, 303, 305 Bunton, Lucius, 90 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), 155 Buridan, Jean, 273 Burns, Arthur F., 117, 246 Burundi, 152 Bush administration, 80, 117, 192, 249 Persian Gulf War and, 389 on S&Ls, 329–30 on trade, 367, 379–80 Bush, George, 20, 30, 93, 471, 478 as Keynesian, 48, 106–107, 254 as "moderate" Republican, 435 as similar to Dukakis, 106ff. economic policy of, 105, 120 NAFTA and, 374 oil and, 395 on federal budget deficit, 257 on foreign aid, 369 on minimum wage, 134 on prenatal care, 59 on "revenue neutrality," 257 on saving, 38 on spending, 257 on taxation, 68, 328, 433–34 on trade, 372 Persian Gulf War and, 392, 430 Business, 121 big, 156, 200–01, 375, 428, 476 partnerships with government, 188ff. small, 200–01 Business cycle, 4, 35 Austrian theory of, 180–81, 264, 293, 319, 446 Establishment view of, 246–47 NBER on, 170, 243ff., 248 proclaimed as over, 264–65 Butcher, Willard C., 302 Butterfly Effect, 26 Byrd, Robert, 439
Cable television, 126 Cadillac, 204 Calculus, 26 Calhoun, John C., 485 California, 82ff., 156ff., 481ff. Cambodia, 415 Cambridge University, 447 Campaign of 1992, 3
501 Canada U.S. trade with, 368 Cannan, Edwin, 443 Cape Town, University of, 443 Capital, 18, 145, 152, 183 gains, 39 market, 35, 122, 145, 175 Capitalism, 147, 293–94 as antidote for racism, 385 effects on culture, 164 falling prices as benefit of, 250 state, 400ff. Capitalism and the Historians (Hayek), 444 Carey, Henry C., 381 Carey, Matthew, 381 Cargo Cult, 170–71 Carlson, Chester, 200 Carnegie Foundation, 76 Cartel airline, 193–94, 196ff. American Medical Association as, 76 as unstable, 386 diamonds, 385ff. effect on prices, 385–86 gun regulation as creating, 154 NAFTA as, 378 welfare state as promoting, 84 Carter, Jimmy, 22, 98, 108, 124, 126, 196, 210 Cato Institute, 483 Central banks. See Banks, central Certificate of deposit (CD), 278 Change-NY, 54 Chaos theory, 25ff. Chase Manhattan, 302, 396 Chase, Salmon P., 191 Chavez, Cesar, 141ff. Checking accounts as warehouse receipts, 279 Chemical industry, 121 Chevron, 396 Chicago, 65, 125, 344 Chicago Tribune Co., 137 Chicago School 40, 250 on gold, 273 on inflation, 334 on unions, 445 Child care, 54 Child Care Act, 430 Children's Defense Fund, 60 China, 85, 124, 151, 152, 414, 416, 426 Chodorov, Frank, 226 Christianity, 477 Chronicles, 209
502 Citibank, 396 Citizen Action, 389 City University of New York, 148 Civil Aeronautics Board, 108, 193ff. Civil rights, 132, 430, 491 Civil Rights Act, 368 Civil service, 486 Civil War, 15, 88, 163ff., 190–92, 429 Clean Air Act (1990), 368, 430 Cleveland, 267, 344 Clinton administration, 204–05 as campaigner, 3 as ideologue, 435 Brady Bill and, 153 economic policy of, 116ff., 119ff., 169ff. "economic summit" of, 217 monetary policy of, 313ff. on Cesar Chavez, 141 on crime, 154 on environmentalism, 91 on exchange rates, 349–50 on free speech, 202 on gasoline tax, 220 on gun control, 154 on health care, 126–27 on lobbying, 202 on NAFTA, 373–74, 376–77, 495 on national service, 153 on price controls, 126–27 on welfare, 56–57 public opposition to, 201, 431, 435, 468, 479 Clinton, Bill, 153, 372, 433, 467–68, 404 See also Clinton administration Clinton, Hillary, 119 as ideologue, 435, 436, 479 Coast Guard, 409 Coelho, Tony, 416 Cold War, 394 Collective bargaining, 140 Collectivism, 130, 153 war, 429 See also Communism; Socialism Columbia University, 28, 124, 166 Columbus, Christopher, 160 Commerce, Department of, 380ff. Communism, Communist, 85, 119, 124, 125, 132, 151, 166, 176 collapse of, 415, 469–70 conservatives on, 420 foreign aid directed against, 369 Frank Chodorov on, 226 Harry Dexter White as, 295 in Poland, 397ff., 419
Making Economic Sense South African, 445 refugees from, 408 reversibility of, 420 socialism and, 415 transition from, 419ff. Communist Party, 421, 469 Competitive Enterprise Institute, 376, 483 Computers, 15, 30, 108, 131, 177 Conda, Cesar, 483 Congress, U.S. and constitutional spending power, 439 Conservatives, 164, 485 English, 374 German, 374 on alleged permanence of communism, 420 on education vouchers, 156ff. "quick fixes" and, 436ff. Consols, 175 Constitution, U.S., 111ff., 115, 163, 485 Consumers, 37–38, 83, 96ff., 121, 131 effects of tariffs on, 380 under socialism, 144 Consumption, 34–35, 37ff., 179, 211 Contract with America, 433ff. Cooke, Jay, 191, 278 Corporations, 121 leveraged buyouts of, 183–84 takeovers of, 182–84 Cortney, Philip, 457 Costs as subjective, 363 Council of Economic Advisers, 210, 340 Counterfeiting, 275 See also Inflation as counterfeiting Credit. See Bank credit Credit cards, 255–57 Crime, 15, 65–66, 152–53, 430 Criollos, 400ff. Cuango River, 387 Cuba, 142 Currency blocs, 298, 300 convertibility, 424 determination of value of, 303–05 fiat, 36, 191, 233, 250, 300–01, 311, 314 Japanese, 297 West European, 297 world paper, 109, 233, 295ff., 315, 317, 368–69, 377 See also Money
Index Currency and Credit Markets (Richebacher), 72 Czech Republic, 470 Daley, Richard, 65 Dallas, 344 D'Amato, Al, 256 Darman, Richard, 328 DeBeers Consolidated Mines, 385ff. Debt corporate, 260–61 federal, 175 in nineteenth-century Britain, 175 of the states, 161 repudiation of, 175–76 Deficit trade, 36, 178, 320, 367 Deficit, federal, 24–25 as alleged cause of 1987 stock market crash, 178 Balanced Budget Amendment and, 437ff. effects of taxation on, 249, 268 effects on interest rates, 180 Keynesianism on, 255 "off budget" items and, 237–38 privatization as means of reducing, 145 relationship to inflation, 7ff. tax increases advanced as solution to, 10–11, 38, 220, 222ff., 236 Deflation, 15–16, 250ff., 261–62 Democracy, 42, 472 analogy with taxation, 228 economic freedom and, 415 in Eastern Europe, 417 Democrat-Republican Party, 162 Democrats, 3, 68, 78, 79, 82, 107, 111, 116–17, 119, 152, 340, 471–73, 480, 491 during Civil War, 190 in nineteenth century, 381 on minimum wage, 133–34 on NAFTA, 376 on 1980s, 103 public opposition to, 431ff., 468–69 on recession, 249 Deng Hsiao-ping, 417, 418 Deposit insurance, 284 See also Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Depreciation accelerated, 225
503 Depression deflation blamed for, 251 of 1981, 13, 320 of early 1990s, 105 See also Recession Depression, Great, 262, 307, 317ff. agricultural policy during, 81–82 collectivist response to, 429 confiscation of gold and, 344–45 in Britain, 230 Mises as predictor of, 447 Deregulation, 193, 330–31, 434, 492 Desocialization, 144, 413–28, 469–70 See also Privatization Detroit, 358 Dewey, Thomas, 473 Dhahran, 395 Diamonds, 385ff. Disney Corporation, 164ff. Disney, Walt, 165 Division of labor, 271 Do We Want Free Enterprise? (Watts), 451 Dole, Robert, 433, 435, 490 Dollar, 35–36, 105, 304, 313 as international reserve currency, 296, 301, 307, 316 as weight of gold, 288, 295, 310–11, 333, 346 confidence in, 238 depreciation of, 297, 299, 381 Federal Reserve and, 313 Group of Seven and, 308 investment in, 178, 308, 320 redefined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 288 severed from gold after 1971, 288 Dos Passos, John, 407 Drexel Burnham Lambert, 182, 188 Drug and Hospital Workers Union, 166 Dukakis, Michael, 20, 30, 107ff. Duke University, 95 "Dumping," 362ff. Dutch, 171 Dylan, Bob, 467
Eastern Airlines, 194 Eastman Kodak, 200 Economics of the Colour Bar, The (Hutt), 445 Economist, The, 109 Economists conservative, 227, 237 liberal, mainstream or Establishment,
504 24–25, 37, 136, 169–70, 176ff., 209ff., 217, 258ff., 288, 321, 335, 340, 376 Education, 80, 118–19 Department of, 108, 434 egalitarianism and, 159 in suburbs, 159 private, 148, 160 public, 148, 156ff., 437 vouchers, 156ff.,437 Edwards Aquifer, 90 Efron, Bradley, 30 Egalitarianism education and, 159 insider trading regulations and, 187–88 public transportation and, 221 taxation and, 229 universal health care and, 130, 131 Eisenhower administration, 23, 117, 473 on Bricker Amendment, 374 Eisner, Michael, 165 Election of 1988, 20, 29–30, 106ff. of 1992, 103, 478–79 of 1994, 3, 431–32, 467–98 Empower America, 490 Endangered Species Act, 90–91 Energy, Department of, 434 England, 152, 225, 380, 448 Enterprise zones, 66, 80 Entrepreneur, 72, 183, 186, 261 macro function of, 251 Environmentalism, environmentalists, 118, 164 free-market solutions, 87–99 gill netting and, 409 NAFTA and, 374 on the automobile, 203–04 Erhard, Ludwig, 424 Estonia, 415, 417 Ethiopia, 85 Europe, 210, 232–33, 296, 316–17, 368, 472 Eastern, 414–428 Western, 152, 189, 219, 297 European Central Bank, 232ff., 305 Currency System, 305 currency unit, 109, 232ff., 305, 316 Economic Community, 232, 316, 368, 373 Exchange rates, 109 fixed, 34, 36, 297ff., 309ff., 315–16, 349ff. fluctuating, 299–300, 310ff., 316, 348–49
Making Economic Sense Gresham's Law and, 313 NAFTA and, 314 under gold standard, 295, 311 Export-Import Bank, 395 Exports, 299, 313, 369, 372–73, 377 Ezell, Harold, 481
Fabians, 150 Factory Acts (Britain), 444 Fair Deal, 78 Famine, 84ff. Farm workers, 141ff. Farmers, 81ff., 90, 108 Federal Aviation Agency, 193ff. Federal Communications Commission, 126 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 262–63, 284, 292, 321ff., 326ff., 330, 343 abolition contemplated, 290 Federal Emergency Management Agency, 92–93 Federal Home Loan Banks, 330–31 Federal Home Loan Board, 330–31 Federal Reserve Act, 318 Federal Reserve System, 41–42, 105–06, 107, 254, 277, 281ff., 303, 323, 330, 493 abolition contemplated, 327, 346, 289ff. as cartel, 192, 283, 343–44 as celebrated, 276 crash of 1988 and, 179ff. Contract with America and, 435 inflation and, 8, 172–73, 282–83, 327, 332 interest rates and, 11–12, 33ff., 169, 179–80, 334 monopoly of note issue of, 346 propping up dollar, 313–14 "pushing on a string," 261–62 response to recession, 255ff. Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, 284, 321, 324, 326ff., 330–31 Federalists, 162 Feigenbaum's Number, 26 Feminism, 6 Ferguson, Adam, 31, 32 Fertig, Bertha, 457 Fertig, Larry, 457 Feudalism, 413 Finn, Chester, 80
Index First Amendment, 113ff., 188 Fish, Lawrence K., 322 Fisher, Irving, 40, 105, 246–47, 250 Flag, U.S., 112ff. Flew, Antony, 397–98 Flexner, Abraham, 76 Flexner Report, 76 Flexner, Simon, 76 Foley, Thomas, 494 Foner, Eric, 166 Foner, Philip S., 166 Food and Drug Administration, 203–04 Ford, Gerald, 117, 340 Forecasting, 12–13, 21–22, 266–67 Foreign aid, 493 as subsidy to export firms, 369, 372–73, 377 Contract with America on, 434 directed against Communism, 369 Foreign policy, 493 Contract with America on, 434 Forman, Eric, 83 Fort Knox, 346 Foundation for Economic Education, 451 Franc, 302ff. France, 86, 171, 302ff., 309, 316 Francis, Samuel, 488 Frankfurter, Felix, 139 Free Man's Library, The (Hazlitt), 443 Free Market, The, 80, 106, 133, 460 Free Markets or Famine? (Watts), 452 Free speech, 114ff., 148, 188, 202, 488 French Revolution, 123, 140 Friedman, Benjamin, 210 Friedman, Jerome H., 30 Friedman, Milton, 40 on "crowding out" effect, 9 on government spending, 437 Friedmanites Fruits, 81ff. Fruit dealers, as example of the subjectivity of costs, 364 See also Monetarism From, Al, 435 Fugger family, 278 Fujimori, Alberto, 399ff. Fur Workers Union, 166
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 147, 181, 182, 210, 212, 310 Garcia, Hector, 399
505 Garrett, Garet, 463 Gasoline, 202 conservation of, 218–19 price of, 218–19, 389 taxation of, 17, 217ff., 394 Gebert, Kostek, 421 General Electric, 429 General Theory, The (Keynes), 40, 446, 447 Georgia, 162 Georgia State University, 334 Gerawan, Dan, 84 Gerawan Farming, 82–84 Germany, 25, 303, 313, 325, 337 Gilson, Etienne, 264 Gingrich, Newt, 6, 250, 433ff., 490ff. Glasnost, 414, 416 Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 434, 487, 493–95 Goering, Hermann, 119 Gold as "barbarous relic," 273 as abundant in "moneyable" qualities, 272 coins, confiscation of, 286, 344–45 coins, minting of, 345 James Baker on, 309 mining of, in South Africa, 384 privatization of, 287 Treasury pricing of, 346 versus government paper, 272ff. "Gold bugs," 273, 289 Gold standard, 36, 109, 307 absence of inflation under, 171, 250, 299 as only sound monetary system, 295 as only successful fixing of exchange rates, 348 Balance of Payments under, 365 during Civil War, 191 exchange rates under, 295, 311 inflationary recession and, 266 recommended for Soviet Union, 402ff. Goldman Sachs International, 118, 188, 314, 350 Goldwater, Barry, 473 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 253, 254, 404ff. Gore, Albert, 91, 435 Gordon, David, 486 Gosbank (Soviet Union), 402ff. Government as supplier of money, 273–74 partnerships with business, 189ff. revenue, 274–75 See also Spending, government
506 Graham, George, 61 Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act, 70, 112, 332 Grapes boycott of, 142ff., 385 Grayson, C. Jackson, 126–27 Great Britain, 86, 161–62, 171, 175, 190, 227ff., 230ff., 300, 302, 307ff., 317 Great Society, 65, 78–79 Greed, 293 Greenbacks, 381 Greenspan, Alan, 68, 70, 106, 107, 117, 179, 181, 267, 334, 339ff., 343 Gresham's Law, 301, 307, 310, 313, 349 Gross National Product, 243 Group of Seven, 309 Gulag, 415 Gulf Oil, 396 Gun control, 4, 154ff., 434, 492–93 Gutfreund, John, 173 Gyoten, Toyo, 302
Haloid Co., 200 Hamilton, Alexander, 161ff. Harding, Harry, 426 Harper's, 481 Harvard University, 55, 117, 210, 451 Hayashi, Dennis W., 409 Hayek, F.A., 31, 33, 417, 444, 446ff., 457, 461 Hazlitt, Frances, 457 Hazlitt, Henry, 436, 443, 457 Head Start, 54 Health and Human Services, Department of, 58, 59 Health care, 20, 57, 74ff., 126ff. tax deductions for, 225, 437 See also Medicine Helms, Jesse, 434 Heritage Foundation, 479, 483 Hicks, John R., 447 Highways, 220, 430 Hilary, Sir Edmond, 342 Himmler, Heinrich, 119 Hirst, Francis W., 443 Historians, Establishment, 293 History, 165–66 HMO (Health Maintenance Organization), 130 Hoffman, Matt, 376 Holland, 152 Homeless, 20, 62ff., 137, 202, 214
Making Economic Sense Homestead strike, 137 Hong Kong, 152, 178 Hoover, Herbert, 103, 179, 429 Hopkins, Harry, 81 Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, 133 Hormats, Robert D., 314, 350 Hotelling, Harold, 28 Housing, 20, 54, 105–06, 337 public, 57, 63, 66, 80, 202 Housing and Urban Development, Department of, 202 Human capital, 118 Hungary, 414, 417, 427 Hurricane Hazel, 95 Hurricane Hugo, 94ff. Hutt, W.H., 44, 443ff. Hyperinflation in Asia, 320 in Brazil, 172, 252 in Germany, 25, 325, 358 in Latin America, 320 in Poland, 172 in Russia, 172 in Third World, 105, 404 under world paper currency, 296, 317
IBM, 200 Ibn Saud, 395ff. Idaho, 89 Immigration, 4 Contract with America and, 434 of Vietnamese, 408ff. proposition 187 and, 481ff. Imperialism, 86 Imports, 18–19, 109, 299, 309, 313, 320 Incas, 401 Income, 5–6 India, 394 Industrial policy, 118 Industrial Revolution, 15, 251, 359, 413, 444 Infant mortality, 58ff. Inflation, 10, 45, 169, 172, 231, 247, 261, 274, 312, 323, 331ff., 333ff., 336ff., 493 absence of, under gold standard, 171, 299 as counterfeiting, 275, 318–19 as crucially different from deflation, 292 as encouraging spending and debt, 277 as wealth redistribution, 276, 319 as taxation, 277, 319
Index as vanquished, 265 benefits to government of, 304 as central to Keynesianism, 254 bank run as check on, 327 business cycle and, 105, 180–81, 335–36 Cantillon effect and, 276–77 confusion regarding, 423 considered an antidote for recession, 179–80 during nineteenth century, 191, 381 during Reagan administration, 180, 317ff. during war, 15 exchange rates and, 299 expectations of, 12, 35, 320 Federal Reserve as cause of, 343 in Brazil, 250, 252 in China, 124 in France, 316 in Germany, 305–06 in Great Britain, 229 in Italy, 316 in Japan, 309 in Mexico, 314 in Soviet Union, 250, 403–04 in West Germany, 309, 316–17 interest rates and, 34ff., 320, 334 premium, 12, 35 price controls viewed as antidote for, 124ff. purchasing power and, 304 unemployment trade-off, 13–15, 172, 181 world coordination of, 109, 233, 296, 301, 307, 310, 369–70, 377 See also Hyperinflation Inflationary recession, 43, 171–72, 181, 231, 246ff., 260, 265–66, 336 "Information superhighway," 6 Insider trading, 108, 185ff., 427 Institute of Economic Affairs (London), 230, 495 Institutional Revolutionary Party (Mexico), 375 Insurance, 71ff., 329 deposit, 262 health, 127–28 Intellectuals, government and, 476–77 war and, 429 See also Conservatives; Liberals Interest rates, 33ff. effects of deficit on, 9–10 during Reagan administration, 180, 320
507 effects of credit expansion on, 172 Federal Reserve and, 169, 179 in Japan, 309 in West Germany, 309 inflation and, 320, 334 inflation premium on, 12 long-term, 169 of S&Ls, 331 short-term, 169, 172 Interior, Department of (South Africa), 445 Internal Revenue Service, 233 privatization contemplated 190, 439 International Monetary Fund, 309, 316, 434 International Trade Commission, 380 Inventory, 260 Investment, 120ff., 257 business cycles and, 35, 44, 172, 179, 180, 319 "crowding out" of, 9–10, 122, 175 effects of taxation on, 225 foreign, 427 government spending equated with, 118, 122, 211 in United States, 37ff. in Third World, 153 Iowa, 221 Iran, 394 Iraq, 389ff., 392ff. IRAs, 39 Iron protectionism and, 379 Israel, 394 Italy, 309, 316 Izvestia, 402
Jackson, Andrew, 429, 489 Jackson, Jesse, 436 Jacobins, 140–41 Jamaica, 61 Japan, 200, 302, 309, 313, 361 central banking in, 233, 316 infant mortality in, 59 saving in, 37 U.S. trade with, 108, 355, 356, 367, 372 Japanese in Peru, 401 Jarai, Szigmond, 427–28 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 416 Javits, Jacob, 357 Jefferson, Thomas, 46, 162, 175 Job training, 54 Johannesburg Stock Exchange, 388
508 Johns Hopkins Medical School, 61 Johnson, Lyndon, 472, 473 Johnson, Skip, 95 Jones Act, 408 Jones, John W., 91 Jordan, Jerry, 310 Joseph, Keith, 146 Journal of Political Economy, 246 J.P. Morgan & Co., 341 Jubail, 396 Justice, Department of, 185
Kahn, Alfred E., 193 Kaldor, Nicholas, 447 Kantor, Mickey, 373 Kashmir, 394 Katuna, Michael, 94 Kauffman, Bill, 209 Kemp, Jack, 299, 310, 483–84, 491 on foreign aid, 370 on housing, 80 on Los Angeles riots, 66 Kennedy, Edward, 133 Kennedy, Robert, 141 Kentucky, 162 Kessler, David, 203–04 Keynes, John Maynard, 40, 254 Hayek on, 447–48 misrepresentation of J.B. Say, 446 on gold, 273 on world currency, 109, 301, 315 Keynesian Episode, A Reassessment, The (Hutt), 446 Keynesianism, 13–14, 25, 43–49, 172, 181, 340, 369–70 "acceleration principle" of, 446 as rationalization for statism, 448 during Bush administration, 106, 120 economic "fine-tuning" and, 247ff. idle resources and, 445 NAFTA and, 377 Nobel Prize and, 461 on deficits, 41, 46ff., 80, 255 on deflation, 250 on "excess capacity," 43 on gold, 273 on inflation, 43, 117, 315ff. on recession, 46, 121–22, 179, 254–55 on taxation, 117, 178–79, 236, 257 on unemployment, 43–44 W.H. Hutt on, 494ff. world paper currency and, 109, 233, 295, 301, 305, 310, 315ff., 377
Making Economic Sense Keynesianism, Retrospect and Prospect (Hutt), 446 KGB, 417 Kidder Peabody, 188 Kissinger, Henry, 376 Klaus, Vaclav, 470 Knight, Frank, 40 Koch, Edward, 98 Kondratieff cycle, 263–64 Korean War, 429, 430 Koreans, 66–67 Kourouma, Michelle, 384 Kozuki, Tad, 83 Kristol, Irving, 79, 484 Kristol, William, 483–84, 490 Krona, 302 Krugerrands, 345, 383ff. Kuwait, 389ff., 392ff., 396
Labor, 18 demand for, 134, 152 Philip Foner as historian of, 166 Labour Party (Britain), 227, 230, 231 Lachmann, Ludwig, 116, 446 Laffer, Arthur, 17 Laffer curve, 17–18, 41, 42 Lange, Oskar, 371 Lasch, Christopher, 481 Latin America, 320 Lauter, David, 132 Law of the Sea Treaty, 89 Lawyers, 72, 226 Layton, Christine, 60 Lazard Freres, 118 Lenin, V.I., 123, 258, 419, 431 Lennon, Gered, 95 Lerner, Abba, 447 Liberalism, 77–78, 148–49, 156, 184, 212–13, 220–21, 485 classical, 413–14 Libertarian Party (California), 482 Libertarians, 451 in Poland, 398 left-, 66, 165 on education vouchers, 128, 156ff. on privatization, 148ff., 439 on Proposition 187, 482 Libraries, 148–49 Licenses, 66 for diamond mining, 386 gun, 154ff. medical, 76–77 Lieberman, Joseph, 389
Index Lima, 401 Limbaugh, Rush, 3 Lincoln, Abraham, 166, 190–91 Line-item veto, 435 Lobbying, 62, 202 Locke, John, 450 London School of Economics, 443, 446ff. Lorenz, Edward, 26 Los Angeles, 64ff., 80 Los Angeles Times, 132, 377, 483 Louvre agreement, 36 Lucas, David, 95 Ludwig von Mises Institute, 133, 458ff., 471, 482, 486, 488, 495ff.
Maastricht Treaty, 305, 373, 375 Maltsev, Yuri, 59, 470 Manassas, 164–66 Mandelbroit, Benoit, 27 Manitoba, University of, 451 Maoism, 399 Mao Tse Tung, 419 Mark, 303, 305, 313 Marshall, Alfred, 40 Marshall, John, 489 Marshall Plan, 493 Martino, Giulio, 335 Marx, Karl, 40, 258, 419 Marxism, 85, 123, 166, 420 Austrian economics and, 463 in Poland, 398 in Soviet Union, 402 Maryland, 162, 322 Mathematics, 25ff., 28ff. Matthews, J.B., 457 Matthews, Ruth, 457 Maxwell, Robert, 136 McCarthy, Joseph, 226 McDonald's, 154 Means, Gardiner, 184 Measuring Business Cycles (Burns and Mitchell), 246 Media, 478 framing of issues by, 19ff. on Bruce Babbitt, 221–22 on election of 1994, 431 on gasoline tax, 220 on NAFTA, 376 on Proposition 187, 482–83 Medicaid, 54, 74 Medicare, 74–75, 491 Medici family, 278
509 Medicine, socialized, 20, 119, 231 See also Health care Mello, Fernando Collor de, 252, 400 Mencken, H.L., 42 Mendelsohn, Robert, 30 Mercantilism, 189, 413 GATT as, 487, 495 NAFTA as, 372 protectionism as, 367 Meteorology, 26 Mexico, 484 inflation in, 314 migrant farm workers from, 143 NAFTA lobbying in U.S., 374 oil and, 375 U.S. trade with, 368, 380 Milken, Michael R., 103–04, 181ff. Miller, John J., 158 Minimum-wage laws. See Wages, minimum Minneapolis, 344 Mises, Ludwig von, 452–55 as model for Mises Institute, 459ff. as predictor of Depression, 447 as systematic, 449 influence on F.A. Hayek, 446 married life, 456ff. methodology of, 32 on business cycles, 319 on interventionism 74, 436 on "loopholes," 24 on men of wealth, 184 on private property, 424 on socialist calculation problem, 414–15 on stock market, 426 on W.H. Hutt, 444 Mises, Margit von, 455ff. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 26, 210 Mitchell, Wesley C., 245 Modern Corporation and Private Property, The (Berle and Means), 184 Mondale, Walter, 222 Monetarism, 40, 48, 109, 120, 231, 232, 250, 297ff., 300ff., 310, 316 Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (Mises), 447 Money as crucial command post, 271 as different from other commodities, 274 as medium of exchange, 271–72
510 calculation of profit and loss and, 272 goods used as, 272 privatization of, 285 redemption in gold of, 286 supply, 11–12, 180, 250ff., 262, 303–04, 317ff., 332, 335 See also Currency; Inflation; Deflation Monopoly, 19, 189ff., 195 "predatory price-cutting" and, 363 Morgan, House of, 278–79, 281 Morgan Guaranty Trust, 341 Mortgages, 329–31 deductions for, 104, 225 Morton, Cliff, 91 Moynihan, Daniel P., 67, 68, 70 Mozambique, 85 Mullendore, William C., 451 Mundell, Robert, 310 My Years with Ludwig von Mises (M. Mises), 456
Nader, Ralph, 389 National Association of Blacks Within Government, 384 National Association of Federal Licensed Firearms Dealers, 155 National Banking Act, 192 National Banking System, 191 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 170, 235, 243ff., 258 Dating Committee of, 267 National Conference of Black Mayors, 384 National Guard, 125 National Health Service (Britain), 231 National Labor Board, 429 National Labor Relations Act. See Wagner Act National Labor Relations Board, 140, 429 National service, 153 National Urban League, 384 Natural law, 450 Nazis, 190, 254 Neoclassical economics, 27 Neoconservatives, 478, 485 on Bill Clinton, 119 on Proposition 187, 483 on trade, 368 on welfare state, 77ff. New Deal, 56, 68, 78, 81–82, 117, 132, 139–40, 330, 429, 463, 474
Making Economic Sense New England, 357 New Left, 258 New Jersey, 97, 148, 182 New York, 357 New York City, 54–55, 92, 96–99, 114, 137, 155, 166, 344, 479 New York Daily News, 136 New York Post, 55 New York Times, 182, 186, 210, 211, 302 New Yorker, 276 Nixon, Richard M., 79, 117, 310, 473 price controls implemented by, 297, 308 repudiates gold standard, 297, 308 Nobel Prize, 499, 461 Nomenklatura, 421 Normal curve, 29–30 Norris-LaGuardia Act, 140, 492 North American Financial Group, 314, 350 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 370ff., 375ff., 493 as mercantilism, 372, 495 as cartel, 378 environmentalism and, 373 Keynesianism and, 377 fixed exchange rates and, 314, 350 international currency regulation and, 314 leading to centralization, 373 oil and, 375 side agreements of, 374 North Carolina, 162, 357 North Carolina Law Review, The, 139 Northwood Institute, 452 Northwood University, 452
"Off-budget" items, 237, 438 Office of Price Administration, 124 Ohio, 322 Oil allowances for depletion of, 225ff. foreign, U.S. dependence on, 219 price of, 218–19, 388ff., 394ff. Old Right, 125, 434 Operation Desert Shield, 393 Oppenheimer, Sir Harry, 388 Orange Country Register, 482 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 180, 320, 334, 385, 394–95
Index Orwell, George, 19, 123 Other Path, The (de Soto), 399 Oxford University, 117
Pakistan, 394 Paleoconservatives, 164–65 Panama, 393 Panic of 1819, 358 Panic of 1873, 191 Pattison, Scott, 84 Paul, Ron, 344 Pearl Harbor, 401 Pennsylvania, 161 People's Express, 194 Perestroika, 414–15, 417, 425 Perot, H. Ross, III, 110ff. Persian Gulf War, 219 domestic statism and, 430 oil prices and, 389ff. Personal exemption, 104 Peso, 314, 350 Petrakov, Nicholas, 253 Petro, Sylvester, 140 Pew, J. Howard, 498 Philadelphia, 344 Phillips, A.W., 14 Phillips curve, 14–15, 172, 181 Philosophy of Individualism, The (Hutt), 443 Phoenix, 109, 315 Photocopiers, 199ff. Physics, 25 Pilkey, Orrin H., 95 Pol Pot, 419 Poland, 172, 397ff., 416, 419, 423, 428 Politics vs. Prosperity (Watts), 452 Pollution, 202ff. Poole, David A., 249 Population control, 151ff. Populism election of 1994 and, 435–36, 479, 481, 495 supply-side economics and, 42 Portugal, 86 Postal service, 144–45 Pound, 295, 303 as world reserve currency, 307 Praxeology 32, 463 Prices cartels and, 385 chaos theory and, 27 controls on, 94, 123ff., 130, 194, 253, 391–92, 423 determination of, 390
511 during 1920s, 105, 172, 318 during 1980s, 105, 172 during recession, 171–72 effects of productivity on, 319–20 effects of protectionism on, 19 effects of supply on, 319 gold standard and, 250 housing, 105 index, 309–10, 317, 338 Industrial Revolution and, 15, 251 stock, 177 Prices and Production (Hayek), 447 Privatization, 144ff., 146ff., 425, 470, 492 in England, 146, 230 of Internal Revenue Service, 190, 439 of public housing, 230 of undesirable activities, 439, 290 of water, 91–92, 99 See also Desocialization Productivity effects of investment on, 232 labor, 134 Progressive Era, 117, 192 Progressive Policy Institute, 118 Property education vouchers as attack on, 159 environmentalism and, 88–91, political freedom and, 415 private, 115–16, 138, 153, 163, 294, 325, 406 rights, 138, 216 Proposition 13 (California), 157 Proposition 174 (California), 156ff. Proposition 187 (California), 481ff., 487, 489 Protectionism, 108, 300, 367ff., 370ff., 378ff., 355ff. balance-of-payments argument for, 365–66 currency depreciation as, 299, 381 fallacy of confusion of costs with prices of, 361 "infant industry" argument for, 364, 381–82 minimum-wage law as, 357 safety as pretext for, 357–58 "senile-industry" argument for, 364–65 Public Securities Association, 174 Pullman strike, 137
Quotas import, 19, 108, 356ff., 367, 379–80
512 Racism, 79, 385 Rahn, Richard W., 243 Railroads, 19, 191, 359 Rand, Ayn, 341 Randolph, John, of Roanoke, 474 Ratajczak, Donald, 334 Ravitch, Diane, 80 RCA, 362 Read, Leonard, 451 Reagan administration, 117, 135 Keynesianism in, 45, 48 Keynesians vs. supply-siders in, 48, 310 inflation during, 317ff., 337–38 interest rates during, 320 minimum wage and, 133 on exchange rates, 298 on Law of the Sea Treaty, 89 regulation and, 108 tax policy of, 68–69, 215 Reagan, Ronald, 103–04, 109, 196, 372, 473, 474 air traffic controllers and, 194, 199 as an authentic conservative, 471 economic policy of, 120 free-market rhetoric of, 229 monetary policy of, 180 tax cuts, 104, 247 tax increases of, 104, 107, 121, 220, 478 Real estate, 104–05, 172, 178, 322 Reason, 450 Reason Foundation, 483 Recession, 8, 121, 171–72, 264ff. as consequence of inflation, 106, 180, 335 as corrective to malinvestment, 248–49 average person and, 266 cutting government spending during, 179 George Bush and, 254ff. in Brazil, 253 Keynesian view of, 122, 254–55 media on, 20ff. NBER determination of, 170, 243ff., 258–59, 267 of early 1970s, 247, 263 of early 1980s, 247, 333 of 1990, 103ff., 122 price trends during, 171 tax increase during, 121, 170, 178–79, 235, 249 See also Inflationary recession Reconstruction, 166
Making Economic Sense Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 429 Regan, Donald, 48, 109 Regulation agricultural, 81ff. as cartelization mechanism, 156 European Community and, 232, 368 maximum purchase, 173 NAFTA and, 373–74 of automobiles, 219 of communication, 126 of lobbying, 202 of private schools, 160 Rehabilitation of Say's Law, A (Hutt), 446 Reich, Robert, 117, 118 Religion, 3 Republicans, 78ff., 111, 117, 124, 125, 164, 468, 471, 474, 479–80, 490ff. as similar to Democrats, 70, 78, 432, 471–472, 493 economic policy of, 192 for Clinton, 119 in nineteenth century, 190, 381 on housing, 80 on minimum wage, 133 on NAFTA, 376 "Rockefeller," 476 Radical, 381 Revenue, government in Britain, 231 "neutrality," 257, 433 relationship of tax rates to, 17–18 Review of Austrian Economics, 459 Revolt of the Elites, The (Lasch), 481 Revolution Betrayed, The (Trotsky), 431 Rhode Island, 322 Ricardo, David, 250 Richebacher, Kurt, 22, 105 Richmond, 344 Rioting, 64ff., 80 Rivlin, Alice, 217 Rhodes Scholars, 117 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 417, 498 Robbins, Lionel, 447 Roberts, Paul Craig, 420, 421 Rockefeller, David, 181ff., 227, 396 Rockefeller, Nelson, 473, 476 Rockefeller family, 104, 341, 395, 478, 495, Rockwell, Llewellyn H., Jr., 107, 376, 487, 496 Roe v. Wade, 488 Rohatyn, Felix, 118 Rohrabacher, Dana, 482 Roman empire, 152–53 Rome, 123
Index Roosevelt, Franklin D., 49, 63, 82, 429, 472 oil policy of, 395 repudiates gold standard, 344, 273, 277 Rothbard Bank (fictional), 280–81 Rothschild Bank, 385 Rothschild, Edwin, 389 Rothschild family, 278 Rubin, Robert, 118 Ruble, 402ff., 423–24 depreciation of, 403 Russia, 85, 172 Rwanda, 152
Sabah family, 396 Saddam Hussein, 389, 392ff. St. Louis, 344 Salinas, Carlos, 375, 484 Salomon Bros., 173, 176 Samuelson, Paul, 322 Saudi Arabia, 392, 394–95 Saving, 9–10, 34–35, 120ff., 179 as validating malinvestment, 257 effects of taxation on 225, 257 in China, 427 in Third World, 153 in United States, 37ff. Savings & Loan institutions (S&Ls), 172, 292, 328ff. as cartel, 330 bankruptcy of, 343 collapse of, 262, 322 fractional-reserve banking and, 323, 329, 400 Say, J.B., 446 Say's Law, 75, 446 Scandinavia, 59 Schlafly, Phyllis, 474 Scholastic theologians, 360, 450 Schultz, George, 396 Schultze, Charles L., 210 Schumpeter, Joseph, 40 Schwarzkopf, H. Norman, 392–93 Scotland, 229 Securities and Exchange Commission, 185 Hungarian equivalent, 427 Sereny, Ferdinand, 457 Shapiro, Robert, 118 Sheehan, Jim, 376 Shiites, 394 Shining Path, 399 Shutz, Alfred, 457 Shutz, Ilse, 457
513 Sierra Club, 90–92, 203 Silver as abundant in "moneyable" qualities, 272 Simon, Paul, 437 Sixteenth Amendment, 191 Slaughter, Thomas P., 164 Smith, Adam, 31, 40, 444 Smith, Fred, 376 Smithsonian Agreement, 297, 299, 310 Sobran, Joe, 395 Social democrats, 415 Social Security, 24, 68, 104, 432, 340–41, 491 surplus, obscures deficit, 70, 255 Socialism, 84–85, 119 as final outcome of interventionism, 74 collapse of, 413–19 economic calculation under, 498 in China, 414 democratic, 415 in Hungary, 414, 417 in Yugoslavia, 414 "market," 370 political freedom and, 417–18 reversibility, 420 varieties of, 425–26 Socialism (Mises), 446 Socialized medicine, in England, 231 See also Health care; Medicine, socialized Solidarity (Poland), 416–17 Solow, Robert M., 210–12 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 417 Sony, 362–63 Soto, Hernando de, 399–400 South (U.S.), 166, 357 South Africa, 491 apartheid system and, 383ff., 495 Communist Party in, 495 currency of, 345 diamond mining in, 385ff. Interior Department of, 445 South Carolina, 96ff., 162 South Vietnam, 124 Southern California Edison Corporation, 451ff. Sovereignty, 316–17 Soviet Union, 119, 210, 394 as grain importer, 85 black markets in, 123–24, 188, 253 deflation in, 253
514 desocialization in, 419, 423 diamond cartel and, 387 gold standard recommended for, 402ff. infant mortality in, 58–59 inflation in, 250, 404 price controls in, 423 socialism in, 414 U.S. aid to, 404ff. Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), 301, 316 Speculators currency, 303, 305 in oil, 390–91 Spending, government as consumption, 39 Balanced Budget Amendment and, 438 "cuts" as disingenuous, 23 in Great Britain, 229, 231 J.K. Galbraith on, 210 Keynesianism on, 121–22, 255, 448 on health care, 130 reductions in, 233, 434, 491–92 Sprinkel, Beryl W., 298, 310 Standard Oil, 396 Stalin, Josef, 119, 211, 431–32 Stamp Tax, 161 Stanford University, 30 Statistics, 6 improper use of, 9, 14, 21–22, 27, 28ff., 37, 244ff., 259 Steel, 138, 146 protectionism and, 18–19, 379ff. Stein, Herbert, 126ff. Stephanopoulos, George, 467 Sterling. See Pound Stevens, Thaddeus, 381 Stock market, 105–06, 173, 317ff. as crucial to capitalism, 426 chaos theory and, 27 in China, 426 in Hungary, 427 insider trading on, 186ff. need for in Eastern Europe, 424ff. crash of, 176ff. See also Depression, Great Stockholders, 182ff. Strasbourg, 232 Strikes, 136ff. Subsidy FEMA as promoting, 93 tax breaks equated with, 16, 214, 215ff., 224–25
Making Economic Sense to Disney theme park, 165 to railroads, 191 Sullivan, Louis W., 59 Sun Oil Company, 498 Sununu, John, 256 Supply-side economics, supply-siders, 40ff., 48, 120, 257 on deficits, 41, 223 on gold standard, 41–42, 238ff. on government revenue, 41, 257 on international monetary system, 310 on taxation, 41, 122 Supreme Court, 191, 485–90 Sweden, 302 Switzerland, 172 Syria, 394
Taft, Robert, 473 Taiwan, 360, 361 Tariffs, 356ff., 367 as a "negative railroad," 359 during Civil War, 191 effects on consumers, 380 on iron and steel, 18–19, 379ff. Tax Reform Act of 1986, 38, 81, 104, 214, 437 Taxation as cartelization mechanism, 156 Balanced Budget Amendment as increasing, 237, 437ff. capital gains, 39, 81, 225 collectors of, 162 complexity of, 224ff. credits, 214–15 deductions, 16, 38–39, 104, 215ff., 225ff., 437 democracy and, 228 effects on investment, 225 effects on production, 121, 155, 219 effects on saving, 39, 225, 257 egalitarianism and, 229 energy, 121 equal, 16–17, 228–29 European Community and, 232 excise, 161ff., 191 exemptions from, 16, 223 "farming," 190, 439 "fee" as euphemism for, 107, 155 flat, 16, 224ff. gasoline, 17, 217ff., 394
Index in England, 225 in Europe, 210, 439 income, 17, 163, 191, 224ff., 491 increases in, 24, 104–05, 121ff., 209ff., 235–36, 237 internal vs. external, 161 Keynesianism on, 257 lawyers, 226 loopholes, 16, 24, 81, 104, 214ff., 437 media on, 21 mercantilism and, 189 "neutral," 227ff. on cider, 162 on whiskey, 161ff. poll, 228ff., 231 progressive, 184 property, 157 proportionate, 16, 227ff. reductions in, 23–24, 217, 231, 247, 249, 257 riots against, 227 shelters, 104 "sin," 163, 191 views of business toward, 156 Teachers, 157 Tenth Amendment, 435 Term limits, 486 Texas, 89ff., 395 Textiles, 18–19 Thatcher, Margaret, 80, 146 free-market rhetoric of, 229, 230 on European Community, 368 tax policy of, 227ff. Theory of Collective Bargaining, The (Hutt), 444 Theory of Idle Resources, The (Hutt), 445 Third World, 151ff., 254, 472 famine in, 85–86 hyperinflation in, 105, 403 infant mortality in, 61 Thompson, Julian Ogilvie, 388 Tiananmen Square, 418 Time preference, 37–38, 171 Tobacco as money, 272 Toffler, Alvin, 7 Tos, John, 83 Tower, John, 416 Townsend-Greenspan, 339 Trade blocs, 368–69 deficit, 36, 78, 320, 367 "fair," 367, 379, 359ff. free, 191, 367ff., 371ff., 381
515 Treasury bonds, 174, 175 Treasury, Department of, 234, 255, 316 gun regulation and, 155 maximum purchase regulations, 173 minting of gold coins, 345 pricing of gold, 346 privatization of tax collection, 439 Treatise on Money (Keynes), 447 Triffin, Robert, 301, 316 Trilateral Commission, 341, 396 Trotsky, Leon, 431–32 Trotskyites, 415 Truman, Harry, 125–26, 138, 472 Trump, Donald J., 181, 184 Tsongas, Paul, 217 Tucker, Jeffrey, 80
Unemployment, 20, 121, 169 causes of, 251 in Britain, 230 insurance, 45 minimum wage and, 134–35 Phillips curve "trade-off" and, 13–14, 172, 181 Union Monopoly (Watts), 451 Unions, 136ff., 142 apartheid and, 495 as advocates of minimum wage, 136 Chicago School and, 445 teachers', 157 use of violence, 136ff. V. Orval Watts on, 451 wage rates and, 44–45, 444 W.H. Hutt on, 444–45 Unita, 109, 296, 301, 315 United Farm Workers, 141–42 United Nations, 377 Conference on Population, 150ff. Law of the Sea Treaty, 89 Republicans on, 434, 493 tax exemption of employees, 223 V. Orval Watts on, 451 United Nations: Planned Tyranny (Watts), 451 United States, 301, 312, 316 aid to Gorbachev and, 404ff. infant mortality, 58ff. international monetary system and, 295–302, 306–19 international trade and, 360ff., 367–82 Persian Gulf War and, 392ff. University of Chicago, 40, 249 University of Dallas, 443–44 University of Warsaw, 397ff.
516 Van Eck Management Corporation, 249 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 399ff. Venceremos Brigade, 142 Veterans of Foreign Wars, 113 Vietnam War, 430 Vietnamese-Americans, 408ff. Virginia, 162, 164ff. Volcker, Paul, 41–42, 43, 106, 117, 340, 343 Vouchers. See Education, vouchers
Wages as indicator of productivity, 18–19 as influenced largely by complementary capital goods, 360–61 effects of trade sanctions on, 383 labor demand and, 383 minimum, 58, 66, 133ff., 357, 368 of migrant farm workers, 143 unions and, 444 Wagner Act, 139–40, 429, 492 Wall Street, 118, 173ff., 182ff., 185ff., 299, 396, 478 See also Stock market Wall Street Journal, 61, 158, 322, 402, 483, 495 Wallace, George, 106 Walters, Sir Alan, 232 Wanniski, Jude, 42 War growth of government and, 428ff. prices during | {
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This new entry-level Jeep is nearly identical to the similarly priced Compass with which it shares a platform.
By Shaun Bailey
This new entry-level is nearly identical to the similarly priced with which it shares a platform. What sets it apart is styling and, with some versions at least, off-road worthiness. The latter doesn't include the base Sport front-wheel-drive model ($14,985), but its -like styling just might be enough to sway buyers into thinking other-wise. Four-wheel drive is available, in the form of the Freedom Drive I ($16,735) and Freedom Drive II ($19,175) off-road packages.
Standard equipment includes ABS, side airbags and stability control. Upgrading the base Sport to a Limited model adds roughly $5000 to the price, but brings air conditioning, keyless entry, leather trim, heated front seats, body-color moldings, foglamps and 17-in. alloy wheels.
The base engine is a 2.4-liter that produces 174 bhp mated to a 5-speed manual transmission. A continuously variable transmission is optional for lower trim levels and standard for the "Trail Rated" Freedom Drive II, which also offers a lower final-drive ratio, an extra inch of ground clearance, a lockable center differential and skidplates to make the wilderness more accessible. Although the manual transmission is preferable to the motor-boating CVT, the off-road prowess of the little is impressive.
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The Electric Truck Wars Are Here | {
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Khloé Kardashian's ex Tristan Thompson files gag order on woman claiming he fathered her child
By Christine Estera| 1 month ago
NBA star Tristan Thompson has filed a gag order in an attempt to silence the woman who claims she gave birth to his baby last week.
Us Weekly reports the Sacramento Kings player asked a judge for the emergency motion on Tuesday in Harris County, Texas, where he requested for himself and local personal trainer Maralee Nichols be banned from speaking out about the paternity case as it plays out in court.
The case originally kicked off in June, when Nichols filed a paternity suit against Thompson, in which she claimed she and the basketballer conceived a child in March when he was in town for his 30th birthday.
READ MORE: 'One in two women experience sexual harassment, and I'm one of them'
Tristan Thompson was reportedly still dating Khloé Kardashian when he had a fling with Maralee Nichols in March. (Instagram)
He has since admitted to sleeping with the trainer but has doubts over whether he is the father. However, in Nichols' filing, she has reportedly requested child support and other birth expenses.
It's believed the athlete was still dating reality TV star Khloé Kardashian at the time of the fling. The pair, who share a three-year-old daughter True, ended their on-off, five-year relationship for good in June.
Thompson also shares a four-year-old son, Prince, with ex-girlfriend Jordan Craig. Nichols has since given birth to a boy, welcoming him on December 2.
READ MORE: Brooke Shields says interview from teen years was 'criminal'
Tristan Thompson shares daughter True with Khloé Kardashian and son Prince with ex Jordan Craig. (Instagram)
Now, in fresh documents obtained by Us Weekly, Thompson claimed Nichols violated a confidentiality agreement that a judge put in place earlier in the proceedings as she allegedly spoke to the media about the situation.
READ MORE: Unusual ingredient in Jamie Oliver's 'Get Ahead Gravy' recipe
Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson dated on and off since 2016. (Instagram)
In the documents, Thompson accused Maralee of "leaking information" about the paternity suit, calling it a "flagrant and callous disregard for this Court's authority and with malicious intent toward".
Thompson also accused the PT of filing the suit to "try to achieve some sort of notoriety and gain for herself".
Celebrity babies 2021: Every celebrity baby born this year
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Woman discovers man who 'flirted' with her on holiday has a wife | {
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Meredith Pellon clasps her hands and looks down, movement stirring inside her before it escapes in clunks that still manage to have grace. She looks over an invisible ledge with ambiguous focus, as if she could be looking through a hole in the earth or a display of jewelry under glass. While held close at first, her popping has the quality of a VHS skipping, in the most pleasurable way. Slowly rotating, she builds tension by keeping her bursts of movement relatively contained. Relief finally hits when Etta James' "I'll Be Seeing You" starts playing, bringing an entirely different environment to the sculpture of Pellon's ideas. Her stances get wider, her feet start leaving the ground more often, she lifts her eyes and stretches her arms away from the grasp they once held each other in.
Meredith Pellon. Photo courtesy of artist.
12 Minutes Max, Open Studio, Choreography, Etc., and now Performance Lab – the name has evolved, but the concept remains the same. On The Boards is dedicated to showcasing local artists' work (such as Pellon's) not only in the final stage, but also in development. Those selected for this session presented their works-in-progress "in the round," with an audience on four sides.
Tension builds differently when WAREHAUS dance collective takes the stage. Clad in Adidas tracksuits, dancers Akeisha de Baat and Megan Hunter run their hands over their legs and arms. The satisfying "swoosh" sound of the sports fabric immediately awakens the senses. Assuming traditional warm-up positions, squeezing joints, and finding deep, preparatory stretches, the duet not only limbers up their bodies, but our perspective. Circling the space, their "warm up" evolves into more stylized angles, and moments of spinning that doesn't seem to stop. Sliding across the floor in their socks, I feel as if I could still experience this dance with my eyes closed, which is exactly what Hunter does next. With one sense gone, the two finally make contact and dive into a full bodied, half-blind duet. Lifts, assisted falls, flips, and weight shares follow one after another, without certainty as to who's leading. WAREHAUS expertly investigates how the experience of the senses changes when not all of them are available.
Hope Goldman's work seems to cover all the senses, in all directions, shapes, and moods. Six dancers in red and blue pedestrian clothes take turns setting off a chain of events, over and over in Shoal. They stumble onto stage, inch with baby steps, rub their legs, reorient randomly yet organize thoughtfully at the same time. It seems as though every possible verb enacts in front of me, through different bodies, collectively, yet separate. A wonderful flurry of contradictions, her work utilizes unison phrase work, intensely internal gestures, and popcorn progressions to build a sort of society of movement. Goldman makes the appropriate choice not to include added sound, which lends itself well to the percussion of the quirky stomps and shuffles. Toward the end, it becomes hard to find a pattern as the group stands, kneels, and twists in all different ways. Yet in this moment of individualism, we see the group come together in a collective humanity, which we can sense was there all along.
Photo by Shelley Rose Photography.
Humanity combats an object, and the personal trauma it represents in the Naomi Macalalad Bragin's work. She stares down a violin, like a bullfighter across an arena. Her strained relationship with the instrument shows right away, as she prepares for battle by applying red lipstick. Sounds of a thunderstorm and dishes shattering rattle the space as she approaches and takes the violin out of its case. All hell breaks loose as she thrashes around, pantomiming through a classical piece, seemingly possessed by the violin. Broken is the story of Bragin's tortured background in growing up a competitive classical musician. As a street/hip-hop dancer, friction is created between her body's pathways and the Western history of the object she holds. At one point her shoulders quiver to the sound of a typewriter, and she mouths the words "her English never breaks," a reference to her harrowing experience as the daughter of an immigrant, removed from her Filipino culture. By far the most emotionally evocative piece of the night, Broken is an intimate look at Bragin's childhood trauma of cultural assimilation in her family.
Performance Lab showed at On The Boards on September 20th, 2018. Find more about the program here.
Naomi Macalalad Bragin will also be showing work in Solo: A Festival of Dance at On The Boards October 4-7, 2018. Find tickets and info here. | {
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A one day workshop for women leaving the past behind and moving into your future. Many times people are held back by their past. Maggie inspires the audience to let go of past pains so they can embrace who God created them to be.
This day includes, but is not limited to overcoming fear, walking in forgiveness, renewing the mind, and letting go of guilt and shame. The Freedom workshop is designed to help ladies or youth overcome the negative life events so they can walk out their liberty in Christ.
Workshops are beneficial for new believers who struggle with who they have been and need to get rid of their baggage to walk out the life Christ died for on the cross. It is also for women called to ministry or leadership roles who want to make sure they have properly dealt with the past, so nothing holds them back in their ministry.
Because this is vital for both new believers and seasoned women this workshop is life transforming. Workshops can be presented live at a local church, and web-based modules both individual and group settings.
Many people spend time like the Israelites did walking around in the desert wondering who am I? Why am I here? What am I suppose to do?
Discovering your call is designed to help you understand your God-given purpose by utilizing tools and finding purpose. Some of the topics covered are core values, spiritual gifts, natural skills, talents, personality types, temperament, and past experiences that make you who you are today.
During the workshop, you will experience both presentation and application of what is going to help you write you own mission and vision statement. By defining these, you can find your purpose and focus on the areas you are created to be both professionally and personally.
If you feel like you are in needing a change in your career, you want to be active in your ministry or you have lost passion and want it back – start here.
Maggie's testimony is powerful due to her surrendered heart to the Lord. Various life circumstances has given her insight on how to help others, encourage, and provoke people to want to change.
Life does not just happen; one must recognize the need for change and take action. Maggie shares the importance of intimacy with God, destroying destructive behaviors and walking in freedom. She is available to speak to both women's groups and youth groups. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
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Six companies will be listed on the main and alternative markets of the Tunis Stock Exchange (TSE) in 2016, President of the Financial Market Council Saleh Sayel affirmed.
Speaking, Monday, on the sidelines of a study day on the new financial structure of Zitouna shares, he added that the directorate general of the financial market has already received applications for listing from "Maille club" company (alternative market) and drug manufacturing unit UNIMED (main market).
Regarding the other companies, decisions for listing on the TSE were taken during their general assemblies.
The number of listed companies is now 78 (12 on the alternative market) and 66 on the main market). | {
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AUTOMATIC TARGET RECOGNITION SYSTEMS
PROACTIVE EMERGING THREAT DETECTION (PREVENT)
MACHINE LEARNING IN THE FACTORY
MACHINE LEARNING FOR PATTERNS OF LIFE
RAYTHEON PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE (RPM)
STRATEGIES FOR RAPID PROTOTYPING MACHINE LEARNING
CLASSIFICATION OF HANDWRITING
LEADERS CORNER
EYE ON TECHNOLOGY
Stephanie Yung, mechanical engineer, hosts a table of aspiring engineers. She was one of eight Raytheon engineers who offered advice to more than 100 young women from the Los Angeles Regional FIRST Robotics Competition.
FROM ONE ROBOT-MAKER TO ANOTHER
WOMEN ENGINEERS MENTOR 100 NEXT-GEN ROBOT-MAKERS AT FIRST® COMPETITION
Hundreds of students packed a Pomona, California, fairplex; makers of robots that would do battle at the Los Angeles Regional FIRST® Robotics Competition. The atmosphere in the arena, themed to recall the 8-bit video games of the 1980s, was electric as teams made last-minute modifications.
The competition brought together high school students from across Southern California to compete head-to-head with robots they designed and built over a six-week period. Raucous cheers bounced off the walls as each team's robot hit the arena floor. Operators, armed with controllers designed by their teammates, deftly moved their robots along the arena floor, picking up bright yellow boxes and depositing them into bins for points.
After six weeks of design and testing, the robots hit the competition floor. Teams competed in 2.5 minute rounds, where their robots picked up and moved " power cubes"
to earn points.
During a break in the competition's action, 100 of the young women behind the robots met with eight Raytheon women engineers at a speed-mentoring event in the conference center next door. Their mission? Share important lessons about making it in a field where women are often underrepresented.
"I am most looking forward to learning about confidence," said one of the students before the speed-mentoring event. "I know women are held to a different standard to do things a certain way. I think that talking about it helps relieve the stress of wanting to be perfect in a society where no one is perfect."
The engineers encouraged the young women to own their chair as future leaders in science, technology, engineering and math — the subjects known as STEM.
"You need to play to your strengths. As you go through high school and college and then get into the workplace you're going to have an opportunity to find what your strengths are," advised Angela Juranek, a Raytheon Space Systems program manager. "My strengths are motivating and inspiring teams to get the job done, and that's how I ended up becoming a program manager."
As the young women rotated from table to table, the conversations covered a wide variety of subjects, from choosing a college to tips on navigating a career. Many of the attendees were interested in hearing the engineers tell their own career stories.
STEM advocate Angela Juranek shares college and career advice with future women engineers at the speed-mentoring event.
"'Higher education will open doors of opportunity,'" said April Sanders, a Raytheon systems engineer, when asked about her story. "These are words that I heard repeatedly as a child of a single mother and high school dropout."
In an ongoing effort to narrow the gender gap and increase diversity in the workplace, Raytheon sponsors FIRST Robotics teams from across the country. Employee volunteers spend thousands of hours coaching robotics team members and providing mentorship to students looking to make their mark in science, technology, engineering and math.
After the speed-mentoring event, the next generation of robot-makers charged back to the arena floor, ready to take on the challenges at the competition — and beyond. Juranek and her fellow engineers hope that the advice they offered will inspire the young women to join their ranks in STEM careers.
"I support STEM programs with the hope that I will be able to help young women see the potential in themselves," said Juranek. "The new generation of women engineers approach problems differently than my generation did — I want them to be part of my future teams, sit at the table with other engineers and design incredible things."
Copyright © 2019, Raytheon Company. | {
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The year Ottawa tech became a cash magnet
James Bagnall
Assent Compliance Chief Product Officer Martin Sendyk, CEO Andrew Waitman and CFO Russell Frederick at their office in Ottawa. The software firm unveiled $40 million in venture financing July 14, 2017. Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network
Ordinarily, this would be a very big deal. The day after Ottawa's civic elections, software company Assent Compliance revealed it had raised $130 million from investors to finance future growth — one of this year's biggest equity investments for a Canadian startup.
This was the third round of funding in just the past three years for the company, reflecting chief executive Andrew Waitman's drive to create a global specialist in the arcane art of data management software for supply chains. Assent Compliance, this most Ottawa of firms, helps large organizations make sure they are paying proper attention to government rules and regulations throughout their network of suppliers and sub-contractors.
When Waitman signed on as CEO in 2014, the startup had just 25 employees. Now there are more than 400 across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.
Last week's equity investment in Assent Compliance, which comes courtesy of New York private equity giant Warburg Pincus, will allow Waitman to further bolster his increasingly wide range of software products.
Even so, the Warburg Pincus announcement was largely overshadowed by the cash-raising prowess of firms in other parts of the region's business sector.
Indeed, not since the tech boom of 2000 has so much investment money poured into the coffers of Ottawa-area firms.
The legalization of recreational marijuana on Oct. 17 has been a significant catalyst but by no means the only one.
Shareholders at Canopy Growth, the industry leader based out of Smiths Falls, recently approved a transaction that will see Constellation Brands — the U.S. beer, wine and spirits company — invest $5 billion in exchange for significant ownership. Crosstown cannabis products rival HEXO Corp. of Gatineau was also busy raising money this year. Its net cash position improved nearly $210 million during the nine months ended July 31 (latest available) — thanks largely to a sale of shares that grossed $149.5 million in January.
Cannabis firms weren't the only ones to persuade investors to part with their money.
Ottawa's burgeoning e-commerce software star, Shopify, saw its cash reserves top $2 billion (converted from $1.6 billion U.S.) as of Sept. 30, up $720 million since year-end 2017. This largely reflected Shopify's decision to sell millions of shares earlier this year to investors on the New York and TSX stock exchanges.
In August the company filed paperwork that will allow it to raise as much as $6.5 billion through further share sales on an expedited basis when Shopify judges the timing is right.
In this, Shopify appears to have drawn an important lesson from Nortel Networks, which failed during the tech boom to buttress its cash reserves. From a corporate point of view it's best to market your equity when you can, not when you have to.
This has also been an important year for Mitel Networks as far as corporate finance goes. The Kanata telecommunications technology pioneer revealed in April that it would be acquired in full by a New York investment firm, Searchlight Capital Partners. Assuming the deal clears all the regulatory hurdles as expected by year-end, Searchlight will take over all of Mitel's equity for $1.7 billion (in addition to assuming Mitel's considerable debt).
Even non-tech firms were tapping the stock market. Minto, one of Ottawa's most prominent real estate firms, raised $200 million through the sale of units in its Minto Apartment Real Estate Investment Trust. The company said it will use part of the proceeds to diversify its real estate offerings. Some of the money has also been earmarked for estate planning for the Greenberg family that controls Minto.
Considering that a significant portion of the money raised this year by Ottawa firms will disappear into the accounts of foreign and corporate investors, does it really matter to the lives of ordinary people? Well, yes, because much of the cash is cascading through the local economy in the form of construction, hiring and general spending by employees with shares in their companies. Canopy Growth alone has hired hundreds of people so far this year and is investing a fortune in Smiths Falls infrastructure. Canopy, HEXO, Assent Compliance and Shopify are filling office complexes with new employees.
Equally important is the added security that strong cash balances give corporations, especially in the high-risk technology sector. The higher this city's exposure to a handful of larger tech corporations, the greater the potential risks to its economy. Cash, especially in the amount coming into Ottawa, provides some at least some measure of comfort.
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Splendid China was a theme park in Four Corners, Florida. It was opened in 1993 but closed on December 31, 2003. It was a sister park to the Splendid China in Shenzhen, China, and cost $100 million to build.
It was a miniature park with more than 60 replicas at a one-tenth scale at its height of popularity. Each piece was handcrafted to maintain authenticity. Initially, Chinese artists were hired to perform in the park. After a number of them tried to seek political asylum in the United States, they were replaced by local performers.
Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda criticized the Chinese government's ownership of Splendid China; the state-owned corporation China Travel Service owned and operated the theme park.
History
Origins
The original idea for the Florida Splendid China theme park was that of Josephine Chen, a former educator from Taiwan. In 1988, Chen toured a prototype park, "Splendid China Miniature Scenic Spot", in Shenzhen, China operated by China Travel Service (CTS). This park is close to Hong Kong. 3.5 million people visited the park during the first year. CTS recouped its US$100 million investment during this first year.
She negotiated an agreement with CTS, controlled by Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, under the China National Tourism Administration. Under the agreement, Chen supplied the land and management services, while CTS would construct the building, and supply non-management personnel.
Construction
On December 19, 1989, groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the start of construction for Florida Splendid China.
The park's replica of the Great Wall took nearly seven million long bricks and stretched about . The replica of the Leshan Buddha was four stories tall.
Buyout
In December 1993, the American partners were bought out by the Chinese government.
Changes in 1996
In May 1996, the Orlando Sentinel reported that the President, General Manager, and Senior Vice-President for Entertainment were replaced in what was described as a 'big management shakeup'.
In July 1996, the Orlando Business Journal reported that Florida Splendid China was changing their name to "Chinatown." In August 1996, the Orlando Business Journal reported that marketing department of Florida Splendid China had shrunk by 5 positions.
FARA violation
In March 1998, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda asked Attorney General Janet Reno and the US Department of Justice to investigate Florida Splendid China for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
In May 1999, the Far East Economic Review reported that Florida Splendid China was losing $9 million a year.
Protests and bans
A group called Citizens Against Communist Chinese Propaganda (CACCP) staged several protests at the park against perceived Chinese Communist Party propaganda in the Mongolian and Tibetan exhibits.
In November 1995, the Pinellas County, Florida school board voted to ban trips to Florida Splendid China.
In March 1996, at the 11th demonstration against perceived Chinese Communist Party propaganda in the Tibetan, Mongolian and Eastern Turkestan exhibits, five college students sat down and closed the front gate Florida Splendid China while a large crowd of demonstrators watched.
On April 19, 1996 the Representative Assembly of the 1996 Florida Teaching Professionals-NEA State Conference in Orlando passed a resolution to ban personal or school trips to Florida Splendid China by its members. The resolution passed overwhelmingly.
In October 1997, the brother of the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet (Takster Rinpoche), attended the 20th demonstration at Florida Splendid China to commemorate the 48th anniversary of takeover of Eastern Turkestan.
In December 1999, CACCP held the 32nd demonstration at the main gate of Florida Splendid China to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the Grand Opening.
Plans for closure
In May 2000, the Orlando Business Journal reported that Sunny Yang, Florida Splendid China president, confirmed that the motel property was about to change hands and that sources close to the attraction had said that the park was to be sold and closed.
In November 2000, the Orlando Business Journal reported that amid allegations of financial mismanagement, the former president (Sunny Yang) of the struggling Splendid China attraction has been sent back to mainland China.
After closure
After closing its gates, Splendid China suffered a rash of attacks from thieves and vandals. Hundreds of items were taken ranging from small miniatures to portions of life-size statues. The perpetrators, thought to be local youths, were never caught. The property has passed through several owners and in July 2009 was up for sale at an asking price of $30 million.
On May 9, 2013, the new owners started to tear down the park.
In August 2015, Encore Homes reported that Margaritaville Resort would open on the former Splendid China site, with resort homes, condos and timeshares in Jimmy Buffett themed setting.
By March 2016, there was nothing left of the park as construction had begun for the new Margaritaville resort. The former park is located on a parcel of the southern and eastern property of the resort bordering Fins Up Circle, Formosa Gardens Blvd. and Funnie Steed Rd.
Exhibits
The Mogao
The Mogao Grottoes Cave
The Yungang Grottoes
The Longmen Grottoes
Leshan Buddha in Sichuan province
Buddhist Stone Sculptures in Dazu
Midair Temple
Cliffside Tombs
Stone Forest Yunnan Province
Shanhai Pass of the Great Wall
Nine Dragon Wall
Mongolian Yurt
Mausoleum of Genghis Khan in Inner Mongolia
The Great Wall
1000 Eyes and 1000 Hands Guanyin Buddha Statue
Xiang Fei's Tomb (Tomb of Apak Hoja)
Id Kah Mosque
Panda Playground
Bai Dwelling Houses
Three Ancient Pagodas in Dali
Manfeilong Pagoda
The Dai Village
Jinzhen Octagonal Pavilion
Potala Palace in Tibet
Lijiang River Scenery
Foshan Ancestral Temple in Guangdong Province
Zhenghai Tower
Dwelling House of the Hakkas
Water Village
Tengwang Pavilion
West Lake Scenery in Hangzhou
Town God Temple
Chinese Garden
Temple of Confucius
Summer Palace in Beijing
Zhaozhou
Lugouqiao (Marco Polo Bridge) in Beijing
Forbidden City in Beijing
Jin Gang Bao Zuo Pagoda
The White Pagoda in Miaoying Temple in Beijing
Yingxian Wooden Pagoda
Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shihuang Mausoleum
Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an
Jiayuguan Pass of the Great Wall
Ancient Star-Observatory
Memorial Temple of Zhuge Liang (Temple of Marquis Wu)
Buyi Village
Miao Village
Wind and Rain Bridge, Drum Tower of the Dong
Yueyang Pavilion (Tower)
Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan
Feihong Pagoda
Shaolin Temple
Pagoda Forest at Shaolin Temple
Jin Ancestral Temple
Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and seen at China Pavilion at Epcot
Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing
References
External links
A photo gallery
Archive website of effort against Florida Splendid China
"Forbidden City: Can a new CEO lift the veil – and revenues – at China's troubled theme park in Orlando?"; Cynthia Barnett; Florida Trend magazine; June 2001
"Developer devotes energy to Four Corners"; Nancy Pfister; The Journal of Osceola County Business, January 1997
"Florida Splendid China"; Kenneth R. Timmerman, American Spectator Magazine; February 1999
Defunct amusement parks in Florida
1993 establishments in Florida
2003 disestablishments in Florida
Roadside attractions in Florida
Miniature parks
China–United States economic relations | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} |
Tag Archives: Supreme Court
More Than One Iota: Supreme Court Agrees to Decide Scope of Arbitration Law; Outcome Will Affect Independent Contractor Agreements
Last week I read that Sirhan Sirhan had been denied parole again. No surprise there. But what captured my attention was his attorney's comment that there was not "one iota" of evidence he would be a threat to society if released.
Not even one iota? Why are there never any iotas? And what is the plural of iota anyway? And how do you even respond to that? Well, actually, we had a few iotas. Let me check my notes here. Yes, three iotas.
"Iota" means an infinitesimal amount. Synonyms include bupkus and diddly-squat. But if you search for "iota" online, no one ever has any iotas. The word is always used in the negative.
Well here are a few iotas for you. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases that will affect when arbitration agreements with independent contractors can be enforced. The Supreme Court generally gets involved when there are at least a few iotas of good arguments on both sides.
Both cases address the scope of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which creates a presumption that arbitration agreements should be enforced, but includes a few iotas of carveouts.
In the first case, Viking River Cruises v. Moriana, the Supreme Court will determine whether cases brought under California's Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) are subject to arbitration. California courts have said they are not.
In the second case, Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, the Court will address the scope of the Section 1 exemption, which makes the FAA inapplicable to certain types of transportation workers in interstate commerce. The Saxon decision is likely to clear up the mass confusion (and circuit split) over whether last mile delivery drivers and local rideshare fall within the exemption.
In the political arena, arbitration agreements have come under fire, and there is a movement among Democrats to abolish mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, appears more likely to enforce the contracts as written, deferring to the contractual intent of the parties and interpreting any exemptions to the FAA narrowly.
There is more than one iota of evidence to support both sides of these disputes. But expect some 6-3s.
If I am pulling out my crystal ball, I expect the Supreme Court will uphold the arbitration agreements, at least in Saxon. Moriana is tougher to predict since PAGA is a state law creation in which the individual bringing the claim acts as a private attorney general, bringing the claim on behalf of the state. On one hand, the state never agreed to arbitrate. But on the other hand, the individual bringing the PAGA claim did agree to arbitrate any disputes, not to bring them in court under the guise of PAGA.
Whenever the Court rules, we'll see arbitration agreements back in the news. More visibility on this issue will mean louder and more urgent calls from politicians to abolish pre-dispute arbitration agreements.
We can expect many iotas of news on arbitration agreements later in 2022.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, California, Independent Contractor, Uncategorized, What to Watch | Tagged Arbitration, Arbitration agreements, California, Independent Contractor, Independent Contractor Agreements, Supreme Court
Meatloaf Lyrics Inspire Supreme Court; Arbitration Agreements Can Be Implied to Include Class Action Waivers
https://youtu.be/_wO8toxinoc
Meatloaf's "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth" opens with a dialogue by Jim Steinman, who wrote the song, and actress Marcia McClain, who played Dee Stewart in the soap opera As the World Turns. He asks, "On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?"
For a quick trip back to 1978-79, listen to the album version, not the shortened single, which cut out the dialogue, presumably because it distracted the roller skaters. The song is about teenage lovers and passion, and the lyrics are rich with intense imagery.
Offering a new twist on this old classic, the Supreme Court last week issued a ruling on arbitration agreements that can be paraphrased as "You took the words right out of the air because they weren't in my arbitration agreement." This decision will inflame passions in the pro-worker camp, but it's a good decision for businesses. The case is called Lamps Plus v. Varela.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, Class Action, Contracts, Tips, Uncategorized | Tagged Arbitration agreements, class action waivers, Meatloaf, Supreme Court, Tips
Supreme Court Ruling May Stop Enforcement of Some Contractors' Arbitration Agreements
The year 1925 was a banner year for transportation. Walter Percy Chrysler founded the Chrysler Corporation, London introduced its first double decker bus, and Malcolm Campbell became the first person to exceed 150 mph in an aero-engined car, accomplishing the feat at Pendine Sands in Wales. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)
Meanwhile, back in the States, American courts had developed a habit of not enforcing arbitration agreements, and Congress was determined to change that. In 1925, Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which is the law that allows parties to agree to arbitrate disputes and which tells courts to respect those agreements, subject to a few limited exceptions.
Those exceptions were at issue in the Supreme Court case of New Prime v. Olivieri, decided last week in an 8-0 decision.
The Court ruled that:
(1) If there is a question about whether the FAA applies to an arbitration agreement, a court — not an arbitrator — decides whether the FAA protects the arbitration agreement.
(2) The FAA's exception — which says the FAA does not cover workers in the transportation industry — applies not just to employees in the transportation industry but also independent contractors. In other words, the FAA does not protect arbitration agreements entered into by independent contractors in the transportation industry.
For business owners who wish to use arbitration agreements with their workers, what does this ruling mean?
I. Who decides who decides?
Sometimes an arbitrator decides whether a dispute is subject to arbitration, and sometimes a court decides. Last month in the Henry Schein case, the Supreme Court held that an arbitrator can decide, in most instances, whether a dispute is covered under an arbitration agreement.
But last week's New Prime case draws a distinction about who decides if the issue is whether the FAA applies to the dispute.
So, to simplify: On the issue of who decides whether a dispute is subject to an arbitration agreement, what's the rule now?
1. If the issue is whether the FAA protects the arbitration agreement, a court decides whether the FAA applies or not. (That's the New Prime decision.)
2. If the FAA does apply and the issue is whether a particular dispute is subject to the agreement to arbitrate, then the arbitrator decides whether a dispute is subject to the agreement to arbitrate — assuming that the arbitration agreement has delegated to the arbitrator the ability to decide. (That's the Henry Schein decision.)
The last sentence in Point 2 is the reason companies should consider adding a clause to their arbitration agreements saying that the arbitrator decides questions of arbitrability.
II. How does the New Prime ruling apply to arbitration agreements with independent contractors?
For independent contractors not in the transportation industry, this ruling does not apply. Arbitration agreements with independent contractors are generally enforceable and are protected by the FAA.
But how do we know the FAA doesn't apply to all independent contractors in interstate commerce?
To answer that question, we need to head back to the Year 2001, a year after the electronic calendar shifted away from 19xx and technically-inclined doomsday prophets foretold of planes falling out of the sky. Shortly after mankind endured this potential calendar-caused calamity, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Circuit City Stores v. Adams.
The issue in Circuit City was whether the FAA applies to arbitration agreements between employers and employees. There is a carve out provision in the FAA, saying that the law favoring arbitration does not apply to "to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce."
The issue in Circuit City was whether the carve out for "contracts of employment" of "workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce" was intended to be broad and apply to all employees in interstate commerce or just those in the transportation industry. What was the intended meaning of "workers engaged in … interstate commerce"?
In Circuit City, the Court ruled that:
(1) the FAA generally does apply to arbitration agreements between employers and employees, but
(2) the FAA does not apply to workers in the transportation industry.
The Court decided that the phrase "workers engaged in … interstate commerce" was intended to refer only to workers in the transportation industry, not all workers. Arbitration agreements with employees in industries other than transportation would be enforceable under the FAA.
But that decision left open an important issue: What about independent contractors in the transportation industry? Do they have "contracts of employment"? Does the FAA apply to their arbitration agreements or not?
Fast forward to last week's New Prime case.
The Supreme Court ruled that when the FAA was written in 1925, the phrase "contracts of employment" was understood to mean all work engagements, not just employer-employee relationships. Our understanding of the word "employment" has changed over time and, if that phrase were used in a statute today, it would likely refer only to true employer-employee relationships. But in 1925, it meant all work.
The Court therefore ruled that the FAA's carve out applies to all workers in the transportation industry, regardless of whether such workers are employees or independent contractors. This means that arbitration agreements signed by employees or independent contractors in the transportation industry are not covered by the FAA, and therefore their agreements to arbitrate disputes are not protected by the FAA. Those disputes might have to go to court.
So what happens now?
First, the ruling is narrower than it may seem. The Court ruled only that the FAA did not apply to independent contractors' arbitration agreements in the transportation industry. It did not rule that these arbitration agreements were automatically void.
Many states have their own statutes that protect arbitration as a means for resolving disputes. Companies with workers in the transportation industry should check whether there is a state law that can be applied to protect these arbitration agreements. If it would be reasonable to apply that state's law, then companies should consider choosing that state's law in the arbitration agreement's Choice of Law provision. The right state's law might still be able to save the arbitration agreement. We can expect further litigation on this subject, but here's a tip for now. Try to pick a state with a favorable arbitration statute if your workers are in the transportation industry.
Second, we can expect the next battle to be over the meaning of the phrase, "transportation industry." Does the "transportation industry" include only workers who transport goods across state lines? Or does the "transportation industry" include independent contractor drivers who transport passengers across town (such as ride share) or who deliver your pizza?
In Circuit City, the Supreme Court looked favorably on other court decisions that had defined the "transportation industry" to mean those workers "actually engaged in the movement of goods in interstate commerce." If that holds true, then local drivers of passengers and late-night food cravings should be considered not part of the "transportation industry." The FAA, therefore, would still apply to those workers.
But we can expect the plaintiffs' bar to argue for a broad interpretation of the "transportation industry." We can now expect to see arguments that rideshare drivers and local delivery drivers are in the "transportation industry" and that their arbitration agreements are not protected by the FAA. I think that argument is incorrect, but I do expect to see it.
I would expect Courts of Appeal (and perhaps eventually the Supreme Court) to adopt a narrow view of the "transportation industry," meaning that the FAA still applies to independent contractors who transport people or make local deliveries. I expect the courts to rule that the carve out from the FAA exempts only those workers (employees and contractors) who routinely transport goods across state lines.
For now, here's what you need to know:
Arbitration agreements with independent contractors in the "transportation industry" are not protected by the FAA. It may be more difficult to enforce those arbitration agreements unless they are governed by the law of a state with its own arbitration statute.
Arbitration agreements with independent contractors outside of the transportation industry should remain enforceable under the FAA.
And the bottom line for me is that maybe it's time for self-driving cars.
For more information on joint employment, gig economy issues, and other labor and employment developments to watch in 2019, join me in Orlando on Jan. 24, Philadelphia on Feb. 26, or Chicago on Mar. 21 for the 2019 BakerHostetler Master Class on Labor Relations and Employment Law: Meeting Today's Challenges. Advance registration is required. Please email me if you plan to attend, [email protected]. If you list my name in your RSVP, I will have your registration fee waived.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, Contingent Workers, Independent Contractor, Independent Contractor vs. Employee, Uncategorized, What to Watch | Tagged Arbitration agreements, Independent Contractor, New Prime, Supreme Court
Fecal Matter Meets Electrical Wind Machine: NLRB Scrambles to Re-Evaluate Joint Employment
According to the British site, The Phrase Finder, the expression When the shit hits the fan "alludes to the unmissable effects of shit being thrown into an electric fan." That's lovely. The Cambridge Dictionary (also U.K.) describes the idiom a bit more delicately: "also, when the shit flies, [when] a situation suddenly causes a lot of trouble for someone."
Thank you, British internet!
In any event, this expression seems to capture the predicament the NLRB suddenly finds itself in after the D.C. Court of Appeals issued its unexpected ruling a couple weeks ago in the ongoing Browning-Ferris case, which we wrote about here.
The ruling vastly complicated the NLRB's efforts to adopt a more pro-business definition of "joint employment" that would require direct control over essential terms of employment before joint employment could be found. The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the meaning of "joint employment" under the National Labor Relations Act is determined by the common law Right to Control Test, and that the NLRB has no authority to change the definition in a way that is inconsistent with the common law meaning.
The common law Right to Control Test, to the current Board's dismay, allows for a finding of joint employment when control is reserved, even if the right to control is not actually exercised. That ruling is contrary to the definition being proposed by the NLRB as part of its ongoing effort to enact a new regulation through the rulemaking process.
Since the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling, here's what's been happening:
First, two key Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Board Chair John Ring, asking that the Board abandon its rulemaking effort in light of the court's ruling. Nice effort, but that's not likely to happen.
Second, "in light of the unique circumstance" posed by the court's decision, the Board has again extended the period for the public to submit comments on the proposed rule. The new deadline is January 28, 2019, with reply comments due February 11, 2019. This is the third time the Board has extended the comment period. The second extension inspired one of my favorite posts, "Amazon Users (espec. Cindy, Amy & kris), Please Don't Submit Comments On the NLRB's Proposed Joint Employment Rule," which if you missed, it's not too late.
So what happens next? The Board has a few options:
1. It can change the proposed rule to allow for a finding of joint employment when a company reserves the right to exercise control, even if the control is indirect and is never actually exercised, but only if the right to control covers "essential" terms and conditions of employment. That change would be consistent with the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling, but it's not as sweeping a change as current pro-business Board majority would like.
2. It can plow forward with its current rulemaking plan and ignore the D.C. Court of Appeals. The NLRB typically ignores decisions by the U.S. Courts of Appeal on the basis that there are 12 regional federal Courts of Appeal and they don't always agree, while on the other hand, the NLRB's authority is national, not regional. This approach often results in circuit splits, in which Courts of Appeal issue contradictory rulings, a situation that generally results in the U.S. Supreme Court deciding the issue once and for all. If the NLRB takes this approach, a circuit split could develop, and the Supreme Court would be likely to get involved, but it would probably take years before that wound its way up to the Supreme Court.
3. It can ask the full slate of D.C. Court of Appeals judges to re-hear the case. This is called an en banc proceeding. Since the decision was 2-1, there could be some momentum toward the full slate of judges agreeing to reconsider the case, but even if that happens, there is no guarantee the ruling would be any different.
4. The D.C. Court of Appeals decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court could decide to hear the case, or it could decline and allow the law to further develop. The Supreme Court often waits to hear what other Courts of Appeal have to say before it issues a final decision. But even if the Supreme Court takes the case, there is no assurance that the NLRB will get the ruling it wants.
Here's why. On one hand, the newly constituted Supreme Court is more conservative and is regarded as more pro-business, which would appear to suggest support for the outcome that the pro-business NLRB would want — authority to narrow the definition of joint employment to situations in which control is directly exercised, not merely reserved.
But on the other hand, the current Supreme Court seems less and less inclined to defer to agencies' interpretations of statutes. While the current Supreme Court may be sympathetic to the outcome desired by the NLRB, it is unlikely to be sympathetic to the process by which the NLRB wants to achieve that outcome. The Supreme Court's current members seem inclined to limit the authority of federal agencies to re-interpret the law.
There are lots of ways the joint employment saga might play out. But for now, it's fair to say that the D.C. Court of Appeals decision was unexpected and messy, in a way that alludes to the unmissable effects of excrement being thrown into an electric fan (as the Brits might say).
Standard | Posted in Joint Employment, NLRB, Staffing Agency, Tests, Uncategorized, What to Watch | Tagged Browning-Ferris, comments, Joint Employment, NLRA, NLRB, Supreme Court, test, Tests
After Supreme Court Ruling, Be Sure Your Arbitration Agreements Contain These Two Essential Clauses!
I never thought hyenas essential
They're crude and unspeakably plain
But maybe they've a glimmer of potential
If allied to my vision and brain
– "Be Prepared," The Lion King
The song goes on to warn that "you can't be caught unawares." Be prepared. The song neglects to remind companies to check their arbitration agreements for two essential clauses, but that's why you have me.
The Supreme Court delivered its first Kavanaugh-authored opinion late last week. It was a short, punchy, and unanimous decision with no mention of cartoon hyenas or warthogs, but it clarifies an important point under federal arbitration law: If an agreement calls for disputes to be resolved by an arbitrator, a court cannot override that contractual agreement — even to decide a threshold question like whether the dispute is subject to arbitration.
This is a case of Who decides who decides.
Many arbitration agreements contain carve-outs, saying that certain types of disputes are not subject to arbitration. A common carve-out allows parties to go to court to get an injunction to prevent imminent harm.
The issue here was whether a carve-out like that could be presumed by the court (since it was not explicitly in the agreement), or whether the arbitrator had to decide what was subject to arbitration. The court ruled:
When the parties' contract delegates the arbitrability question to an arbitrator, the courts must respect the parties' decision as embodied in the contract.
How does this apply to you? Two important points:
First, carve-outs: Your arbitration agreements should be drafted to include carve-outs that allow parties to go to court to seek injunctive relief to prevent imminent harm. Specific types of disputes should not be subject to arbitration. If your employee or contractor is about to reveal a trade secret, you need the ability to run to court and get immediate relief. Arbitration is too slow to prevent that danger.
Second, arbitrability: If you fear that a court might invalidate the arbitration agreement or attempt to override it, include a provision like this: "Any disputes regarding whether an issue is subject to arbitration shall be resolved by the arbitrator."
This case was decided under the Federal Arbitration Act, which is the federal law that favors enforcement of agreements to arbitrate disputes, subject to a few limited exceptions. One of those exceptions is also now before the Supreme Court in New Prime v. Olivieri, a case we discussed here. It relates to independent contractors in the transportation industry and whether the Federal Arbitration Agreement applies. A decision in New Prime will be issued sometime this term.
Arbitration agreements are an important tool that should be in your toolbox, especially if your company is concerned about class action claims, either from employees or independent contractors.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, Contracts, Independent Contractor, Tips, Uncategorized | Tagged Arbitration agreements, contract clauses, Henry Schein, hyenas, Lion King, Supreme Court, Tips
When Are Shareholders Also Employees? (Disney-Themed Version)
I have always believed that in the song made famous by Happy, Dopey, Sneezy and friends, they were saying "Off to work we go," but I just checked a few sites for lyrics and the lyrics all show the dwarves singing, "It's home from work we go." Can this be true? Have I been mixed up all these years about which way the dwarves were going to dig dig dig with a shovel or a pick?
Work can be confusing. A non-cartoon-dwarf scenario that can be confusing is trying to determine whether shareholders in a business are also employees of that business. In today's post, we examine that question by celebrating the 15th anniversary of a 2003 Supreme Court case. (Happy Anniversary, case! 🎂)
Like many tests for determining Who Is My Employee?, this one comes down to control and the familiar Right to Control Test.
In Clackamas Gastroenterology Associates, P. C. v. Wells, an employee of this Oregon-based medical clinic tried to sue for disability discrimination under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To bring claim under the ADA, though, the plaintiff must show that her employer has 15 or more employees.
The clinic had four owner/shareholders who were also physicians. If they were also employees, then the clinic had 15 employees and Ms. Wells could pursue her ADA lawsuit. If these physicians were just shareholders and not employees, then the clinic had fewer than 15, and Ms. Wells would be SOL.
The dispute made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the proper way to determine whether the physician/shareholders counted as employees was to apply a Right to Control Test. But which version?
The standard Right to Control Test tries to distinguish between an employee and an independent contractor. Because the question here is a bit different, the test had to be adapted to fit the situation.
The Court decided that these six factors were most important for deciding whether the physician/shareholders were also employees:
1. Whether the organization can hire or fire the individual or set the rules and regulations of the individual's work;
2. Whether and, if so, to what extent the organization supervises the individual's work;
3. Whether the individual reports to someone higher in the organization;
4. Whether and, if so, to what extent the individual is able to influence the organization;
5. Whether the parties intended that the individual be an employee, as expressed in written agreements or contracts; and
6. Whether the individual shares in the profits, losses, and liabilities of the organization.
Like the traditional Right to Control Test, this is a balancing test. Some factors may weigh in one direction, some may tilt the other way. Ultimately, a judge (or jury) needs to weigh the factors and make a determination.
In this case, the Supreme Court did not do the weighing. Instead, it articulated the test and sent the case back to the Oregon district court to weigh the factors.
So for Ms. Wells, the case left the Supreme Court and went back to the federal court in Oregon. And so the real question is: For Ms. Wells after the Supreme Court's ruling, was it "off to court we go" (headed back to Oregon) or "home from court we go" (leaving D.C.)? I bet she never thought about that.
Standard | Posted in Discrimination, Tests, Uncategorized | Tagged Business, Owners, Right to Control, Shareholders, Supreme Court, test, Tests
Epic Ruling Clears Path: Arbitration Agreements Can Save Millions in Independent Contractor Misclassification Claims
Today in the Epic Systems case, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that in employer-employee relationships, mandatory arbitration agreements with class action waivers are lawful.
A class action waiver means that employees cannot file class actions. They must instead bring any claim individually to arbitration, one person at a time, even if there are a lot of others in the same situation.
The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the employers could require employees to sign these agreements.
The argument for allowing the agreements was that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) favors arbitration as a way to resolve disputes and says that most attempts to invalidate arbitration agreements are against the law. But there are narrow exceptions.
The argument against allowing the agreements was that the NLRA grants workers the right to engage in protected concerted activity, and filing class actions (they argue) is a type of protected concerted activity.
The court had to decide whether the NLRA's right to engage in protected concerted activity created an exception to the FAA's rule favoring arbitration. As expected, the conservative court held that mandatory employee arbitration agreements — including class action waivers — are lawful. In other words, businesses may require their employees to sign away their right to bring class actions. Read that again slowly. It's important.
What does this mean for independent contractor agreements?
The decision does not directly address independent contractor agreements, but the decision does say that the Supreme Court has rejected every other challenge to the FAA's policy favoring arbitration.
It seems pretty safe, then, to assume that the Court would allow mandatory arbitration agreements, with class action waivers, in independent contractor agreements.
Should businesses include mandatory arbitration provisions in independent contractor agreements?
There are pros and cons to arbitration, and the answer depends largely on how reliant your business is on independent contractor relationships as part of the business model. In other words, are you at risk of a class action?
If yes you are, then yes you probably should. (But please consult counsel.)
Businesses that may be at risk of a widespread finding of independent contractor misclassification can use these agreements to prevent class actions from being filed. If contractors who claim misclassification have to bring their claims individually, there is a lot less money at stake and, strategically, the incentive for plaintiffs' lawyers to take these cases is greatly diminished. Few lawyers will take a case that may be worth a few thousand dollars (or often less). Most lawyers would love a case that may be worth a few million dollars. The difference is in the numbers. Class action waivers can greatly reduce your company's risk of a large misclassification verdict.
Other advantages of arbitration include:
The results of individual arbitrations can be kept confidential, unlike court decisions. That means a finding against you will not hit the social media feeds or trade publications;
The parties select the arbitrator, which means you can ensure that your fact finder is a lawyer or has a background in the industry or type of dispute involved;
There's no risk of a runaway jury, populated by regular folks who might have an axe to grind and no sense of the value of money;
The dispute gets resolved quickly, with finality, and with no right to appeal (except in very limited circumstances)
But there are potential downsides to arbitrations too:
Filing fees can be expensive;
Arbitrators can be expensive too. They get paid by the hour, unlike a judge who is not being paid by either side (we hope);
The barrier for employees to bring a claim is lower. They don't need an attorney, and they can initiate a claim with ease, which could mean that more individual claims would be filed than if employees had to go to court;
There is no right to appeal (except in limited circumstances). This is both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on whether you win!
Arbitration agreements have pros and cons, but for businesses that make substantial use of independent contractors, an arbitration agreement with a class action waiver can be critically important in avoiding a large claim.
One final reminder: If you use an mandatory arbitration agreement, remember to include a class action waiver. That's one of the main benefits of these agreements.
Please consult with your employment lawyer to decide whether arbitration agreements are right for your business.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, Class Action, Consequences, Independent Contractor vs. Employee, Tips, Uncategorized | Tagged Agreements, Arbitration agreements, Independent Contractor Agreements, Independent Contractor Misclassification, Independent Contractor vs. Employee, Supreme Court
Arbitrator or Court: Who Decides Who Decides?
Who decides who decides? That's as fun to write as it is to think about.
On TV, sometimes the parties agree that Judge Judy can decide. (Here's how that works.) But sometimes, the parties disagree over who decides. What happens then? Who decides who decides?
That's an issue the Supreme Court is going to consider, as it relates to arbitration agreements for independent contractors in the transportation industry.
The dispute stems from an arbitration agreement between Dominic Oliviera, an independent contractor (although he's not so sure of that), and New Prime, Inc., a trucking company. Their arbitration agreement says that all disputes go to arbitration, including those about the scope of what gets arbitrated. In other words, the arbitrator gets to decide whether something is subject to arbitration. (That's not an unusual clause, by the way.)
Our protagonist Mr. O tried to bring a lawsuit, claiming wage and hour violations by New Prime. In response, New Prime pointed to the contract and said the issue had to be arbitrated. Not to be outwitted, however, Mr. O then pointed to an exception in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The FAA is the federal law favoring arbitration of disputes, but the FAA contains an exception. The FAA doesn't apply to employees in the transportation industry.
I hope I haven't bored you because here's where it gets interesting.
If the FAA exception applies, Mr. O doesn't have to arbitrate and he can go to court with his wage and hour claims instead.
But the exception only applies (it seems) if he is an employee. If he's an independent contractor, the FAA should still apply, which means that New Prime can still force him into arbitration.
Now here's where it gets really weird.
The agreement says that the arbitrator gets to decide whether the matter is subject to arbitration. But Mr. O says he's an employee and therefore he's not bound by the arbitration agreement. If he's not bound by the arbitration agreement, then New Prime can't force him to go to the arbitrator to decide whether the dispute is subject to arbitration. So, who decides who decides?
Still with me? Here's the bottom line. There are two important questions that the Supreme Court has agreed to consider in this case:
(1) Whether a dispute over applicability of the Federal Arbitration Act's Section 1 exemption is an arbitrability issue that must be resolved in arbitration pursuant to a valid delegation clause; and
(2) whether the FAA's Section 1 exemption, which applies on its face only to "contracts of employment," is inapplicable to independent contractor agreements.
For businesses using mandatory arbitration agreements, these are important issues.
Last week, in this post, we addressed Issue #2. But Issue #1 is also pretty important for businesses with arbitration agreements in the transportation industry. If the validity of those agreements is contested, who decides whether they are valid?
If the arbitrator gets to decide what is subject to arbitration, the realist deep inside you (he's roommates with the pessimist) expects that the arbitrator will keep the case. In other words, the most likely ruling by the arbitrator — who is paid by the parties by the hour to conduct the arbitration — is that the matter is going to be subject to arbitration. After all, that's what the contract says, and if the contract didn't apply, then the arbitrator never would have gotten involved in the first place.
This case won't be decided until next year.
For more information on independent contractor issues and other labor and employment developments to watch in 2018, join me in Cincinnati on March 28 for the 2018 BakerHostetler Master Class on Labor Relations and Employment Law: A Time for Change. Attendance is complimentary, but advance registration is required. Please email me if you plan to attend, [email protected], and list my name in your RSVP so I can be sure to look for you.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, Contracts, Independent Contractor, Independent Contractor vs. Employee, Non-Employee Workers, Uncategorized, What to Watch | Tagged Arbitration agreements, Independent Contractor, Independent Contractor vs. Employee, New Prime, Supreme Court
Can You Require Independent Contractor Drivers to Sign Arbitration Agreements?
How do you want your disputes decided? State court? Federal court? Arbitrator? Coin toss?
Ok, probably not coin toss, but that method is still used to break ties in local elections. (Spoiler alert: It was heads.)
Lots of businesses using independent contractors rely on arbitration agreements (with class action waivers) as a way to protect against a claim of independent contractor misclassification. Arbitration agreements with class action waivers prevent large groups of contractors from joining together in court to file class action lawsuits.
Instead, they have to bring any claims on their own. That means much less money is at stake in any individual case, and much of the incentive for hungry plaintiffs' lawyers to file these claims is gone. (So sad.)
When bound by an arbitration clause, some plaintiffs have pointed out that there is an exception under federal arbitration law that applies to transportation workers. The Federal Arbitration Act, which is the federal law favoring arbitration, doesn't apply to employees in the transportation industry.
Most courts have said this exception applies only to employees, not to independent contractors. In other words, employees in the transportation industry might not have to arbitrate their claims, but independent contractors do.
A recent court of appeals decision, though, may have changed that. The First Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the FAA transportation worker exception applies to employees and independent contractors. If true, the implications for the gig economy could be massive. Independent contractor drivers are all over the transportation industry. (Some might not be in interstate commerce, but that's a technical argument for court, not for a blog.) Uber, Lyft, FedEx. They have all switched to using mandatory arbitration agreement with their independent contractor drivers.
The Supreme Court has agreed to decide this important issue in a case called New Prime Inc. v. Oliviera.
The Court just accepted the case last week, so we won't have a ruling until next spring or summer, but this is an important case to watch for any business using independent contractors in the transportation industry. Will your arbitration agreements survive?
The issue accepted by the Supreme Court for review is: "Whether the FAA's Section 1 exemption, which applies on its face only to 'contracts of employment,' is inapplicable to independent contractor agreements."
Note for Supreme Court Watchers: This is a separate issue from the Epic Systems case already heard by the Supreme Court, which should be decided by this June. In Epic Systems, the issue is whether the National Labor Relations Act prohibits businesses from requiring their employees to sign mandatory arbitration with class action waivers. The issues are somewhat related, but distinct. Epic Systems deals with employees' arbitration agreements; New Prime deals with independent contractors and is limited to the transportation industry.
Standard | Posted in Arbitration, Contingent Workers, Contracts, Gig Economy, Independent Contractor, Non-Employee Workers, Uncategorized | Tagged Arbitration agreements, Independent Contractor Agreements, New Prime, Supreme Court
Joint Employment Tests Will Remain a Mess, Thanks to an Indecisive Supreme Court
Is your business a joint employer?
This sounds like a straightforward question. Unfortunately, it's not. The test for whether a business is a joint employer varies depending on which law is being considered and where the business is located.
Let's focus on that last part, because it is pretty ridiculous. The federal law covering overtime and minimum wage requirements is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA is a federal law, so it should mean the same thing all around the country, right? Right. It should. But it doesn't.
As we saw in this map, the test for joint employment under the FLSA varies depending on what state your business is located in.
Standard | Posted in FLSA, Joint Employment, Non-Employee Workers, Staffing Agency, Tests, Uncategorized | Tagged FLSA, Joint Employment, Supreme Court, Tests | 1 Comment | {
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Chef Ranveer Brar shares the history behind Cuban food as he explores the authentic Cuban cuisine in the Global Menu kitchen. From a sandwich to a rice preparation, Cuban food is zesty and full of flavours.
Exploring the flavours of Cuba- Chef Ranveer explores the authentic Cuban cuisine and its history.
Chef Ranveer explores Brazilian food and the history behind some prominent dishes.
Chef Ranveer Brar rustles up centuries old mouth- watering Peruvian dishes.
Chef Ranveer Brar explores the 116 year old Peruvian cuisine with Chinese tadka.
Chef Ranveer shares tidbits about the cuisine of Bolivia and finds some similarities with India.
Chef Ranveer stumbles upon the famous dish of Bolivia created by the housewives.
A Cuban classic sandwich made famous by the Americans. This recipe is a must try.
A simple Cuban rice with the classic flavour of cumin, chilli and oregano.
A delicious coconut and chocolate dessert to please your sweet tooth. | {
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CarCostCanada, Sustainability
Your Electric Cars for Sale in Canada Buyers Guide
As more Canadian's warm up to the idea of choosing a battery electric vehicle (BEV) as their next new car or light truck the range of available vehicles is rapidly expanding.
While the average selling price of new BEV's are higher than the overall market average, more affordable choices are becoming available.
The list of vehicles below represents the currently available new cars and light trucks. We will add additional models as they become available. Watch for the addition of the Chevrolet Silverado EV, Ford 150 Lightning, GMC Hummer EV Pickup, GMC Hummer EV SUV and new BEV's from Mercedes Benz and Nissan.
The Audi e-tron is a compact luxury SUV that combines the Ingolstadt, Germany-based carmaker's edgy design language and high-quality execution with a fully
electric power unit.
Sized similarly to the A7, the Audi e-tron GT is based on Porsche's Taycan and is therefore a dedicated electric four-door
coupe targeting the Tesla Model S in the luxury mid-size category.
2022 Audi e-tron Sportback
The Audi e-tron Sportback directly targets the swoopy Tesla Model Y, providing the German brand's sharp styling with full-electric propulsion in the compact luxury SUV-coupe segment.
2022 Audi e-tron S Sportback
Audi's e-tron S Sportback builds on the sleeker SUV-coupe body style of the luxury automaker's e-Tron BEV, with stronger performance overall.
The Q4 e-tron is Audi's entry-level battery electric vehicle (BEV) in Canada, smaller and more affordable than the compact luxury e-tron.
2022 Audi Q4 e-tron Sportback
The Q4 e-Tron Sportback is a sportier SUV-coupe styled version of the regular all-electric Q4 e-Tron subcompact luxury SUV.
2022 Audi RS e-Tron GT
Based on Porsche's Taycan, the RS e-Tron GT is more potent version of Audi's regular e-Tron GT, a mid-size four-door coupe that targets Tesla's Model S.
2021 BMW i3
This is the last year for BMW's funky i3, a subcompact BEV-powered hatchback featuring a carbon-fibre body and the option of a gasoline-powered range-extender engine.
2022 Chevrolet BOLT
Redesigned for 2022, Chevrolet's Bolt is a plug-in battery electric-powered subcompact hatchback that benefits from a few SUV styling details.
2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV
All new for 2022, the Chevrolet Bolt EUV is a battery-powered subcompact crossover SUV, positioned slightly above the regular Bolt EV.
Now in its second model year, Ford's Mustang Mach-E pulls its name and many styling cues from the legendary Mustang pony car but gets all-electric power and an SUV body style.
Hyundai's Ioniq 5 takes the brand's edgy styling to new electrified levels, while adding 800-volt DC fast charging for an 80-percent charge in just 18 minutes, plus over 480 km of range.
2021 Hyundai IONIQ Electric
The Hyundai IONIQ Electric, which will be discontinued at the close of 2021, shares its design with hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants. The all-electric model has a range of more than 270 km.
The Kona has been a massive hit for Hyundai. Available with gasoline and all-electric power, the latter version is capable of driving more than 400 km on a full charge.
Jaguar's I-PACE crossover was early to the luxury electric category but delivered
impressive luxury and strong performance two motors making 394 hp and 512 lb-ft of torque.
Kia's Niro comes in regular gasoline-powered form, plus as a plug-in hybrid and a pure EV, with the latter capable of driving 385 km on a single charge.
The Soul is available as a regular gasoline-powered subcompact crossover, plus as a 100-percent battery-powered EV capable of driving 383 km between charges.
The MX-30 compact crossover, Mazda's first EV, can be charged from 20 to 80 percent in about 36 minutes with a Level 3 DC 50-kW fast charger, resulting in 161 km of combined city/highway range.
2022 MINI Cooper SE
Based on Mini's smallest 3-Door hatchback, the Cooper SE is an all-electric subcompact good for up to 183 km of range and 80-percent of fast-charging in only 35 minutes.
Nissan's LEAF has long been an EV best-seller, with the latest second-generation model capable of up to 363 km of range with its larger 62 kWh battery.
Polestar is Volvo's new electrified sub-brand, with its first "1" plug-in hybrid luxury coupe finishing up production and the new "2" crossover sport sedan EV good for up to 400 km of range.
Based on the XC40 subcompact luxury SUV, also available in gasoline-power and as a plug-in hybrid, the XC40 Recharge BEV has a range of 359 km and takes a minimum of 33 minutes to charge up to 80 percent.
Canada's best-selling electric car, the Tesla Model 3 is a BMW 3 Series-sized luxury sedan capable of 3.3 seconds to 100 km/h and 576 km of range in top-line
trim.
Canada's best-selling electric crossover SUV, the Model Y is compact in size yet
mighty powerful, dashing to 100 km/h in just 3.7 seconds and capable of driving
up to 531 km on a single charge.
Tesla's first practical car, the Model S holds many racetrack records for performance, even sprinting to 100 km/h in just 2.1 seconds, despite being a comfortable mid-size luxury sedan with up to 637 km of range.
Tesla's first crossover SUV, the Model X uses powered gull-wing doors for rear entry, plus can sprint to 100 km/h in only 2.6 seconds and drive up to 536 km on a single charge.
The stylish new Volkswagen ID.4 is a new battery-electric compact crossover SUV that provides up to 400 km of pure-electric driving range in AWD-enhanced Pro trim. Additionally, ID.4 buyers get three years of free unlimited fast charging at Electrify Canada stations.
by CarCostCanada Editor January 3, 2022 January 4, 2022
Introducing CarCostCanada Concierge Service
CarCostCanada® has been helping Canadians buy and lease new vehicles since 1999. Even the best negotiators have benefitted from our service. We offer a better way to buy or lease a new car, van or truck. We provide detailed information about new car prices and programs that makes discussions with the dealer fair for everyone. For those who want more help, we offer additional services:
Can't find the exact vehicle that you want? Don't have the time (or patience) to shop around?
Do you hate negotiating with car dealers? Prefer to have an expert in your corner?
If you answered YES! to any of these questions, then our premier-level Concierge Service is designed for you!
Our Concierge Team are experienced former dealership staff who only work for you. We're on your side, we do the heavy lifting; you reap the benefits. All for only $199 (plus taxes).
Our paid Concierge experts are on call; however, our Free Pro Membership (including 2 complimentary Price Reports and other benefits) is always available for those who want to learn more at no cost. Whether you use our Free Membership or Paid Concierge services, you will join over 400,000 Canadians who have benefited from our Best Price Formula and saved on their new cars and trucks.
CarCostCanada empowers new vehicle buyers like you by levelling the playing field. Over the years, CarCostCanada has helped Canadians save close to $3 Billion dollars (that's a lot of zeros) off their new car deals! Our proprietary Invoice Price Reports include New Car Invoice (Dealer Cost) Information, Advertised and Non-Advertised Incentives, Cash Rebates, Special Finance, and Lease Rates. Our Price Reports also include Pricing Guidance, a recommended price category for each new vehicle.
Hire our in-house experts and enjoy our premier-level Concierge Service. Our Concierge Team will work with you to provide everything you need; from price negotiation and trade-in advice, to supply and location considerations, we cover all the bases. And of course, with our 100% money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose! We have over 150 years of combined dealership experience. We know how to work with dealers because we were dealers! We even wrote a book on how to buy a new car. Not ready to hire us, but want to find out more? Sign up for our free service using the link below, or contact us by live chat, email us, or call 1.866.453.6995 ext 200
by Shagun Benipal November 24, 2021 December 2, 2021
2021 Mazda CX-5: Trusted Mainstream Name, Premium Next-Level Experience
The Mazda brand is one synonymous with premium luxury without the premium cost, and that's with no expense spared when it comes to performance, comfort, and both the driver and passenger experience. Through attention to detail, the recurrent use of premium materials, KODO design language and feature set, it's no wonder that the Mazda CX-5 is regarded as one of the most dependable and fun-to-drive compact SUV models on the market.
Today, let's get behind the wheel, pop the hood, and get to know the 2021 version of this icon further.
Practical Comfort-Focused Features
With heated and multi-adjustable seating options for the driver and all passengers, built-in electronic stability control, and fine leather-trimmed upholstery, the 2021 Mazda CX-5 is not only a smoother ride but a more soothing and comfortable one. Specific trims like the GT model receive added bonuses including heated rear seats and a built-in premium sound system by Bose – one that you won't soon forget upon hearing it. Sunroof options are also available. With five different trim levels to choose from including Sport, Touring, Grant Touring, Grand Touring Reserve and Signature, there are even more ways to narrow down your needs and wants to find the right CX-5 for your use case and budget.
Navigation Innovation
Depending on the trim model that interests you, a bevy of state-of-the-art navigation features will be included. From dedicated blind-spot monitoring, stop-and-go functionality, an active driving display (found on the GT model), and parking sensors to optional all-wheel-drive configurations and more, you won't be short on conveniences. Each feature is optimized to be anything but intrusive, paired with seamless infotainment incorporating Mazda Connect services. Drivers and passengers alike also benefit from keyless entry, built-in cruise control, and user inputs that are easy to manage without being overwhelming. It's not just about giving more options – it's about encouraging you to make full use of them to improve your experience, safety, and comfort on or off the road.
Top-Notch Performance in All Trim Levels
We know many of you are keen on numbers, and rightly so. The 2021 CX-5 features a 2.5-litre Skyactiv-G DOHC 16-valve l4, six-speed automatic engine along with four-wheel ABS. This configuration can be found on almost all models, though the GT can be custom-ordered with an optional 2.5-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged engine that delivers up to 310 pounds per foot of torque and 252 horsepower. Other onboard performance features include driveline traction control, Smart City brake support, a tire pressure warning system, rear cross-traffic alerts, e-parking brakes, and electronic stability control.
Regardless of which trim you opt for, know that this is a pure-blooded Mazda. That means exceptional fuel efficiency, with an average of 24 miles per gallon in the city, 30 for highways, and 26 combined. It also means, thanks to the Skyactiv technologies and navigational features we touched on earlier, that each ride will be smoother with highly responsive handling. And, with a focus on exterior aerodynamics and interior comfort, ambient noise and vibrations are kept to a minimum in the cabin even in busy environments – perfect for a stress-free daily commute or road trip through a new-to-you city.
Mazda Hallmarks on Full Display
Mazda has always been a brand focused on never settling. Good design and innovation means never staying still, instead, continuing to search for improvement. In many ways, the company's design and engineering teams carry forward a passion for a welcoming, efficient, smooth ride for all. The 2021 Mazda CX exemplifies this approach with further refined feature sets, premium touches, and optimized performance.
All in all, now's a great time to consider a recent or brand-new Mazda given the strides the company has made with its proven blend of innovation and sensible design. The latest Mazda CX-5 is tangible proof of this in action. We're sure that each year to come will bring continued refinement of the beloved mainstream compact SUV – a vehicle that challenges the preconceptions of its class and looks, feels, and performs anything like one.
by CarCostCanada Editor October 12, 2021 October 13, 2021
CarCostCanada's Comments on Current Automotive Market Conditions
CarCostCanada® receives ongoing feedback from thousands of members and hundreds of dealer partners. We wanted to share our thoughts about the current automotive landscape in Canada and how we can help.
Sales are up. So are back orders.
2020 was a bad year for new vehicle sales vs previous years. But the rebound this year has caused more challenges. The latest StatsCan data shows Canadian light vehicle sales are up roughly 19% over same period in 2020. From a planning and delivery standpoint, unfortunately most manufacturers were unable to respond quickly to this increased demand, precisely when Canadians were excited to get back outside, on the road, and buy new vehicles.
To make matters worse, as business ramps up again, competition from big corporate (and government) "fleets" to restock their supply is at an all the time high, precisely when supply is at an all time low. Dealers are telling us there are thousands of corporate "back-orders". Coupled with supply and materials delays at "up-fitters" (companies who modify vehicles – think of the cable van with the ladders on the roof), many fleet orders are backlogged all the way out to spring 2022.
The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting supply shortfall has created a lack of inventory for many popular new car and light trucks. Car dealers are experiencing unprecedented low inventory levels. One large Toronto area dealer we spoke with has less then 10 days supply on ground. Where they would normally have up to 400 cars and trucks in stock, they currently have less than 50, and most "in demand" models are unavailable.
Another important piece to this puzzle is the increased supply of money in our system, along with persistent and consistent low interest rates from the Bank of Canada. Canadians have more cash in the bank than any other time in history and borrowing rates are as low as 0%.
Maybe I should buy a used car?
Partly due to limited new car inventory, and also because certain sectors of the Canadian workforce have seen reduced income due to Covid-19 work disruption, there's been a surge in used car sales this year and an overall spike in prices.
In some cases, certain "in demand" vehicles, for example 2020 Ford F150 and Toyota RAV4, are commanding prices equal to the price people paid when they were sold new in 2019!
CarCostCanada has been surveying our members buying habits and opinions for over 10 years and we learn many things from all this customer feedback. One thing people mention is that if they decide they must have a certain model and they can't find it new, they are sometimes willing to pay a premium for a lightly used version.
Our advice is to find a balance between your current identified need and the time frame required for a quality new car dealer to supply a new vehicle (ordered from the factory at a discounted price). In some cases the timetables won't work and a used car or different model of new vehicle may be the only option. If you are thinking new is an alternative, before you make your final decision, speak to Member Support at CarCostCanada to receive the latest information about the models you are considering.
Canadians are ready to buy, but there's no supply.
From some buyers point of view, dealers have become less cooperative and are expressing resistance to discounting. Since dealers have fewer vehicles to sell and they still want to stay profitable, they are tending to hold the line on discounting. It's becoming increasingly difficult for the average consumer to see large savings off M.S.R.P. at dealerships. In conjunction with that, some manufacturers have reduced their discounts and incentives because once again they have less vehicles to sell and less money to give away as a result.
So, we have a supply disruption, an increase in demand and the response from most automotive dealers from the country has been to hold dearly to their profit margins.
We get it – times are tough. If you need to buy/lease a new car right now, Canadian consumers may be forced to pay more then they would like. However, historically, CarCostCanada members have shown themselves to be thoughtful, forward-thinking planners who generally don't rush right out and purchase the next bright shiny object! We encourage our members and all Canadians to consider their circumstances and plan accordingly for the eventual supply increases. If you can hold off a while, then hold off.
Will this affect my lease?
There's always discussion about how market conditions affect leases that are about to expiry. The manufacturers and leasing companies are being very flexible with lease extensions. This is one way to defer the final decision and continue to keep your existing vehicle a little bit longer on your current payment plan. Of course when you do so, if you do eventually buy out the vehicle, those payments have been helping pay down the principal as well.
In other cases, buying out the lease is an excellent choice to keep your very good vehicle. We recommend if you do buyout that you plan to sell or trade-in at some point in the next couple of years. The incidence of repair costs increases after 5 or 6 years and more importantly it is quite possible you will be very impressed at how much the dealer will pay for your 5 or 6 year old vehicle. For many years now we have seen cases where someone buys out their lease, drives it for a while and then trades it in for close to or equal of what they paid for the buyout!
But what if I need a new vehicle now (or soon)?
CarCostCanada can help and connect you with dealers who will still work with you, even in these difficult times. CarCostCanada offers several valuable tools and resources to understand and identify where the best deals are, right now and has been doing so since 1999.
With hundreds of combined years of industry insider experience, we have deep awareness of which vehicles in which market places are still readily available and how our members can enjoy savings on their leases and purchases.
Our team is in touch dealer by dealer and brand by brand looking for the best deals and identifying dealers who recognize that satisfying customer needs and promoting long term goodwill is their first priority.
Our popular (and free to new users) Price Report service includes a "comparable vehicle" function that shows you vehicles we think may interest you that offer similar quality and features at a potentially better value/price proposition.
In addition, we offer a paid service where you can leverage our Concierge Experts to help you find the vehicle you are looking for and achieve a deal that you are happy with!
All of this and more is available with a call 1.866.453.6995, live chat or email to our Customer Service Team.
CarCostCanada is here with all the available data and information, not only the price, but also the hidden rebates and incentives, loyalty programs, special inducements and interest rates available to you in the marketplace. Visit carcostcanada.com to learn more.
by CarCostCanada Editor October 7, 2021 October 7, 2021
See how Mike saved over $5,000 on his new Audi S4
Buying a car, even if it's not your first, is a big decision. You have a lot to think about and you want to make sure you don't forget anything. Most of all, you want to make sure you pay the right price for what you really need.
Making the right decision can be easier and save you thousands of dollars just by using CarCostCanada. In fact, they offer free price reports that help most Canadians negotiate when buying a new car. Canadians across the country are now sharing their stories to show how anyone can save thousands of dollars on their next new car purchase by using CarCostCanada's services.
This week, let's take a look at Mike's story and find out how he saved over $5,000 on his new Audi S4 with CarCostCanada's free price report.
Saving more even on a high end car
Mike is a 28 year old active man from Toronto, Ontario. He works in finance and is often on the road meeting new clients. However, he also enjoys playing baseball on the weekends and getting together with friends for a beer after work. Mike is single, has no children.
Following a recent promotion, Mike wanted a new car to match his success. So, to make sure he was making the right decision, Mike decided to shop around with the help of CarCostCanada. A friend of his told him about the online price reports of CarCostCanada and said it would not only help him find the perfect car, but also save him a lot of money.
Getting the best price on a new car in 3 easy steps
In 3 easy steps, he was able to build his price report online. First, he built and priced his new car using CarCostCanada's free report tool, just as he would have done on the manufacturer's website.
Once the price report was generated, he obtained the best price formula for his specific model by taking the dealer cost minus the incentive plus the dealer margin to see what the best possible price would be.
Finally, the tool helped him find the nearest dealer and meet with one of their professional representatives to get the best price and an exceptional buying experience.
Mike was looking for a car that would make a good impression when he met new clients and went out with his friends. He decided to go with the Audi S4, the car of his dreams, which is a young and good looking car, just like him.
Finally, in the process of buying his new car, Mike was able to save over $5000.
About CarCostCanada
Since 1999 we have provided Canadian New Car Buyers with access to our proprietary Dealer Invoice Price Reports.
Complementing the Dealer Invoice Price Reports, we also have an in-house team of automotive professionals with over an accumulated 100 years of experience and a Canada-Wide New Car Dealer Network.
by Blog Editor August 27, 2021
Porsche retained value tops all rivals in Canadian Black Book
The 911 has earned highest retained value in its Premium Sporty Car segment for two years running.
No matter whether on the road or at the track, Porsche makes a habit of performing at the front of the pack. After the sports car brand managed to attain the highest position possible in the Canadian Black Book (CBB) "2021 Overall Brand Award – Luxury" category for three consecutive years, it once again achieved the top spot in the latest 2021 study.
Porsche actually scores well in all of its categories, with the Panamera retaining the highest percentage of any competitor in its Prestige Luxury Car segment, a feat it's attained for the past eight years. Similarly, the Macan, which earned the highest score in its Compact Luxury Crossover division yet again, has owned this position for three years in a row, while the legendary 911 has been on top of the Premium Sporty Car class for two years as of the 2021 CBB study.
The Panamera, shown here in 2021 GTS trim, has won its Prestige Luxury Car class for eight years in a row.
"We are honoured and delighted to accept the Overall Brand Award – Luxury as well as three model accolades from Canadian Black Book this year," noted Marc Ouayoun, President and CEO, Porsche Cars Canada, Ltd. "Consumers have many available choices in the market and we welcome these recognitions, which provide an additional reason to consider the brand. These outstanding acknowledgments by the leading authority highlight strong value retentions which ultimately benefit the customer."
The Canadian Black Book study ranks vehicles on the retained percentage of their manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) after four years. Holding on to a high value means that ownership will cost less when it comes time for reselling or trading in for a new model, so this is a very important metric.
The Macan, pictured in GTS trim, has outranked all Compact Luxury Crossover category rivals in retained value for three years consecutively.
To find out more on the latest Panamera, Macan and 911, which are currently being offered with factory leasing and financing rates from zero percent, see our 2021 Porsche Panamera Canada Prices page, our 2021 Porsche Macan Canada Prices page, and our 2022 and 2021 Porsche 911 Canada Prices pages, where you can get the latest pricing info along with the various trims and options, plus you can learn about available manufacturer rebates and dealer invoice pricing that could save you thousands.
Make sure to find out how a CarCostCanada membership can benefit you when purchasing your next new vehicle, and remember to download our free app from the Apple Store or Google Play Store so you can have all of this info and more available whenever you need it.
Story credits: Trevor Hofmann
Photo credits: Porsche
by CarCostCanada Editor August 10, 2021 August 10, 2021
New Kia Sportage promises to be ultra-advanced
The upcoming 2023 Sportage further modernizes Kia's already advanced design language.
Have you checked out Kia's latest SUV lineup lately? It's gone from all curves to sharp angles and complex creases, not unlike its sister-brand Hyundai's updated crossover lineup.
The hierarchy of Kia SUV models now includes the entry-level Seltos, the always future-think Soul (which includes an EV option), the second-rung Niro (which provides plug-in hybrid and EV variants), the compact Sportage, the mid-size three-row Sorento, and finally the larger and longer mid-size three-row Telluride, with only the Niro and Sportage needing updates to the brand's edgier new design language.
The new Sportage will stand out just as much from the rear as it does from the front.
Heck, even the new Carnival minivan (which replaced the Sedona) looks like a chunky SUV now, while the always sharp looking Stinger was also updated for 2022, whereas the mid-size K5 (nee Optima) sedan received its redesign for 2021, as did the subcompact Rio (although not as thoroughly) that's now only available as a hatch (you might find a heavily discounted 2020 Rio sedan if you look far and wide enough). The compact Forte sedan and hatchback, on the other hand, are expected to be refreshed for 2022, soon putting the entire South Korean brand at the leading edge of modern-day styling.
The Sportage' angular new design makes it look longer and leaner than its curvaceous predecessor.
While all of the new Kia SUV designs are advanced looking, the new Sportage might just be the most futuristic of all. Such was the case for the outgoing Sportage when its third-generation debuted back in 2010 and fourth-gen model arrived in 2016, the latter looking a bit like a scaled down Porsche Cayenne. This made sense considering all the German designers filling up the brand's studios, as does the new 2023 version's similarities to Audi's Q8 and Lamborghini's Urus.
This means the new fifth-gen Sportage should catch the gaze of passersby, although some of these will merely be trying to figure out where the headlamps are. In fact, these are integrated into two boomerang-shaped LED clusters beside the wide glossy black front grille, which itself is situated under a couple of narrow, horizontal nostril-like vents. While a somewhat radical redesign, it should still be pleasing to most compact SUV buyers that tend to want sporty yet practical alternatives to their less-appealing cars.
Like the current model, the new Sportage should provide light off-road capability, especially with optional AWD.
From the side view, the new Sportage provides more aggressive sculpting on the door panels than most rivals, plus a narrow greenhouse on top, for increased visual length, while some stylish detailing on the lower rockers gives it that critically important SUV look.
The new Sportage appears more conventional from its hind end, thanks to body-wide taillights that add to its wide-looking stance, plus a thin mid-section that almost makes it seem as if it was stretched into place. All of these delicate details support a substantive rear bumper that's visual extended from the just-mentioned black rocker panels, continuing upward to enclose about two-thirds the CUV's backside, before being capped off by some angular metal-like trim mirroring a similar treatment on the side rockers and lower front fascia, the latter items surrounding two LED fog lights. The entire package rolls on some similarly edgy alloy wheels that look quite large in the as-shown trim, and featuring machine-finishing with glossy-black pockets.
The new Sportage' interior is just as modern-looking as its exterior design.
"Reinventing the Sportage gave our talented design teams a tremendous opportunity to do something new; to take inspiration from the recent brand relaunch and introduction of EV6 to inspire customers through modern and innovative SUV design," commented Karim Habib, Senior Vice President and Head of Global Design Center, in a press release. "With the all-new Sportage, we didn't simply want to take one step forward but instead move on to a different level in the SUV class."
Check out the 2023 Sportage' dual-screen gauge cluster/infotainment design.
Kia calls its new design language "Opposites United", a theme that continues inside the cabin where uniquely shaped HVAC vents and horizontally-organized instrument panel trim joins up to form parentheses-like structures that incorporate a very large dual-display primary gauge cluster and infotainment touchscreen within.
The large single-screen setup pulls forward a driver display/infotainment design used recently by both Kia and its parental Hyundai brand, which must be said is similar to Mercedes' MBUX dash design. Ironically (this being a Kia), it incorporates some camera technologies that are much more advanced than anything on offer from the German luxury brand, particularly its rear-facing camera system that automatically shows right/left rearward views when flicking either turn signal.
The infotainment touchscreen is nothing less than massive for this compact class.
A row of switches continues the horizontal theme just underneath, integrating a well-organized two-zone auto HVAC interface at its mid-point, all before a gently sloping piano-black lacquered centre console gets stuffed full of drive functions such as an engine start/stop button, a rotating gear selection dial, a driving mode selector, and more, while switches for the heatable and cooled front seats, plus the heated steering wheel can be found right next door. A wireless charging pad probably sits under a lidded compartment just in front of this cluster of controls, plus all the expected USB ports and other connectivity/charging alternatives.
A highly advanced array of buttons and knobs make up the new Sportage' lower console, the big dial in the middle for selecting gears.
"When you see the all-new Sportage in person, with its sleek but powerfully dynamic stance, and when you sit inside the detailed-oriented cabin with its beautifully detailed interior and first-class materials, you'll see we have achieved those goals and set new benchmarks," continued Habib. "In the all-new Sportage, we believe you can see the future of our brand and our products."
So far, Kia hasn't shown off any other details, such as the new Sportage's front and rear seats or its cargo area, but interior capacities should be similar to the new Hyundai Tucson that shares the Sportage' underpinnings. That compact crossover SUV has grown in size since also being renewed for 2022, now stretching 4,605 mm (181.3 inches) from front to back, making it 155 mm (6.1 in) lengthier than its predecessor, with a 86 mm (3.4 in) longer wheelbase at 2,751 mm (108.3 in), while it's about half an inch (12-13 mm) wider and similarly taller than the 2021 crossover it sent packing.
This alternative lower console view shows its nicely sloped arrangement.
Kia's Sportage has long shared its mechanical setup with the Tucson too, so we're expecting a version of the same 2.5-litre four-cylinder powerplant that currently puts out 190 horsepower and 182 lb-ft of torque in the 2022 Hyundai. The new Tucson also features an efficient eight-speed automatic gearbox across its entire trim line, which should be the only transmission used in the Sportage too, while Hyundai's compact SUV includes both FWD and AWD alternatives, common in this class.
Of course, we'll get more details when the new 2023 Sportage arrives, which should be sometime in calendar year 2022, at which point we should also find out if it receives an off-road focused X-Line variant, and/or the Tucson's electrified power units, which currently include both hybrid and plug-in hybrid alternatives.
The 2023 Sportage should help grow the entire brand in Canada, due to the importance of its compact SUV category.
For the time being, Kia is offering the latest 2022 Sportage with up to $1,000 in additional incentives, while buyers of 2021 models get up to $2,500 off. Also notable, CarCostCanada members are currently saving an average of $2,386, so check our 2022 and 2021 Kia Sportage Canada Prices pages for all the details, including complete trim pricing with all available options and colours.
Additionally, find out how the CarCostCanada system works so you can save the most money possible when purchasing your next new vehicle purchase. A CarCostCanada membership provides manufacturer rebate information, factory financing and leasing deals, plus dealer invoice pricing that can save you thousands on its own. Also, be sure to download the free CarCostCanada app from the Google Play Store or Apple Store, so you'll have all of this valuable info on your personal device exactly when you need it.
Story by Trevor Hofmann
Photos by Kia
2021 Buick Enclave Essence ST Road Test
Although four years since its second-gen redesign, the Enclave still looks good, even in base Essence trim.
As the years start to stack up and there's more of them behind you than ahead, to hear you're aging gracefully is quite the compliment. Such could be said of Buick's current Enclave, a three-row crossover SUV that's now been with us in its current second-generation form for four years. Certainly, that's not long by human standards, but it's a full product cycle in automotive years, albeit not compared to the first-generation Enclave that, despite a mid-cycle refresh in 2013, lasted for an entire decade.
The SUV being reviewed here was as up-to-date as possible when being tested, but as it happens, 2021 is the Enclave's last model year before getting a fairly comprehensive makeover. Its underpinnings will remain the same, but its styling will look a lot fresher, and not unlike the much sleeker and more modern looking second-gen Chinese-market version that's been available since last year.
Long and accommodating, all Enclave trims provide impressive roominess in all seating positions, plus plenty of cargo space.
Sure, you can wait for a 2022, which actually gets reduced by $300 at the base level, but there's opportunity to take advantage of end-of-lifecycle savings if you choose a 2021 over the new 2022 model, so as long as you don't need to have the latest and greatest styling, the outgoing Enclave is still one very attractive family hauler. It's also a very affordable one, at least when comparing it to longstanding luxury brands that it more or less competes against. To be clear, three-row SUV buyers won't likely be shopping the Enclave against BMW's X7 or Mercedes' GLS, simply because their price points are nowhere near each other.
There's nothing particularly unique about the Enclave's rear design, but it's certainly not offensive.
A base Enclave Essence starts at $48,398, or $51,398 with as-tested all-wheel drive. That's similar pricing to fully loaded alternatives from Honda, Hyundai, Kia or Toyota, which arguably offer more features (and sometimes more luxury) for the money, but none of these rise up to $70k, which is possible when adding all the options to the Enclave Avenir. That's around where a base Audi Q7 starts, and plenty of other premium-branded three-row SUVs, although an equivalent entry-level GLS will set you back an astonishing $101,900, just a bit less than what you'll need to pay for the least expensive X7, which starts at $102,900.
A $1,495 Sport Touring upgrade package adds this sporty black mesh grille.
This in mind, Buick, and its Enclave fall into the entry-level luxury sector, along with competitors like the $48,995 Infiniti QX60, $56,405 Acura MDX, and possibly the $59,700 three-row Lexus RX 350 L (which is only meant for small kids in the third row), although if we're moving all the way up to the $60k starting point, we should probably include GM's own Cadillac XT6 that rides on the same stretched C1XX platform (more or less) as the Enclave (and the Chevy Traverse, GMC Acadia), yet starts at $57,998. Everything else in this class retails over the $60,000 threshold, and while that's about where the aforementioned Enclave Avenir can be had ($62,298), this Enclave Essence is the model Buick gave me to test, and therefore targets a different entry-level luxury client.
LED headlamps come standard across the Enclave line.
I don't know if that last exercise was done more for my own clarification of where Buick fits into the scheme of luxury things, or as a way for you to come to grips with the same, but in any case, it's good to understand that Buick fills an important niche in the middle of the automotive class hierarchy, and its relatively strong sales more or less prove that reality.
Despite only offering five models (the 2020 Regal Sportback of which has already been sent off to that great four-door sedan graveyard in the sky—it's a five-door really, as its trunk is actually a hatch), Buick managed to rank sixth amongst premium brands in Canada thanks to 15,957 units being sold last year, which puts it only 755 sales behind Acura, plus more than twice as much as Lincoln (7,155) and almost three times as many deliveries as Infiniti after a particularly gutting year. What's more, as of Q2 2021's close, Buick's 8,277 delivery total had already blasted past Acura's rather sluggish 7,465 tally, although Cadillac's XT6 appears to be on a roll with 8,402 examples out the door, so therefore Buick maintains its sixth position.
These sporty machine-finished 20-inch alloys with black-painted pockets come with the optional ST package.
The Enclave wasn't quite as strong in its mid-size three-row luxury SUV category last year as the Buick brand, but amongst dedicated premium three-row family haulers it ranked seventh out of 11 competitors with 1,773 deliveries (I'm not including Bentley's Bentayga on this list for obvious reasons). This said, so far this year it's doing a bit better with 1,270 units down the road already, placing it ahead of Mercedes' GLS (1,148), Lincoln's Aviator (926), and Infiniti's QX60 (687) that's getting an even more dramatic redesign for 2022.
Nice chrome faux "door hinge" garnishes add to the Enclave's upscale appearance.
Cadillac's XT6 (973) lagged a bit behind the Enclave over the first six months of this year, as did BMW's X7 (522), Lexus' GX (161), and Land Rover's Discovery (103), which seems to be getting killed by the new Defender (1,057). Tally all this up and it's easy to understand why the Buick brand and this Enclave model are so important to General Motors (a total of 3,264 combined Enclave and XT6 sales puts GM close to Acura's MDX), but after factoring in their even greater strength in the U.S. and yet stronger presence in China, this information might also help build confidence that Buick isn't about to leave our market anytime soon—unfortunately I can't confirm that for Infiniti.
Sharp looking taillights get spliced by sharp blade-like bright metal trim, while that tiny "ST" badge refers to this example's Sport Touring package.
The upcoming 2022 Enclave refresh should further improve the model's sales when it arrives later this year, as long as Buick doesn't dump any leftover 2021s on the market before the new one gets here. The fact Buick is only offering customers up to $1,000 in additional incentives is a good sign they have inventories in check, but stay tuned to CarCostCanada for any further discount info. Also, take note that CarCostCanada members who purchased a new 2021 Enclave saved an average of $2,625 thanks to knowing the SUV's dealer invoice price before negotiating their best deal, which means it's a good idea to find out how their very affordable membership works, and how easy it is to use from anywhere via their free app that can be downloaded from the Apple Store or Google Play Store.
Even the base Enclave's interior should cause pause to anyone questioning whether this SUV deserves premium status.
As for the 2021 Enclave Essence being reviewed here, my tester was not only upgraded with AWD, but also received a stylish $1,495 Sport Touring upgrade package that includes a sporty black mesh grille, glossed-black Pitch Dark Night lower accent trim, and 20-inch alloys instead of the standard 18s. This gets added to a base model that also features automatic on/off LED headlamps and heated power-folding exterior mirrors, on the outside, plus proximity access to get you inside.
The Enclave's driver positioning should be good for all body types, while its cockpit layout is easy to use and filled with standard features.
Once seated, pushbutton ignition gets the engine going, while additional standard features include an auto-dimming centre mirror, a 4.2-inch colour multi-information display within the gauge cluster, an 8.0-inch touchscreen at dash-central, integrating Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, a 10-speaker Bose audio system, a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot, a universal garage door opener, a powered tilt and telescopic steering column, a heated leather-wrapped steering wheel, a Safety Alert driver's seat that uses vibrations to warn, perforated leather seat upholstery, three-way heatable and ventilated powered front seats with four-way lumbar support, two-position driver memory, three-zone auto HVAC with a set of rear controls, heatable second-row captain's chairs resulting in seven-passenger capability (a bench for the second row resulting in a total of eight occupants is available), a power-folding 60/40-split third row, a hands-free powered liftgate, a 120-volt power outlet, remote start, etcetera.
The primary gauge cluster works as it needs to and is pleasantly designed, but it lacks the tech offered by most rivals.
All Enclaves include the Buick Driver Confidence Plus package of advanced driver assistance and safety technologies as standard too, which includes a Following Distance Indicator, Forward Collision Alert, and Rear Cross Traffic Alert with Automatic Emergency Braking and Front Pedestrian Braking, as well as Lane Departure Warning with Lane Keep Assist, Side Blind Zone Alert with Lane Change Alert, front and rear Park Assist, and IntelliBeam auto high beam assist headlights.
The Enclave's centre stack is intelligently laid out, and the infotainment system is top-notch.
Believe me, I never once felt like I was slumming it in this Buick, even in its base trim. Actually, standard features like cloth-wrapped A, B and C pillars gave it a true premium feel, as did better-than-average soft composite materials on top of the dash and atop the front and rear side window sills. It's also impressive across the front of the instrument panel, and the lower section of that IP ahead of the front passenger, which extends below the infotainment touchscreen and along the right side of the lower console. Buick made a point of stitching nicely padded leatherette on the sides of that centre stack and lower console, the left side of which is padded further to protect the driver's inner knee from chafing, while this pampering surface treatment extends down to the armrest as well. These areas were done out in a particularly attractive caramel brown in my tester, perfectly matching the seats and door inserts that were also stitched, the former also featuring perforated leather inserts.
The infotainment system's graphics are easy to understand, this "page" showing the tri-zone climate control system's functions.
Additionally, the seat surface leather is suppler than some others at the Enclave Essence's price point too, plus those aforementioned heated front cushions warm up to near therapeutic levels. Warmth in mind, the climate control interface, while appearing a bit rudimentary, did its job well, and while it could be a bit more upscale to look at my eyes were more easily pulled toward the centre display overtop, which has to be one of the simplest to use in the segment.
The Enclave's standard 9-speed automatic transmission is ultra-smooth, as expected, but also surprisingly sporty.
I generally like General Motors' infotainment systems, and while I appreciate Chevrolet's more colourful Apple-inspired interface even more than this classier design from Buick, they both work identically and utilize a full colour palette for graphically stimulating controls. I found this latest version responded to inputs quickly, which was particularly notable when jiggling the navigation map around with my fingertips. I should also note that GM's navigation/GPS system has never once led me astray either, so a big hand to the automaker's tech department that does infotainment very well. Important also, the rearview camera was clear and its moving guidelines useful, while the standard Bose audio system was very good.
Comfort yes, but the base front seats' lateral support aren't up to the SUV's handling capability.
As for the Enclave's primary gauge cluster, it's not very enticing. The chrome trimmed analogue dials are ok, these placed bookending another set of chrome-edged gas and engine temp meters above, but the tiny square multi-information display kind of looks like an aftermarket add-on. This comes at a time that competitors are arriving with fully digital clusters that show virtual gauges one minute and giant maps the next. Some brands are even including rear-facing camera monitors in their clusters, so Buick needs to up the ante in this respect. Fortunately, even this base Enclave's steering wheel is excellent, with high-quality leather and an impressively sporty feel, while the spokes' switchgear well-made and works as it should.
The standard second-row captain's chairs are a step up from the optional bench.
Looking up to the overhead console could be summed up as a trip back to yesteryear too, although it's functional and happily includes a sunglasses holder, as well as LED reading lights and switches for the universal remote, OnStar, SOS, plus more. You won't find a power sunroof button, as this base trim doesn't include a sunroof, and I have to say it's weird not seeing a sunroof in a roof this large.
Nevertheless, I found it easy to find an ideal driving position thanks to a manual tilt and telescopic steering wheel with loads of rearward reach, while the seats were comfortable, although without much lateral support, therefore if you're looking to use this Enclave to snake through fast-paced corners, you'll probably want to find something other than the steering wheel to hold on to. This is only worth mentioning because the Enclave handles well, partially due to the 20-inch wheel and 255/55 tire upgrade noted earlier, so it might be a good idea for performance fans to look upstream to a fancier trim line in order to find more aggressive seat bolstering.
Getting into the third row is ultra-easy thanks to innovative second-row captain's chairs that pop up and move right out of the way.
Similarly, the Enclave Essence model's second-row captain's chair backrests are almost totally flat, although rear passengers can fold down their individual centre armrests to hang on. The second-row seats are mostly comfortable, however, with good legroom when slid all the way rearward. Those in the second row will also appreciate the previously mentioned rear climate control panel on the backside of the front console, which includes seat warming switchgear. This is where you can also find a set of USB chargers, but oddly no air vents. Don't worry, though, as these are intelligently integrated within the roof, as are another set of vents for third-row passengers, and likewise for the LED reading lamps.
If you regularly use a third row, the Enclave should be high on your list as the rearmost seat is roomy.
It's easy to flip the second-row seats up and out of the way for getting into the very back, only necessitating a mild pull on a handle atop the backrest, while another lever below flips them down for storage. Before getting into cargo capacity, rear occupants enjoy separate USB charging ports, not to mention fairly large rear quarter windows for good outward visibility. I found the third-row seats comfortable too, not to mention reasonably roomy. Buick left good space for legs and feet, especially when the second-row seats are pulled slightly forward.
As for cargo, they fold down relatively flat, as does the second row, providing more storage capacity than most of their peers. In fact, I was able to load up a double-wide Ikea Pax wardrobe inside, including its rather bulky glass sliding door system, with room left over. By the numbers, the Enclave can manage up to 2,764 litres of what-have-you behind the front seats, 1,642 litres aft of the second row, and 668 litres in back of the third row.
This vantage point shows how much legroom is offered to rear passengers, not to mention the large rear quarter windows.
Even when loaded up with gear the Enclave was no slouch off the line, its 3.6-litre V6 making a healthy 310 horsepower and 266 lb-ft of torque for plenty of straight-line performance. It's conjoined to a nine-speed autobox that not only aids fuel economy with a fairly good rating of 13.0 L/100km city, 9.1 highway and 11.2 combined with FWD, or a respective 13.6, 9.6 and 11.8 in as-tested AWD, partially thanks to standard idle start/stop technology, but it also provides wonderfully smooth shift up and down the range.
Then again, engaging manual mode and its steering wheel-mounted paddles transform this calm, sedate traveler into a much sportier canyon carver, or at least it was much more enjoyable than I initially expected. BMW doesn't even go so far as to hold the X5 or X7 engine's redlines before upshifting, so a big hand for Buick's engineers that give the Enclave such strong performance. The V6 also makes a nice growl at full throttle, although I wouldn't take that to mean it'll outshine those BMWs as far as engine auditory tracks go.
Compared to most three-row rivals, this is a lot of dedicated cargo space.
I think ride quality will matter more to most Buick buyers than all-out performance, however, and to that end the Enclave's driver and many passengers will be nicely isolated from exterior elements no matter the speeds being traveled or environment outside. Although I found there was more wind buffeting on the highway than expected. It wasn't the side windows (I checked), but it may be something specific to my test model's door seals. Buick prides itself in providing near tomblike silent interiors, so it could also be possible that more of Buick's "Quiet Tuning" technologies get added to upper trims. Either way, make sure you look for this on your test drive.
How's that for total cargo volume? The Enclave provides one of the most accommodating interiors in its class.
Even if the Enclave Essence is a bit noisier at highway speeds than it should be, it's hard to argue against its sub-$50k price point. That it competes so well against others that cost thousands more should be taken into consideration, but then again it also gets out-muscled for features and refinement by some newcomers in the volume-branded mainstream category. This is a very competitive market segment, and the upcoming 2022 Enclave should address some of my minor complaints.
On that note, I don't think any of my grumblings should put you off testing a 2021 Enclave, and at least comparing it to its rivals, especially when factoring in Buick's enviably high ranking in J.D. Power and Associates' 2021 Vehicle Dependability Study, where it sits fifth overall and just third amongst luxury brands.
Review and photos by Trevor Hofmann
Buick shows off fully refreshed Enclave for 2022
The new 2022 Buick Enclave should find universal appeal from a styling perspective, especially in top-line Avenir trim.
Buick recently unveiled its refreshed 2022 Enclave, and one glance should be all that fans of the brand need in order to trade up to the new model. To be clear, the refresh is more about evolution than revolution, with the majority of styling updates pulled over from its predecessor.
The second-generation Enclave arrived on the scene in 2017 as a 2018 model, unless you're reading this from China where a unique version appeared two years later for the 2020 model year. The two designs seem to have been melded into one for this 2022 Enclave, which is a very good thing for those who appreciate elegant conservatism over edgy modernity.
That's one big new grille, although it still comes across as classy, which is important for the brand's more conservative clientele.
As most in this camp with agree, the outgoing 2021 Enclave was already a very good-looking mid-size crossover SUV, with its Chinese alternate arguably being even more attractive. Changes made to this mid-cycle update include a larger grille for even greater premium presence, new headlights and tail lamps for yet more visual fluidity at its backside, and sharpened bumpers front to rear in order to increase visual width. It all results in even more luxury appeal, which Buick will hope lures in would-be shoppers that might otherwise be coaxed away from imported three-row luxury utilities.
At the moment, the only premium choices under the $50,000 threshold, which is more or less today's entry-point for three-row SUVs in the premium sector, include the $48,000 2021 Enclave, soon to be replaced, and the $48,995 Infiniti QX60, which gets a long-awaited redesign for 2022. Acura's recently redesigned MDX is priced well over the $50k mark at $56,405, as is Cadillac's $57,998 XT6 and Lexus' $59,700 RX 350 L.
The Enclave, shown here in top-tier Avenir trim, doesn't brake any styling molds from the rear.
That's similarly priced to an Enclave around halfway through its options list, incidentally, although a fully-loaded 2021 Enclave Avenir nears the $70k mark, a price-point that's in the range of the $64,500 Genesis GV80, $65,500 Land Rover Defender, $64,750 Volvo XC90, $68,600 Land Rover Discovery, $67,950 Audi Q7, and the $69,900 Lincoln Aviator. If you're now questioning why Mercedes' and BMW's three-row competitors fit into this mix, their respective GLS and X7 start at a comparatively stratospheric $101,900 and $102,900, so there's no need to bring them into this conversation.
Expect even higher quality finishings inside the 2022 Enclave, not to mention some updated design details.
Away from such lofty heights, the renewed 2022 Enclave's standard Driver Confidence Plus suite of advanced driver's assistance and safety technologies include forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, blind-spot monitoring, lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, rear parking assist, rear cross-traffic alert, and automatic high beam assistance.
Behind the 2022 Enclaves larger grille, the same 310 hp 3.6-litre V6 joins up with a nine-speed automatic transmission to drive all four wheels, with no powertrain option available. A fully independent suspension provides good road-holding and, most importantly in this class, a comfortable ride, although the top-line Enclave Avenir comes with a more sophisticated adaptive suspension.
The Enclave has always been spacious in all of its three rows, especially when compared to three-row luxury rivals such as Lexus' RX 350 L.
Buick is offering factory leasing and financing rates from zero percent on the 2022 model, although so far the General Motors brand isn't advertising the updated Enclave on their retail website, so contact your local dealer to see if you can order one. As for the outgoing 2021 model, our 2021 Buick Enclave Canada Prices page is currently showing up to $1,000 in additional incentives for new buyers, while CarCostCanada members were saving an average of $2,916 at the time of writing.
To learn how you can save thousands when buying your next new car, truck or SUV, find out how a CarCostCanada membership works, and don't forget to download the free CarCostCanada app from the Apple Store or Google Play Store so you can benefit from all the savings you're entitled to.
Photos by Buick
by CarCostCanada Editor August 5, 2021
Bill Nye The Science Guy explains Porsche Taycan technology in a new video series
Porsche commissioned Bill Nye The Science Guy to explain complicated Porsche Taycan technology in simple, everyday terms.
The new Porsche Taycan is one of the more technologically advanced EVs currently available, but this doesn't mean the only people capable of understanding how it works are electrical engineers.
In order to simplify the science, Porsche hired Bill Nye The Science Guy, a popular TV personality, to explain all the key technology, which resulted in a five-part short-format video series. Each episode, which span just under a single minute to one-and-a-half minutes long, focus in on technologies that differentiate the Taycan from its competitors, such as its 800-volt battery, uniquely innovative aerodynamic design, regenerative braking system, two-speed transmission, and repeatable performance.
Bill Nye uses graphics and humour to bring electrical engineering to the masses.
The YouTube series, dubbed "Bill Nye Explains The All-Electric Taycan," was filmed at the Porsche Experience Center in Los Angeles, California. The entertaining host uses simple terms and silly antics to clarify otherwise complicated subject matter, resulting in a series that's ideal for all ages.
The Taycan, which arrived on the electric scene only last year, is already available in two unique body unique styles and four individual trims, including 4, 4S, Turbo and Turbo S. The sleek Taycan four-door coupe can be had in three of the just-noted trims, including 4S, Turbo and Turbo S, whereas the more recently introduced Taycan Cross Turismo also has a base trim. Additionally, the Cross Turismo can be upgraded with an Off-road Design package that increases ride height while adding more aggressive styling enhancements.
Check out all five short-format videos below.
Top-level Taycan Turbo S trim can accelerate from zero to 100 km/h in only 2.8 seconds, thanks to its 750-hp twin-electric-motor power unit, while standard AWD means that all four performance tires grip the road below, especially helpful in inclement weather or when off-road.
Porsche is now offering the 2021 Taycan with factory leasing and financing rates from zero-percent, so be sure check out our 2021 Porsche Taycan Canada Prices page to learn more. We also provide our CarCostCanada members with dealer invoice pricing that could save you thousands when purchasing your next new vehicle, so learn how our system works, and remember to download our free CarCostCanada app from the Apple Store or Google Play Store, so you can have all of this valuable information at your fingertips when you need it most.
Here are the five "Bill Nye Explains The All-Electric Taycan" videos:
Bill Nye Explains the All-Electric Taycan: Two-Speed Transmission (1:11):
Bill Nye Explains the All-Electric Taycan: 800 Volts (1:17):
Bill Nye Explains the All-Electric Taycan: Regenerative Braking (0:52):
Bill Nye Explains the All-Electric Taycan: Aerodynamics (1:14):
Bill Nye Explains the All-Electric Taycan: Repeat Performance (1:34):
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baby brain pregnancy triggers changes womans brain say researchers
'Baby brain' – pregnancy triggers changes in a woman's brain, say researchers
Reuters News
Pregnancy may trigger changes in the structure and size of regions in a woman's brain that are involved in responding to social and emotional cues, a recent study suggests.
Many of these changes appeared to last at least two years after giving birth, the study found. Mothers who had the most pronounced alterations in their brains also scored higher on tests of emotional attachment to their babies than women whose brains underwent subtler changes.
"This study provides the first insights into the impact of pregnancy on the gray matter architecture of the human brain," said lead study author Elseline Hoekzema of the University of Leiden in The Netherlands.
While the exact cause of these shifts in the brain isn't clear, it's possible the changes may help women prepare for the social demands of motherhood, researchers report in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
For the study, researchers scanned the brains of 25 women who had never had babies, then did imaging tests again after the women gave birth for the first time.
Researchers also looked at brain scans from 19 first-time fathers, 17 men without children and 20 women who had never given birth.
Compared to the other participants, the first-time mothers had a distinct loss of gray matter in regions of the brain associated with what's known as "theory of mind," or the ability to attribute mental states such as thoughts, feelings and intents to themselves and other people.
When researchers showed these first-time mothers pictures of their own babies, they had more activity in some of these pregnancy-altered brain regions than when they looked at images of other babies, the study also found.
Nearly all of the gray matter changes were still present in scans done two years after women delivered their babies. Some of the gray matter volume that was reduced during pregnancy returned in the hippocampus, a region associated with memory.
This pattern of structural changes was so consistent that it could be used to distinguish the brains of women who had given birth from those who had not, as well as to predict the quality of mothers' attachment to their infants in the postpartum period, the researchers conclude.
Beyond its small size, limitations of the study include the lack of information about when or why changes in the brain might occur for first-time mothers.
It's unclear if the changes in the mothers' brains were caused by nine months of pregnancy, many hours of labor and delivery or by the first days and weeks of mother-infant bonding, said Dr. Rebecca Saxe, a neuroscience researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who wasn't involved in the study.
The study also doesn't tell us what happens in subsequent pregnancies, Saxe added by email.
"This could be a once in a lifetime change, even if you have many more pregnancies," Saxe said. "If so, we should be especially careful about making overly strong inferences about the link between neural changes and parent-infant bonding – since obviously, mothers do bond with later children."
Still, the findings add to a growing body of research documenting shifts in the brain associated with pregnancy and parenthood, said Dr. Mel Rutherford, a psychology researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who wasn't involved in the study.
Other research has found women may become more vigilant about strangers and develop a nesting instinct during pregnancy, both of which may be linked to changes in the brain, Rutherford said by email.
"More generally, there is evidence of broader cognitive reorganization: Some cognitive processes become prioritized during the pregnancy, perhaps in service of protecting the investment in the pregnancy," Rutherford said.
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HSBC Holdings Plc., in a report dated 12 September and titled The World's Last Bulls, marvels at the fact that bulls, an endangered species elsewhere, are still to be found in plenty in India. Writes HSBC strategist Gary Evans, "We were shocked, then, to find in meeting fund managers in India this week that perhaps two-thirds are outright bullish, some extremely so, and many are puzzled as to why the Indian market has fallen at all this year and why foreigners have been net sellers."
Why the bullishness? The fall in the price of oil and commodities is just one factor. Other reasons, says the report, include new net inflows into equity funds, lower government bond yields, inflation close to peaking, strong corporate balance sheets and gross domestic product growth of around 7%, much higher than in most parts of the world. The problem, as the report points out, is that the Reserve Bank of India's tightening efforts will slow the economy with a lag. That should lower earnings growth of companies.
More importantly, according to fund tracker EPFR Global, "So far this year, investors have removed a net $28.6 billion (Rs1.32 trillion) from emerging markets equity funds, the equivalent of some 5% of the assets those funds managed at the beginning of 2008, compared to net inflows of $10.7 billion at the same point last year."
The HSBC report says foreign investors have pulled out of India since the start of this year only 13% of the money they put in during the 2003-07 bull market, much less than they have withdrawn from other markets (for example, 19% in Taiwan, 64% in Thailand and 31% in Hong Kong and China).
The implication: since India is still relatively unaffected, any distress selling by foreign investors reacting to events in the financial sector in the West could lead to more selling in the Indian markets.
That's not all. A few days ago, the Chinese central bank lowered its policy rate and relaxed the amount of cash that smaller banks have to keep with it. But that has had no effect whatsoever on Chinese stocks. Similarly, the RBI's measures aimed at improving liquidity in the debt market hasn't had much of an impact on the stock market. But perhaps that's because the panic in the West hasn't yet abated.
The good thing is that the RBI measures seem to have had an impact on the rupee, which may be crucial for foreign investors. Note that the MSCI India index, as on 16 September, was down 8.46% this month in rupee terms, but down only 14.22% in US dollar terms. Although it still outperformed the MSCI Emerging markets index, the extent of outperformance was much lower when adjusted for the depreciation of the rupee against the dollar.
The shares of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd have fallen about 30% since news of its trouble with the US food and drug administration (FDA) first became public in July this year. Note that there's hardly any Ranbaxy stock available in the market, since most of it has been tendered in the open offer by Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. This could have helped prop up the Indian company's shares, since an investor who has tendered in the offer can't sell his shares even if he wants to.
Although the open offer to Ranbaxy's minority shareholders concluded recently, the excess shares haven't yet been credited to shareholders' depositary accounts. The excess shares are expected to be returned by the end of this week, i.e. 19 September. So, even if an investor wants to offload his shares, he'll have to wait a few more days. As a result, volumes are unusually low in the spot market. Delivery-based turnover has averaged Rs16 crore since the open offer ended, a sixth of the average in the preceding three months.
But shouldn't the futures market, where traders aren't constrained by non-availability of stock, reflect the true value of Ranbaxy shares? There, the shares trade at Rs350, only about 7% lower than the spot price. But note that many large shareholders such as insurance companies and mutual funds either aren't savvy using the futures segment or aren't allowed to use them. The true value will be reflected only early next week, after shares tendered in the open offer are released. Unless the FDA reverses its order, the shares could fall further, as investors factor in the impact of lower sales to the US.
According to an analyst who did not want to be named, if the problem results in export restrictions on Ranbaxy, that can impact turnover by about 10%. The US geography contributes 25% of the company's total revenues of about $1.6 billion (Rs7,400 crore), and the list of drugs on which the restrictions could apply account for about 40% of volumes in the US geography. The list also includes valacyclovir hydrochloride. This is the drug for which Ranbaxy had a first-to-file status in late 2009, after having reached a settlement with GlaxoSmithKline Plc. relating to its drug, Valtrex. This drug is expected to have sales of $1.5 billion by late 2009 and the six-month exclusivity for Ranbaxy could have resulted in revenues of $100 million, says an analyst. This now comes under question.
The uncertainties for Ranbaxy are galore and until the order on export restrictions is reversed, and unless the charges of fraud are dropped (a separate case), there's little reason why shareholders may want to stay invested. It's interesting to note, in this context, that Ranbaxy's promoter group has managed to sell its entire stake at more than a 100% premium to current prices. | {
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Kid's Book
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Within the School, Students may share emotionally sensitive information in the following ways: 1.) commenting on a course lecture, 2.) posting/commenting in a Facebook group facilitated by Project Grief, 3.) posting/commenting on social media pages, or 4.) private conversations with the instructor (Danica). No comments or thoughts that are shared in private or closed venues will ever be shared publicly without the Students' express permission. See below for the privacy policies of each type of sharing venue:
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Why Art Works | {
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Chinese swimmer Sun Yang slams Australian swimmer Mack Horton's refusal to stand with him on podium
Australian swimmer Mack Horton has been criticised for refusing to stand alongside Chinese swimmer Sun Yang in a defiant protest at the world championships in South Korea.
Sun narrowly beat Olympic champion Horton to claim his fourth-straight 400m freestyle world title at Sunday's opening night of the eight-day event.
Horton, 23, accepted his silver medal but did not stand on the podium alongside Sun as the Chinese national anthem played – nor did he pose for photographs with his rival.
Horton stood his ground throughout the awkward medal ceremony after previously being the only swimmer in the field not to shake Sun's hand after the race.
Former Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority CEO Richard Ings said that Horton should receive a heavy penalty for the protest.
'I am no fan of Sun Yang. But he has served his suspension for a doping violation and he has been cleared by a FINA panel of refusing to provide a sample. Innocent unless and until proven guilty. Not standing on the podium with him should attract a hefty penalty,' Ings tweeted.
Mack Horton (left) refused to step on the podium after he was beaten by controversial Chinese star Sun Yang (centre)
Horton (pictured with his girlfriend Ella Walter) made it clear he was not happy Sun had been allowed to compete at the titles
'Win, lose or draw you've got to be gracious and to not share the podium with someone who has just beaten you is a really big call,' Channel 9 sports presenter Tony Jones added.
'But the bloke who beat him has a pretty ordinary rapsheet… their history is pretty bleak… (but) it's a big call.'
Sun Yang told reporters after the race that Horton's protest had disrespected China.
'Yes, I was aware that the Australian athlete had dissatisfaction and personal feelings towards me,' Sun told a press conference in Gwangju on Sunday.
'It was unfortunate because disrespecting me is okay but disrespecting China was very unfortunate and I felt sorry for that,' he said.
The Australian made the bold statement after admitting he was unhappy that Sun had been allowed to compete at the world titles ahead of a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing in September that may end the Chinese star's career.
The 10-time world champion will answer charges of smashing vials of his blood with a hammer during a clash last year with drug-testers in a tense standoff after his entourage claimed they were unaccredited.
Sun faces a lifetime ban if found guilty.
Horton copped social media abuse while the Chinese swimming team demanded an official apology after he dismissed Sun as a 'drug cheat' ahead of the Rio Olympics.
Their long-standing feud escalated after Horton upset Sun – who served a three month doping ban in 2014 – to claim a shock 400m freestyle gold at the 2016 Games.
Australia's head coach, Jacco Verhaeren, said Sunday's move even took him by surprise.
'Nobody actually knew, that was his idea to do that. I understand him very much. He has been very strong and vocal about this in the past. You can only respect him for what he does,' said Verhaeren.
Horton collected his silver medal but then stood back and refused to acknowledge Sun
'Mack stands for what he stands for. Nobody can take that away from him, nobody should. But we move on and into the next races.'
Horton collected his silver medal but then stood back and refused to acknowledge Sun who stood with bronze medallist Gabrielle Detti of Italy on the podium.
Sun was surprisingly cleared to contest the titles while waiting to appear in September at a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) hearing.
The 10-time world champion will answer charges of smashing vials of his blood with a hammer during a clash last year with testers.
Sun was surprisingly cleared to contest the titles while waiting to appear in September at a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) hearing
Sun celebrated wildly after the 400m win, splashing water and holding four fingers up to indicate his streak.
But Horton was clearly not impressed, taking a swipe at Sun via the media before his podium protest.
Asked how he felt after a gutsy silver-medal finish, Horton said: 'Frustration is probably it.
'I think you know in what respect.'
Asked to describe his rivalry with Sun, Horton said: 'I think you know what the rivalry is like.
'His actions and how it has been handled speak louder than anything I will ever say.'
It marks the latest round in Horton's row with Sun whom he dismissed as a 'drug cheat' at the Rio Games before upsetting the three-time Olympic champion to claim 400m freestyle gold in Brazil.
Sun has been a controversial figure since serving a secret three-month doping ban in 2014.
Horton poses with bronze medallist Gabrielle Detti of Italy on the podium
Sun was again embroiled in scandal when he was accused of objecting to an out-of-competition test last September at his Zhejiang home before the vials of blood were allegedly destroyed by a hammer.
World governing body FINA opted not to punish Sun amid claims the testers had not shown adequate identification but the World Anti-Doping Agency lodged an appeal to CAS.
Yet it didn't stop Sun contesting the world titles, prompting outrage from swimmers, with American breaststroke champion Lilly King claiming it was 'insane' the Chinese star had been allowed to compete.
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Mourners gather at Amar Kettule's funeral in Fairfield in Sydney's southwest January 16, 2021 | {
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Welcome To The Spring 2019
HAPPILY FAMILY ONLINE CONFERENCE NOTES
Do You want to Watch the conference?
25 videos, audio MP3 downloads, transcripts and all notes
Dr. Christine Carter
Raising Resilient Adolescents and Teens in the Tech Age
"Dr. Christine Carter, author of The Sweet Spot and Raising Happiness, has a unique perspective on how we can find fulfillment, success, and lasting joy in our busy lives. At work, she translates the latest scientific findings–from positive psychology, sociology, research on productivity and elite performance, organizational and management theories, and neuroscience–into action plans for her readers.
Christine Carter is a sociologist and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, where for many years she was the Executive Director. After receiving her B.A. from Dartmouth College, where she was a Senior Fellow, Dr. Carter worked in marketing management and school administration, going on to receive her Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley.
Dr. Carter has appeared on dozens of television and radio shows, including the "Oprah Winfrey Show," the "TODAY" show, and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." She has also been quoted or featured in hundreds of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Real Simple.
She lives with her husband, four kids, and dog Buster in Marin County, California."
It can be tough to raise an adolescent or a teen right now. Join us while we have a lively conversation with Dr. Christine Carter. Christine explains why adolescents and teens in industrialized countries are not doing as well and are less resilient. How can we help our kids cope with everyday discomforts? Christine offers science based tools for how can we soothe our kids and soothe ourselves. Plus we all do a bit of over-sharing from our own parenting and where we've compromised with our teens.
Dr. Christopher Willard
Busy Parents Practice Mindfulness with Young Children
Dr. Christopher Willard is a psychologist and educational consultant specializing in mindfulness. He has been practicing meditation for 20 years, and leads workshops nationally and internationally. He has presented at TEDx conferences and his thoughts have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, mindful.org, and elsewhere. He is the author of several books including Child's Mind, Growing Up Mindful, and Raising Resilience. He teaches at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Christopher Willard shares some practical ideas about how to practice mindfulness meditation when you are a busy parent and how you can introduce young children to meditation. Christopher explains some of the science behind mindfulness. He talks about why breathing and staying in the present is so important, what happens to your brain when you meditate, and how mindfulness is connected to happiness.
Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart
Is this ADD/ADHD, ODD, Anxiety, or a "Behavioral Issue"?
Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart is a Pediatric Psychologist. She is Board Certified in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. She is the Founder and Owner of A New Day Pediatric Psychology. Originally from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, she considers herself a "dual-citizen" of Texas and the Caribbean. She specializes in treating ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, and medical diagnoses.
Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart talks about the differences between ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety, and behavioral issues, and what we can do for our kids to help them develop the skills that they need. Ann-Louise's warm, down-to-earth style is reassuring for parents who are worried about their child. She talks about when to get a child assessed, how to find appropriate professional, and she shares examples of how to handle everyday struggles, such as bedtime.
Dr. Dan Peters
Parenting a Gifted or 2E Child
Dr. Daniel Peters is a psychologist, author, Co-founder of Parent Footprint, host of the "Parent Footprint Podcast with Dr. Dan" and the Executive Director of the Summit Center, specializing in the assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and families, with gifted, talented, and creative individuals, as well as anxiety, learning differences, dyslexia and more. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and Psychology Today, and he speaks regularly at national conferences.
Dr. Daniel Peters talks about what it means to be gifted or 2E. He answers many essential questions: Are gifted kids more likely to be sensitive or have emotional issues? How do you get support from the school for a gifted child? How do you help a child who is a perfectionist, or who has unrealistic expectations, to have a growth mindset? If your child is performing above her same aged peers in any realm this is an important conversation.
Parent Footprint
Michelle Garcia Winner
The Importance of Social Thinking in our High-Tech World
"Michelle Garcia Winner, is a speech language pathologist who specializes in helping people with social learning challenges. She is the founder and CEO of Social Thinking®, a company dedicated to helping children and adults develop their social competencies to meet their personal social goals.
Michelle coined the term "Social Thinking" and has created unique treatment frameworks to help educators, clinicians, professionals, and parents appreciate that social capabilities are integral to a person's success in life, socially, academically, and professionally.
Michelle maintains a private practice, The Center for Social Thinking, in Santa Clara, California, and has written or co-authored more than 40 books about the Social Thinking Methodology. "
Michelle Garcia Winner defines social competencies and social thinking, and how they are different than social skills. Michelle explains that children and adults can develop anxiety, sadness and depression because they lack social learning, and how even kids and adults who are skilled verbally and intellectually, might still struggle with social competencies. Yet, social competencies–problem solving, working as a team, understanding someone else's perspective, etc–are extraordinarily important for kids to succeed academically and make friends, as well as for adults to succeed in the workforce and in relationships. Michelle also talks about the impact that screens have on social learning. She shares about the many free resources that are available on her website to help kids and adults increase their social competencies.
Jennifer Miller
Food, Meals, & Social-Emotional Development
For over twenty years, Jennifer Miller has worked with educators and families to help them become more effective with children through social and emotional learning. She is author and illustrator of the blog, Confident Parents, Confident Kids and writes for numerous publications. She's an expert contributor to NBC Universal's Parent Toolkit. She has contributed to two books, "Smart Parents, Parenting for Powerful Learning" and "Building Powerful Learning Environments from Schools to Communities." She does coaching, webinars, curriculum development, consultation and workshops in Ohio and nationally. She has her master's degree in Instructional Leadership with a focus on social and emotional development. She lives with her husband and nine-year-old son in Columbus, Ohio.
Jennifer Miller talks about the connection between eating and social-emotional development. She tackles topics including picky eating, sensory sensitivity, avoiding food power struggles, meal time behavior, connecting as a family, eating disorders, and encouraging nutrition. If family mealtime is a struggle, or if you're worried about your child developing healthy eating habits this presentation is for you!
Website and Book
Dr. Carrie Contey
Handle Any Situation with Self Aware Parenting
Carrie Contey, PhD is a parenting coach, speaker and author. Her background in prenatal and perinatal psychology offers a unique perspective on children, parenting, family life and what it means to be a healthy, happy, whole human being. In her work with thousands of parents all over the world, she guides, supports and inspires her clients to live with a wide-open and courageous heart so that they can approach parenting with both skill and spaciousness.
Dr. Carrie Contey views parenting as a journey. But rather than offering quick tips and tricks that might not work for your situation, she offers you a framework to understand and relate to your child, and be guided by your own inner wisdom. You may ask, "What do I say when this happens?" or "How do I handle that?". The answers become clear, when you can tune in to your own wisdom, your thoughts, and your feelings. In this talk, you will be drawn in by Carrie's warm smile and deep wisdom.
Leslie Potter
Rethinking Boundaries: A New Way Of Looking At Them
Leslie Potter is a psychotherapist, parenting coach, and spiritual inquirer. She became a mom at 44, when she adopted her daughter. Her life's work is sharing with other parents how they can shift from a controlling fear based relationship with their child to a loving enjoyable reality. She created Purejoy Parenting to help families understand their child's behavior, accept their feelings, and allow the relationship to flourish.
Leslie Potter speaks with wisdom and clarity about what boundaries are, and how to create them for our kids and for ourselves. She shares relatable stories and examples of young children and teens. Leslie shows how we can support our kids and create safety, while also giving them the freedom and space they need.
SafeSeat Practice – Free Audio: How to Stop Beating Yourself Up in Your Parenting
Mercedes Samudio
Shame-Proof: When Families & Communities Move Beyond Shame
Mercedes Samudio, LCSW is a parent coach, speaker, and bestselling author who helps parents and children communicate with each other, manage emotional trauma, navigate social media and technology together, and develop healthy parent-child relationships. Mercedes started the #EndParentShaming movement as well as coined the term Shame-Proof Parenting – using both to bring awareness to ending parent shame.
Parenting is inherently a vulnerable process. You might feel judged by your family, your community, your partner, or you might even judge yourself. Mercedes Samudio knows about the shame that parents and kids feel. She helps parents and kids move beyond the feeling of being "not enough". Mercedes knows how to build shame-proof communities that embrace everyone, reject the myth of the "perfect family", and celebrate individual's strengths.
Dr. David Treleaven
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
David Treleaven is an acclaimed author, educator, and trauma professional whose work focuses on the intersection of mindfulness and trauma. David has offered workshops on trauma-sensitive mindfulness at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as well as keynote speeches at the Omega Institute in New York and the Institute for Mindfulness in South Africa in Johannesburg. Trained in counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, he received his doctorate in psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and is currently a visiting scholar at Brown University.
There is a large body of scientific evidence showing that mindfulness is good for lots of things–reducing stress, increasing happiness and contentment, etc. However for children and adults who have experienced trauma, mindfulness can also evoke a traumatic stress. This conversation with Dr. David Treleaven is essential if you work with or parent a child who has a history of trauma. In this interview we talk about how to recognize the symptoms of traumatic stress and how to adapt mindfulness practices appropriately.
Dr. Joseph Lee
Decreasing Anxiety by Being a "Good Enough" Parent
Joseph Lee is a psychiatrist with a practice in Southern California. Early in his practice he saw that his patients were clearly getting better, but didn't seem to be quite "well." His search to help people truly thrive, led him to a truth-based perspective that he's been applying personally and professionally, built around developing self-worth, meaningful relationships, and lifelong optimal healthiness. Becoming a parent, made him more intentional about every aspect of his own life – trying to figure out the best way to raise his kids, while maintaining his own health and wellbeing.
Dr. Joseph Lee explains, whether you are an adult or a child, why some anxiety is a good thing, but too much has detrimental effects. When you are feeling anxious, what can you do? Part of the solution is having courage. Being courageous means that you still have fear and anxiety but you choose to act anyway. Dr. Lee assures us that kids don't need perfect parents, far from it! "Good enough parenting" actually is, according to the research, good enough!
Todd and Cathy Adams
Parenting with a Partner: When Your Child is High Needs
"Cathy is a self-awareness expert, podcast host, & author focused on parenting and the personal empowerment of women and young girls. She's a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Parent Coach, Certified Elementary School Teacher, Certified Yoga Teacher, and she teaches in the Sociology Department at Dominican University and Elmhurst College.
Todd is the co-host of the Zen Parenting Radio podcast and a certified life coach who focuses on supporting guys in finding a healthy work/family balance. He focuses on marriage, parenting, career, overall self-awareness and life enjoyment."
Parenting a high needs child can add stress to a marriage or committed relationship. In this conversation, Cathy and Todd Adams share personal stories about their own partnership and answered tough questions. How do you prioritize between your relationship, your child's needs, and your own needs? How do you get on the same page? What if you don't agree with what your partner is doing? How do you deal with conflict?
Zen Parenting website
Ann Douglas
When Your Child has a Mental Illness
Ann Douglas is the author of Happy Parents, Happy Kids, Parenting Through the Storm and numerous other books about parenting, including the bestselling The Mother of All Books series. She is also the mother of four children who have struggled with a variety of different mental health, neurodevelopmental, and behavioural challenges — and who are all currently thriving.
Talking to Ann Douglas is reassuring and hopeful because she's been through it ALL! She talks about how to know when to get your child tested, what to do while you wait for the results, how to explain your child's diagnosis to them, how to deal with your own feelings about your child's diagnosis, how to get support for yourself, and how to care for all your kids when one is taking up a lot of time. Ann offers practical tools and relief for anyone parenting through a storm.
Dr. Amy Saltzman
Using Mindfulness to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions
Dr. Amy Saltzman is a holistic physician, mindfulness coach, long-time athlete, a devoted student of transformation, wife, mother and occasional poet. Her passion is supporting people of all ages in achieving peak performance and finding flow. She offers individual holistic medical care, and both individual and team mindfulness coaching, in person and online, to athletes, coaches, children, adolescents, parents, teachers, therapists, and high tech executives.
Mindfulness helps us find a "still quiet place", like the place between ourselves and our thoughts and feelings, or the space between stimulus and response. Dr. Amy Saltzman doesn't just tell us about mindfulness, she shows us, by guiding us through a simple meditation–that could be used with toddlers through adults! We know that childhood is stressful, and parents are stressed too. Amy shows how to bring simple, scientifically backed practices to families to ease stress and difficult emotions.
Eric Bowers
The Heart and Science of Healthy Relationships
Eric Bowers is a counselor, artist, musician, poet, blogger, workshop facilitator, public speaker, and the author of Meet Me In Hard-to-Love Places: The Heart and Science of Relationship Success. Eric's mission is to help people do the healing work that allows them to follow their dreams and deepest callings and build successful relationships in all areas of their lives. He believes that healing work is a potent source of energy, creativity, power, and beauty, and that the brightest of lights that are waiting in the darkest of places.
Eric Bowers explains that the unfinished parts of our childhood are likely to come up in our current relationships, but that our current relationships are also well-suited to help us heal. We asked him… How do we know when something needs to be healed? How do we have curiosity and compassion for ourselves (and our partners or children) in those difficult times? How can we soothe ourselves in tough situations? How do we have healthy connections and boundaries with our kids? Eric insightfully answers these questions in the context of Non-Violent Communication and Interpersonal Neurobiology.
Free Range Kids in a High Tech Age
Lenore Skenazy is a blogger, columnist, and author. She got massive media attention and was dubbed, "America's Worst Mom" when she let her then-9-year-old son take the New York City Subway home alone. In response, Lenore founded the book, blog, and movement "Free-Range Kids" and a new non-profit organization "Let Grow", with the aim of "fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and the perils of a non-organic grape."
In this hilarious conversation, Lenore Skenazy explains why kids growing up today in the US (and many other English speaking countries) have very little freedom in comparison to their parents, even though crime is at a record low. Computers and phones give parents the ability to monitor children (their location, their vital signs, their grades, etc) in unprecedented ways, however these technological advances might impact our relationship with our kids, slow their development, and actually not keep kids any safer or help us parents be any calmer! Lenore talks about how the Let Grow non-profit program is changing schools and communities at no cost, and making it easy, normal and legal to give kids freedom.
Let Grow
Dr. William Stixrud & Ned Johnson
The Self Driven Child
"Dr. William Stixrud is a clinical neuropsychologist and a faculty member at Children's National and the George Washington University School of Medicine. He lectures widely on the adolescent brain, motivation, and the effects of stress, sleep deprivation, and technology overload on the brain.
Ned Johnson is the founder of PrepMatters, a tutoring service in Washington, DC. He is a sought after speaker and teen coach for study skills, parent-teen dynamics, ad anxiety management and his work has been featured on NPR, the U.S. News and World Report, Time, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal."
Are you concerned about your child succeeding in the world, getting into a good college, getting a job? Look no further than Dr. William Stixrud and Ned Johnson's reassuring presentation. They assure parents that there is no narrow road to success, that failures will lead to learning and growth, and that one of our most important roles as parents is to be a non-anxious presence. We can help kids feel less anxious by giving them more control to pursue their goals. We can trust that our kids have a desire and drive to succeed, and with our support and respect, that they will find their way in the world.
Debbie Reber
Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World
Debbie Reber is a parenting activist, New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the founder of TiLT Parenting, a website, top podcast, and social media community for parents who are raising differently wired children. Her newest book, Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World, came out in June 2018. After living abroad in the Netherlands for the past five years, Debbie, her husband, and 14-year-old son recently moved back to the NYC area.
Today, 1 in 5 kids has a learning disability or is neurologically atypical in some way. Debbie Reber talks about what she's learned while raising a "differently wired" son. She shares how to parenting from a place of possibility instead of fear, how to let go of what others think in order to follow her own inner wisdom, and how to get support by creating communities with other parents.
DIFFERENTLY WIRED 7-Day Challenge
Amy Lang
How (and When) to Talk to Kids about Sex
"Amy Lang is a sexuality and parenting expert, and a regular guest on multiple media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, CNN, The Atlantic and the Seattle Times, and podcasts like The Savage Lovecast, Tilt Parenting and The New Family. Amy has worked with parents and professionals from Alaska to Australia, including the Boys & Girls Club, The Air Force Youth and Family Services programs, YMCAs and multiple PTAs and preschools. Parents and professionals appreciate that she is a fun, smart and sassy speaker."
[To our listeners: This is an open conversation about sexual health. Body parts are mentioned and there is a little bit of cursing. Please put on headphones if needed.] Amy Lang explains how important and protective it is to educate children about their sexuality, even at a young age. How do we have these uncomfortable conversations? What do kids need to know at each stage of development? What about consent and pornography? Oral sex? Rape? Tampons? Amy explains what to talk about and how to say it, in this lively, reassuring conversation.
Janine Halloran
Coping Skills for Anxiety, Stress, and Anger
Janine Halloran is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, the founder of Coping Skills for Kids, and a mom of 2. For the past 15 years she has worked primarily with children and adolescents and she's seen the value of learning healthy coping skills early in life, so kids they will be more resilient and manage stress better, even as they grow up. Coping Skills for Kids provides products and resources to help kids learn to cope with the daily challenges of life.
Kids have feelings! Learning how to cope with feelings and develop self awareness is a vital life skill. Janine Halloran shares simple, yet powerful tools to get kids back to peace and calm, so that kids and parents can problem solve together. Janine's wealth of experience, her tools, and her reassurancing presence is especially useful if you have a toddler or elementary-aged child. And her tools can be adapted for teens and even adults.
Dr. Daniel Siegel
Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain
Dr. Daniel Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute. He has authored or co-authored several books including Parenting from the Inside Out, the Whole Brain Child, No Drama Discipline, The Yes Brain, and most recently, Aware.
The message parents get in our culture is to fearfully anticipate the teen years, and then just try to survive them. Dr. Daniel Siegel looked at the research about the adolescent mind and wrote his book–Brainstorm–to tell a different story. He writes that "the adolescent period of life is in reality the one with the most power for courage and creativity. Life is on fire when we hit our teens. And these changes are not something to avoid or just get through but to encourage." Dan talks about the myths of the teen brain and why it's such an exciting stage of human development.
Cecilia and Jason Hilkey
Getting Along: Creating Strong Siblings
Cecilia Hilkey, MA and Jason Hilkey have worked professionally with children and families for 20 years. They've taught parents and educators to use compassionate methods to talk to kids, worked with children with special needs, and even taught together in the same preschool classroom.
They founded Happily Family to respond to the needs of parents and teachers who wanted access to current research about the brain, and more communication tools to use with the kids in their lives. Their popular blog, classes and conferences touch the lives of tens of thousands of people each week.
Cecilia and Jason have been featured in local and national media including Kiplinger's magazine and elephant journal. They regularly present at schools and conferences including CAEYC. They have received grants from the Maternal Child and Health Bureau, California First 5, and the Awesome Foundation.
This LIVE presentation will air HERE on Monday, May 20 at 12 noon Pacific/ 3pm Eastern and will be available afterwards as a replay.
Cecilia and Jason Hilkey will reveal the 3 ingredients of healthy sibling relationships. They will share current research about siblings and their experience working with high needs kids, and raising two girls. They know firsthand what can happen in a family when someone has a physical, emotional, or learning disability. They tackle tough topics like… jealousy, fighting, how to intervene during a conflict, how to have different expectations for different kids, how to explain a sibling's diagnosis, and how to create strong siblings for life!
Calming Plan Free Download
Katherine Reynolds Lewis
The Good News About Bad Behavior
Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning independent journalist, author and speaker based in the Washington D.C. area. Her book, The Good News About Bad Behavior, explains why modern kids are so undisciplined and tells the stories of innovators who are rebuilding lost self-control, resolving family conflict and changing the trajectory of young lives. Katherine is a certified parent educator with the Parent Encouragement Program in Kensington, MD.
Katherine contributes to The Atlantic, Fortune magazine, Parents, USA Today's magazine group, the Washington Post and Working Mother magazine. She and her husband Brian are the parents of three children.
Katherine Reynolds Lewis describes 3 current factors that are contributing to a decrease in the well being and mental health of children. That's bad news! But the good news is that the solutions are do-able. Katherine talks about how we can help our children develop social, emotional, and problem solving skills, contribute to their family and community, and we can shift the focus of our parenting to collaboration, rather than punishments and rewards. She encourages us to allow our children to learn through their failures, while also supporting them before and after the experience.
Dr. Brian Stafford
Parenting as Soulcraft: The Work of Bill Plotkin
Brian Stafford is a Guide and Director for Strategic Initiatives for the Animus Valley Institute, a nonprofit organization of 10 to 15 guides based in Durango, Colorado. Since 2008, Animas has led programs on dreamwork, shadow work, the cultivation of ecological identity, deep imagery journeys, and other topics. Animas founder Bill Plotkin and the other Animas guides have created and shaped over 40 contemporary practices that assist people of Western cultures in their quests for more meaningful, fulfilling, and culturally engaged lives aligned with nature.
Brian Stafford says that people come to Bill Plotkin's work and the programs at the Animus Valley Institute to learn how to grow to their full potential. One of the things that we are missing in our culture is a deeper connection with nature. Brian talks about the importance of early exposure to nature and nature rites of passage. He shares with us the sequence of stages the very healthiest, most self-realized humans go through. He talks about how to embrace and heal our fragmented or wounded parts of ourselves. He shows how powerful nature is as a healer, to make us whole, and how parenting can be a doorway to our own personal growth.
Jacqueline Green
Maintaining Mental Health while Parenting
Jacqueline Green is a parent coach, and the creator and host of the Great Parenting Simplified (formerly called the Great Parenting Show). Since its founding in 2010, GPS has had over 150 top parenting experts and has grown its audience to over 35,000 parents from 94+ countries. Jacqueline has been interviewed by national newspapers and magazines, and has been on major radio and TV, including the Huffington Post Live.
Jacqueline Green shares her personal struggle with mental health as a mom raising two children in the midst of a difficult marriage, and her eventual divorce. She not only tells us how she got through it, but she lights a path for others who are also dealing with challenging circumstances. Jacqueline shares what she's learned on the way, what her kids have learned, and the 5 tools that she still uses to move from surviving to thriving.
Pause Button Challenge | {
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A world economy left in ruins by the Coronavirus pandemic has forced policy makers to take one (or a hundred) steps back to reassess their approach to building a sustainable future – starting with creating a more resilient economy and infrastructure. The national commercial law space has notably undergone a striking upheaval with the focus now placed on surviving rather than profiting. With companies focused on advancing technologies to tide over this crisis, intellectual property rights have been pushed to the forefront, and international players have optimistically come together more than ever before.
In keeping with this spirit, we hope that through this blog we can encourage discourse on these three crucial areas of law: Commercial Law, Intellectual Property Rights and International Law, as we adapt, together, to the dynamics of a fast evolving world.
INDIA AND SOUTH AFRICA MOVE TO WTO TO SUSPEND THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS FOR COVID-19 VACCINES.
India and South Africa have submitted a proposal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend the intellectual property rights for Covid-19 medicines and vaccines. It has been pointed out that medicines once patented, they get really difficult to procure. The countries have expressed their concerns over shortage of such products due to the intellectual property rights which will act as a hindrance to stop the ongoing pandemic.
On 2nd October, 2020 WTO posted the joint submission made by the two countries for the waiver of some of the provisions of the TRIPS agreement on intellectual property protection. This was done to ensure the treatment, prevention and containment of the novel virus. The move has been welcomed by the health activists who strongly believe that the patents hinder the accessibility of medicines by people all over the world. They believe that patents are major block for providing inexpensive medicines.
AMAZON APPROACHES THE INTERNATIONAL ARBITRAL TRIBUNAL AGAINST THE RELIANCE-FUTURE DEAL.
The world's richest man drags Asia's richest individual to the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) over the latter's deal with the Future group. Amazon has claimed that the Future Group has violated their contractual clause by selling off its assets worth Rs 24,713 crore to the Reliance Industries.
Last year, Amazon had entered into a contract with the Future Group wherein it purchased 49% stake in one of the Future's unlisted firm, Future Coupons Ltd. Amazon has claimed that the contract clearly stated that the Future Group cannot sell any asset within 10 years of the deal with Amazon without their consent and that Amazon had the right of first refusal. The contract also restricted the Future Group to sell any of their shares to Reliance or any other competitor.
In August, the Future Group had reached an agreement with Reliance wherein they sold off its retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing units to Reliance. The deal is still waiting for regulatory approvals. It was reported that Amazon had sent a legal notice to the Biyani-led group before going into arbitration. The Future Group hopes to settle the dispute amicably. The arbitration proceedings may start from November.
BRUSSELS HAS INITIATED LEGAL ACTION AGAINST UK OVER BREACH OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Brussels has taken a legal action against UK over its plans to violate the terms of the Brexit withdrawal agreement from last year. This could lead the UK to the European Court of Justice.
Brussels had sent a letter of formal notice to the UK over Prime Minister Boris Johnson's "internal market bill". The Bill could allow the UK government to override the crucial points that were agreed upon between the Prime Minister and the EU on Northern Ireland especially over sensitive points on state aid an export documentation.
The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has stated that the bill was a "full contradiction" of the previous UK commitments over the avoidance of a hard border on the island of Ireland. The bill, apparently, by its very nature is a breach of the "obligation of good faith" contained in the withdrawal agreement that led to UK exiting the EU. President Ursula also mentioned that UK had a month to review its bill before the Brussels legal step. However, the deadline was ignored.
NEW ANTITRUST CASE AGAINST GOOGLE OVER ABUSE IN SMART TVs MARKET
According to a Reuters report, a new antitrust case has been filed against Alphabet Inc.'s Google in the Competition Commission of India (CCI). It has been alleged that Google has abused its dominant position in the Smart TVs market by blocking those companies who want to create or modify the android system, such as the Amazon Fire TV's operating system. Since June, the CCI has been looking into such antitrust allegations against Google of creating barriers for firms wanting to use or develop modified versions of Android for Smart TVs. CCI has apparently directed the company to submit its written responses on the allegations. The antitrust watchdog could either order an investigation against Google or do not admit the case at all depending upon the merits of the case.
This is the fourth major antitrust case against Google in India wherein various local startups have criticized the company for its certain policies and company charges that hurt their growth in the market. Google is also facing antitrust challenges in the United States, and another antitrust probe in China is set to look into the allegations of how the company abuses its dominant position in Android operating system by stifling competition.
AMENDMENTS TO THE COMPANIES ACT, 2013 HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED.
The Companies (Amendment) Bill of 2020 has received President Ram Nath Kovind's assent after getting passed in both the Houses of Parliament. The Bill provides for a slew of amendments to the Companies Act, 2013.
The Bill seeks to remove the existing provisions on producer companies and adds a new chapter in the Act with similar provisions on producer companies. The Bill also provides for decriminalization of certain offences which were present in the Act. Penalties have also been reduced. The Bill also empowers the central government to allow certain classes of public companies to list classes of securities in foreign jurisdiction. The Bill has also relaxed CSR compliance requirements by the Companies and establishment of Benched of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal. The Bill empowers the Central Government to exclude companies issuing specified classes of securities from the definition of a "listed company" in consultation with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. The Bill has now become an Act.
NMIMS Student Law Review aims to publish high-quality original research that contributes to the contemporary legal scholarship and thought.
Year in review 2020: environmental law January 11, 2021
YEAR IN REVIEW 2020: FAMILY LAW January 9, 2021
Year in review 2020: intellectual property law January 6, 2021
Year in Review 2020: National Education Policy January 4, 2021
COVID-19 Pandemic and Egregious Condition of Syria: An Overview of Human Right Deprivations due to Sanctions December 26, 2020
© Copyright 2020 – All Rights Reserved – Kirit P. Mehta School of Law – NMIMS | {
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Q & A with Whatcom Community Foundation CEO Mauri Ingram
Recently, we were lucky enough to chat with President and CEO of the Whatcom Community Foundation, Mauri Ingram (pictured in the middle above).
The Whatcom Community Foundation is one of three community philanthropy organizations in our county and has made an immense impact since opening its doors, over twenty years ago. To date, they have given 8,955 gifts totaling over $47 million to a variety of non-profits and other organizations, including hundreds of scholarships! They have been partners and supporters of many beloved projects including the Bellingham Skate Park, the Fairhaven Village Green, The Whatcom Farm to School Initiative, Depot Market Square, Ferndale Library and the Blaine Pavilion. In total, they have funded 582 different programs and projects, including many of Sustainable Connections.
They are wonderful partners in our work and we are incredibly grateful for the support they give our Food & Farming Program and the Green Building & Smart Growth Program! Our chat with Mauri was enjoyable and enlightening – we hope you think so too…
Tell us a little bit about the history of the Whatcom Community Foundation:
The great thing about the way the Community Foundation got started was that the people who got it off the ground were initially just a small group of friends. They were aware of community foundations and thought, "you know, maybe Whatcom County would benefit from a community foundation." They didn't come at it with a predefined idea of exactly what this should look like or be, which is the greatest gift the founders gave us, a sense of responsible risk taking and possibility.
One thing I value most about the Community Foundation is the legacy our founders left for us to steward along the way, including a real sense of humility around the organization. They believed the Community Foundation didn't know better than anyone else about what should happen here, and that we always need to be listening to the community, talking with the community, and being a part of the community. It's weaving the fabric of the community together so that everyone feels like they can rely on each other, fail together, and learn together.
How has the Community Foundation's mission evolved over the years and how has its approach to giving changed?
It's always been about making life here better for everybody, that everyone who lives here thrives. A fundamental tenet of our work, and of what we believe, is that we are a part of making this community better for folks who have less opportunity, and that if we can do that together, life will better for everyone in the community.
I think the main change is that we talk about it a little bit differently, hopefully in a more concise way!
What has the Community Foundation found as the most important ingredients for community health?
One of the main things is that people feel welcomed and safe. This is the absolute basis of community health. It's ground zero and where we have to start. Absent that, there is so much to unpack. All of the social challenges we face as communities are intertwined, and complex, so when we peel back the onion to the absolute core, this is where we land. People must get their basic needs are met, and they need to feel safe and welcome in their community.
Sometimes it's hard and uncomfortable to talk about creating more welcoming and safe spaces. We are trying to get better at having those uncomfortable conversations and it's hard for different reasons for different people. If you're a person of color you're just tired of having or not having the conversation. If you're white you can feel guilty, or feel like you're being attacked. But it's good to be uncomfortable sometimes. These are some of the messy things we are trying to dig into and even though there is discomfort, everyone at the Community Foundation is committed to the work.
Do you have any favorite initiatives, programs or projects?
Project Neighborly is making me unbelievably happy for a lot of reasons. For one, we made an intentional effort to reach beyond the nonprofit community, to include them, and to reach out to the broader community. There were so many creative ideas, we would have loved to have been able to fund everything we got a proposal for. Also, while there are some incredibly powerful things happening, there are also big learning opportunities occurring. Sometimes things don't go the way people had planned, but then the next question for those communities is "well, what would you do next?" Is it about trying a different approach, or does it make you want to do something else to try to create more connections? This really helps us to see where the challenges are in the community.
One of my favorite Project Neighborly's to talk about is the Beach School on Lummi Island. They created a pen pal initiative with a club that has existed for more than 100 years on the island, the Lummi Island Civic Improvement Club. It created a connection between the students and women who are long-time residents – many have been there for generations. They didn't know the newer families and similarly the newer families didn't have grandparents or other extended family in the area, so these wonderful relationships got made through the pen pal arrangement. Recently the club members threw a tea party for the kids. So, there is that lovely intergenerational project, and there are others where people have said let's just roll up our sleeves and deal with something messy like natural resource management. Let's talk about water, or how to prevent wildfires in an area that is particularly prone to them – contentious issues. We didn't want to tell people tackle the really tough stuff, we've just said, "what do you want to do?" and beautiful things have come out of it.
There are so many amazing things that we get to do, to have some small piece of investment in, but what I love about Project Neighborly is that it gets back to that core of having people first see each other as humans before they see anything else.
What's the best way for someone to get involved with the work the Community Foundation does?
There are many ways to get involved, but the place we like to start is with the broad idea of giving here matters – whether you are giving to the Community Foundation or any of the resourceful organizations working hard to make Whatcom County a better place for everyone. We love to see donors and residents feel connected to making a difference here, with local organizations.
We are lucky to have great partnerships with the nonprofit sector and think that we are even luckier to have a community full of nonprofits that embody an entrepreneurial spirit. It is great to get to chew on ideas and challenges with the organizations is this community because people here are interested in getting to the solutions, they are willing to collaborate and dig deep. In that regard, we are always looking for more partners and collaborators. Consider our Board Match program which connects people with little or no nonprofit board service to organizations that align with their passions.
If you are a donor who wants to learn more, just come on in or give us a call. It's all about relationships for us, we want to be connected to donors – whether they are donors to the Community Foundation or not – and to add value to their philanthropy. We just need to get to know them and learn about what matters to them. We try to give context to the things that people are interested in and help them connect to work that they find meaningful. That's why it's about the relationship first.
In general, how can each of us help create a thriving Whatcom county?
Just be neighborly, think of neighboring as a verb. That is something each one of us can do, and there are many little things we can each do over the course of a day. The other thing is to think about the things that really matter to you, whatever your passion is. Think about how you can be a part of what is happening around that topic in the community. We each have gifts to give, whether it is attending nonprofit events, or donating your writing and editing skills, or volunteering time to make a difference in the life of a child. Just showing up and being compassionate is highly underrated.
We see cultural values in this community that you can't buy, people being willing to come to the table and truly show up. That's why we are hopeful about neighborliness, and why we're hopeful about achieving the vision that everyone who lives here thrives. We believe the community shares this vision, and the more people we can get engaged in it the better! | {
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The usually reliable Facebook suffered an outage on Thursday this week, amid rumours that the site had been attacked by a hacktivist group. However, there's been no confirmation of this and it could have just been the case that the site suffered technical problems. The outages didn't affect all of Facebook's 900m users, but many had problems logging in or experienced glitches such as pages being slow to load for a couple of hours.
As you can imagine, this prompted a slew of both angry tweets and jokes at the time, with many users furious that they couldn't access their profile whilst others cracked the joke that "Facebook is down just like its share price".
In spite of the jokes, and the outage, Facebook share prices climbed slightly yesterday by $1.41, bringing the shares up to $29.60.
The Communications Consumer Panel (CCP) has warned that unless the government addresses policy regarding broadband rollout and education, the existing 'digital divide' will widen further and could threaten to stifle internet growth and innovation.
According to the CCP, about 11 million people in the UK still don't use the internet at home, that's 22% of all UK adults. Panel chairman Bob Warner said that this means a "significant minority" of people will be left unable to access online benefits and services.
"Sustainable growth for the future can only be achieved if broadband is used by most consumers and businesses," he went on to say.
The key to rectifying the situation should be a balance between broadband rollout and online support. Incentives in the past to get people online have included digital champions, who work with people in minority internet groups such as the older generation to teach them how to use the net.
A new Facebook scam is doing the rounds that claims to be able to remove Timeline and revert profiles back to the old layout.
Timeline remover comes in the form of an email or app and takes unsuspecting victims to a third-party Turkish site where they are requested to install a browser plugin. The software is written in Turkish and warns users that the plugin is for Turkish users only with a line written in English. Whilst the email version is still being examined by GFI Lab, the app version appears to point to a survey scam.
Survey scams are common on Facebook and often use social engineering to get users to click on them. This takes the form of sensationalist photos and videos in many cases, although there is also the ever popular 'see who views your profile' scam which continues to appear frequently on the site.
Generally, when clicked, the user is taken to an external site or dodgy app and asked to fill in a survey in order to get to a photo or access the app. These are malicious and can sign up victims to premium rate services, as well as result in unwanted calls. In the worst cases, they contain malicious code which infects a victim machine with malware, often banking trojans.
Needless to say it doesn't work and like all things on Facebook that make unlikely or sensationalist promises, it should be avoided.
Windows 8 is now available to download for review before the official version is released to manufacturers in a couple of months' time. The latest offering from Microsoft has IE10 with integrated Flash and a touch feature that allows flicking backwards and forwards between pages.
There is also a new Hotmail app, as well as SkyDrive and Messenger and more are expected to follow. In addition to this, new lock-down features are enabled to give more control for parents to restrict what their kids can get access to.
No official release date has yet been given, but it's thought that Microsoft will introduce a new voucher scheme which enables new PC buyers to upgrade to W8 at a substantially lower cost.
Three EU committees have voted against the implementation of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The anti-piracy treaty has come in for widespread criticism from rights groups and consumers alike, as it's thought to be a threat to online freedom.
The committees were looking at the details of ACTA in order to assess if it constitutes a threat to civil liberties, the legality of it and whether it's likely to threaten innovation.
The European parliament will make its final decisions on ACTA come July, let's hope it's the right one for the internet, rather than movie moguls.
And finally … is this the most romantic proposal ever?
If the video below doesn't bring a tear to your eye and put a smile on your face for the upcoming Bank Holiday weekend, then you have a heart of stone. Or perhaps I'm just a helpless romantic, who knows. Isaac's Live Lip-Dub Proposal hit YouTube this week and so far has gained 11,326,871views and made it to the top of the Guardian's viral video chart.
As well as the time and effort that the potential groom put into his proposal, the 'awww' factor is undeniable. | {
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Xero's 'curate's egg' first-half result cheered by investors
Investors' response to Xero's first-half results was unambiguously positive despite it being a bit of a curate's egg.
Xero shares, which trade only on the ASX, rose as high as a record A$74.54, up 10.4 percent from A$67.50 on Wednesday, before easing to close at A$73.95. The shares are more than 82 percent higher than a year ago.
The good bits in the accounting software company's results include the overall 30 percent rise in subscribers to 2.057 million, particularly the 51 percent rise in UK subscriber numbers to 536,000, the fact that it reported a small bottom-line profit and free cash flow is positive and rising.
British subscriber growth accelerated from the 48 percent pace in the year ended March and subscriber growth in the rest of the world – everywhere outside of Australasia, Britain and North America – also accelerated from 43 percent in the year ended March to 52 percent in the latest six months.
Xero's annualised monthly recurring revenue rose to $764.1 million, up from $638.2 million in March and the life-time value of Xero's subscriber base is now $5.4 billion, up from $4.4 billion in March.
A new and intriguing feature is Xero's fledgling but fast-growing revenue from outside its core business. As it has previously talked about, Xero has turned itself into a platform from which to sell other related technological services.
That accounted for just 6 percent of revenue in the latest six months but it more than doubled compared with the previous first half.
As chief executive Steve Vamos says, Xero's business beyond its core cloud accounting service now includes more than 800 applications including the payments service Stripe and the document management system Hubdoc, which Xero purchased in August last year for up to US$70 million.
Vamos is expecting that "platform" revenue to continue growing very fast.
He also agrees with analysts who are cautioning that British growth may decelerate in the current six months.
The first phase of Britain moving to digital tax filing boosted the first-half growth and "there's still some question about the timing of other tax initiatives … we will continue to make Xero the best platform for tax and compliance."
Fisher Funds portfolio manager Sam Dickie, who includes Xero shares in his portfolio, notes that Xero's subscriber growth in Australia also accelerated from 25 percent in the year ended March to 28 percent. Australia is Xero's largest single market with 840,000 of its total 2.06 million subscribers.
And while New Zealand subscriber growth decelerated to 13 percent in the latest half year from the 17 percent annual pace in March, local revenue grew at a faster 22 percent rate.
Dickie says New Zealand is a "fairly fully penetrated market" with 367,000 subscribers now and "this foreshadows where other, way less-penetrated markets – UK and US – could still be growing in 5-10-15 years.
"The most important point here is that the result was very strong and the company is doing even better than our bullish expectations."
Jarden analyst Arie Dekker shares Dickie's enthusiasm for what the NZ revenue growth says about Xero's future.
"NZ is showing that the platform/upsell strategy can drive revenue growth in a more mature market, which is also encouraging as it validates the embedded value in the existing customer base and Xero's strategy of unlocking this is working," Dekker says.
He also notes the Australasian figures mean "Xero is showing that once it attracts customers, it can extract better yields and thus more value over time."
So much for Xero's good bits. The big disappointment, which has been disappointing for years now, is North America where subscriber growth decelerated from the 48 percent pace recorded for the year ended March to 21 percent in the six months ended September, when subscriber numbers reached 215,000.
"North America underwhelmed and is the only fly in the ointment we can see on first glance," says Stephen Ridgewell, an analyst at Craigs Investment Partners.
"To be fair to Xero, management had been consistently talking down near-term growth in North America and Xero's argument is, of course, that efficiency has improved, the partner channel takes time to build etc. No doubt there is some truth to that, but optically, it's still a miss in this key market," Ridgewell says.
To put Xero's North American numbers in perspective, its arch-rival, US-based Intuit, reported that it had 3.3 million US subscribers at July 31, up 25 percent from a year earlier, and another 315,000 subscribers in Canada, up 48 percent from a year earlier.
Xero doesn't break out its Canadian figures and Ridgewell says the overall deceleration in North America "validates our caution vis a vis the bull case for a rapid uptake in Canada, which we have not been able to buy into.
"If Xero succeeds in Canada, it will be 3-5 years – more likely the latter – before that market makes a meaningful contribution to group growth," he says.
Intuit, which is Xero's most meaningful competitor globally, has also surpassed Xero in subscriber number terms in Britain with 545,000 at July 31, although its average revenue per subscriber is a little more than half Xero's.
Vamos says the North American market is "very much about foundations and fundamentals that have worked for us elsewhere. I think the critical thing here is to be patient."
Before Vamos took over as chief executive in early 2018, Xero had corrected its strategy in the US, going back to working through accountants as its primary means of attracting its small business subscribers.
Although this strategy had already proven itself in other markets, Xero had been impatient with the slow pace of US accountants in moving to cloud accounting and had tried to go over their heads directly to small businesses, but that departure from strategy simply didn't work.
Vamos says it takes time to support accountants in adopting Xero and then rolling it out to their clients but "that tends to accelerate over time."
He's also optimistic about the opportunity in Canada, which, as a former British colony, has very similar characteristics to New Zealand, Australia and Britain.
With cloud accounting having achieved only about 2 percent penetration in Canada, "that means there's a massive opportunity there for us." | {
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Marietje Schaake, Member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, spoke on the rule of law online as part of CyberProject's 7th Annual International Conference on Cyber Engagement.
The MSFS CyberProject hosted the 7th Annual International Conference on Cyber Engagement: "Global Issues that Demand Global Solutions" on Monday, April 24, 2017. The conference welcomed keynote speakers from across the public and private sectors, as well as panelist experts from around the world.
The day began with keynotes providing government perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing the world of cybersecurity. Dr. Catherine Lotrionte, Director of the CyberProject, first introduced Robert Joyce, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for the White House.
Joyce outlined the cybersecurity priorities of the Trump administration, while emphasizing the difficulties facing a massive organization like the U.S. federal government, where cybersecurity resources are not spread evenly.
"Our government has something like 200 different departments and agencies, give or take, and in those departments and agencies some are really well resourced and focused on the problem, take for example the Department of Defense," Joyce said.
While the Department of Defense has robust cybersecurity programs, Joyce noted that other agencies and bureaus with critical missions cannot individually raise themselves to that same standard.
Joyce divided the federal government's approach to cybersecurity issues like resource allotment into several 'priorities.' The first priority of the Trump administration is to "enhance the security and defenses of the federal government networks." Eye opening attacks like the 2015 Office of Personnel Management personnel data breach underscored the wide-ranging implications of cybersecurity issues that require top-level focus.
Joyce also sees opportunities for better cooperation across government divisions.
Joyce was followed by Marietje Schaake, a Member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands. Schaake expanded on the international nature of cybersecurity, focusing on the development of rule of law and international norms for internet usage, access, and content.
The considerable influence of non-governmental, often private sector voices on the development of the digital world presents a unique challenge to world governments.
Schaake espoused cooperation and the invested interest of all parties as the key to advancing a sustainable and safe agenda for an increasingly connected world.
Panels at the conference included discussions on national cybersecurity strategies, the roles of the military and business in cybersecurity, and the use of cyber in war and peace. One of these panels, titled "News, Alternative Facts, and Propaganda: The Role of Cyber in Influence Operations," focused on the role of cybersecurity in current political events and discourse.
Panelists included Maria Belovas, Director General of the Communications Department of Estonia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Rashid Gabdulhakov, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Media and Communications at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands; Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Trump; Markku Mantila, the Director General of the Government Communications Department in the Prime Minister's Office of Finland; and Anthony Arend, Senior Associate Dean for Graduate and Faculty Affairs in the SFS and Director of the MSFS Program. The panel was moderated by Siobhan Gorman, Director of the Brunswick Group.
Gorman began the panel with the argument that fake news has become a critical element for the role of governments in cybersecurity due to the increasing potential for fake news to influence political discourse. Belovas agreed, adding that with the addition of social media to the news landscape, fake news can travel faster, which has a direct effect on everything from a population's basic understanding of current events to national elections.
Belovas called attention to the similarities between fake news and propaganda, defining propaganda as something "orchestrated by a government with a purpose." In dealing with propaganda in Estonia, she argued that it is up to the public to check their facts, citing a study that even intelligent adults don't often verify the sources of their news. In this sense, she said the way people deal with fake news and propaganda is the same: readers must check the credibility of their sources in any way that they can.
Mantila agreed, explaining that there is a limited role for democratic governments in decreasing fake news because the means of counter-propaganda are contrary to democratic principles of free speech and transparency. In Finland, where the children are the best educated in the world, according to Mantila and numerous independent studies, education is the "first line of defense" in information war, said Mantila.
Arend, who is also a professor in international law and American constitutional law in foreign policy, agreed that legal actions like licensing and regulation are not the best solution to fake news. Rather, the best response to fake news, he said, is better news. Because of this, Arend said he was skeptical of German and French attempts to use legal responses to counter the proliferation of fake news.
What we can do as governments, and what we have to do in this digital era, is be more open, more honest, and more fast with our own information. Because when you get that out first and you are a credible source, and the other sources are not as fast and not as clear with their information, they do not have that credibility.
The issue of speed, then, is both a problem and a solution in the fight against fake news. As Gabdulhakov explained, the urge for speed and sensationalism to drive clicks and shares on social media has made news a monetized commodity, something of which "even venerable news sources" are victims.
Gorka agreed, citing the widespread angle of "palace intrigue" to generate views in recent news stories about the White House. "Unfortunately that market-driven reality [of journalism] creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited by nation-state actors and non-nation-state actors," said Gorka.
The panel ended with a series of questions-and-answers, the majority of which were directed at Gorka by a group of student protesters who attended the session. Many of the questions referenced allegations of Gorka's ties to an anti-Semitic group in Hungary, to which Gorka told the students they were "victims of fake news." Gorka told the conference organizers that he had to leave the panel early, which he did. The audience was not informed in advance.
The final keynote brought Ciaran Martin, CEO of the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), to Gaston Hall to discuss the U.K. government's efforts to combat cyberattacks. The NCSC, housed within the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) signals intelligence organization, was formally opened in February.
"As well as caring about cybersecurity for national security reasons, governments should care about it because confidence in the economy depends on it," Martin said.
To accomplish this, Martin urged an improved understanding of cybersecurity that stressed the preventability of most cyberattacks and demystified the subject.
"Too many attacks are getting through. Worse, far too many basic attacks are getting through," Martin said.
The effectiveness of these basic attacks can be reduced with small investments that raise the costs of those attacks. These changes can be accessible and attainable for broader society.
Cyber security is about risk management. Nothing more, nothing less.
Thus, Martin expects and depends on the private sector to pull its weight in defense against cyber crime. The U.K. government is ready to provide its own expertise, but it hopes to do so as part of a collaborative effort.
"Our strategy is by making it easier to raise basic defenses across the board by first finding gaps in what is happening in the private sector and moving directly to fix them," Martin said.
Overall, Martin was insistent that cybersecurity is not an insurmountable or unmanageable problem. | {
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Hexindai Announces the Results of Annual General Meeting and Name Change
BEIJING, Dec. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hexindai Inc. (NASDAQ: HX) ("Hexindai" or the "Company"), a social e-commerce platform in China, today announced that it held the 2020 annual general meeting of shareholders (the "AGM") at the Conference Room, 5th Floor, Block C, Shimao Plaza, No. 92 Jianguo Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, People's Republic of China, at 10:00 a.m. (Beijing Time) on December 16, 2020. At the AGM, holders of 52,025,638 ordinary shares (including ordinary shares represented by the Company's American Depositary Shares), out of the 52,458,550 ordinary shares issued and outstanding, were present in person or by proxy, and therefore constituted a quorum of more than one-third of the ordinary shares outstanding and entitled to vote at the AGM as of November 6, 2020, the record date of the AGM.
At the AGM, the shareholders of the Company approved the name change of the Company from "Hexindai Inc." to "Xiaobai Maimai Inc.", as a special resolution of the Company. As an ordinary resolution of the Company, the shareholders ratified the appointment of Wei, Wei& Co., LLP as the Company's independent registered public accounting firm.
About Hexindai Inc.
Hexindai Inc. (NASDAQ: HX) ("Hexindai" or the "Company") is a social e-commerce platform based in Beijing, China. The Company collaborates with domestic e-commerce platforms and offers users a wide selection of high-quality and affordable products on its new social e-commerce platform. Leveraging its cooperation with mainstream e-commerce platforms and services marketplaces, and its data analytics algorithm and operating system, the Company continues to identify and introduce cost-efficient products and attract users to its platform and generate higher user satisfaction to realize the platform's fast growth.
For more information, please visit http://ir.xiaobaimaimai.com.
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "potential," "continue," "ongoing," "targets," "guidance" and similar statements. The Company may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Any statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the Company's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements that involve factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such factors and risks include, but not limited to the following: the Company's goals, strategies and expansion plans; its future business development, financial condition and results of operations; its ability to attract and retain new users and to increase revenues generated from repeat users; its expectations regarding demand for and market acceptance of its products and services; its relationships and cooperation with e-commerce platforms and services marketplaces; trends and competition in China's e-commerce market; the expected growth of the Chinese e-commerce market; Chinese governmental policies relating to the Company's corporate structure and the e-commerce industry; and general economic conditions in China. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties or factors is included in the Company's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this announcement is current as of the date of this announcement, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law.
For investor inquiries, please contact:
Hexindai
Ms. Zenabo Ma
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +86-10- 5900-1548
E-mail: [email protected]
Mr. Tip Fleming
Email: [email protected]
http://www.hexindai.com | {
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How to Rekindle Your Friendship After a Fallout
Updated: Oct 08, 2013, 18:11 IST
Use these tips to rekindle your friendship after a fallout
A few months ago, Mumbai-based clinical psychologist Hvovi Bhagwagar was approached by a 33-yearold MNC professional after a break-up had left him rattled. It wasn't a split of the romantic kind. He had had a nasty fight with his best buddy of many years. "Interestingly," says Bhagwagar, "he was going through a divorce at the same time. It wasn't the end of his marriage but the end of his friendship, that made him seek help." It's not discussed often, especially when men are involved, but it's not uncommon for adults to stop talking to friends whom they shared everything with. The reasons could vary. Bhagwagar's patient had a fight with his friend while the two were discussion his turbulent marriage. Well acquainted with the gradual deterioration of his friend's relationship, the friend offered him his frank opinion — you can't blame your wife for everything that goes wrong in the relationship. Take some responsibility too.
"He couldn't handle the criticism and the fact that his friend wasn't supporting him. They nearly came to blows, and cut off all contact," she adds. While breaking up with a best friend is common across all age groups, the loss is more acute in adulthood, say psychologists. While in childhood, a friend often refers to just a playmate, in adulthood, friends equal family. "When you are young, friendship is more about who you spend time with, but as you get older, friends are not merely people you speak to every day," says psychiatrist Dr Samir Parikh. "In fact, sometimes, you may not even talk to them every day. But they are your support system and offer unconditional, non-judgemental acceptance."
The bereavement in such a case equals the trauma faced at the loss of a family member or spouse. "People invest as much in close friendships, whether it's time or emotion, as they would in romantic engagements. And like marriages, these too are expected to continue for a lifetime." Thus, when it's the end, anger and frustration take over.
Patching up is tougher
Reconciliation among fighting pals is tougher than between family members because the ties are not legal or genetic. So it's easier to make a complete break and not talk for years.
In the meantime, check out some tips to strike a balance between friends and a boyfriend.
Intervention can help, though. In the case of the 33-year-old, therapy helped him understand that his reaction to his friend's criticism was extreme. "We realised through therapy that he had a problem in conflict resolution. This had slowly eroded his marriage and was responsible for the fight with his friend too," says Bhagwagar.
When he offered an olive branch, the friend responded curtly, but her patient persisted. Eventually, they met, discussed the problem and buried the hatchet. "His marriage was beyond repair, but at least he got back with his friend," says Bhagwagar. A healthy relationship is one where friends aren't afraid to disagree because they do it with the goal of coming to an understanding. "They thrash things out so that their friendship remains a safe place where they can be themselves."
Talk it out
Had a fight? Here's a 4-step plan to patch up:
Cool down and view the situation using both, logic and emotion. For instance, if your friend didn't support you through a trying period, ask why. Perhaps there's a genuine reason.
Begin conversing in the least awkward way: phone/email/text.
Gradually move to face-to-face communication. Set up a meeting only when ready.
Solve the problem. Apologise, confront and find a win-win option.
Foes, friends again
The cold war between once best friends Shah Rukh Khan and Arjun Rampal began when Rampal began praising Salman Khan, with whom SRK shares a less than cordial relationship. Friends of the two actors — who were spotted with each other often — admitted that the two were avoiding each other at parties. But a few days ago, the two are believed to have made up at an awards function when SRK, on his way to his vanity van, spotted Rampal hanging out with Chunky Pandey, went up and hugged him.
Image courtesy: © Thinkstockphotos/ Getty images | {
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Morgan's Institutional dealing team is one of the strongest and most experienced small-mid cap desks in the country. The team brings together a combination of international experience and a wide variety of sector knowledge.
Since 1991, our Institutional desk has maintained a steadfast commitment to the Australian small-mid cap sector. It has developed trusting relationships with most domestic and offshore Institutional clients.
The team is highly analytical (60% of the members having spent time as research analysts), which allows timely and accurate translation of market information to the benefit of our client base.
Morgans' in-depth research product is complemented by our dealers' relationships with the senior management of companies, producing a unique and powerful marriage of fundamentals with market dynamics.
Our firm's strong research, corporate and institutional broking capabilities manifest themselves in commanding market shares in the stocks we cover.
Please contact one of our experienced Institutional Advisers to discuss how Morgans can assist your organisation. | {
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Facebook Shares Rise as US Senators Question Zuckerberg
1 year ago admin Comments Off on Facebook Shares Rise as US Senators Question Zuckerberg
Facebook shares rose to their highest in almost three weeks as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg fended off questions from U.S. senators on how the social network handles user data and plans to counter attempts at interfering in U.S. elections. Zuckerberg repeated his apologies for a range of problems that have beset the world's largest social network, but the 33-year-old internet mogul broke little new ground in a joint hearing of the U.S. Senate's Commerce and Judiciary committees, raising investor hopes he could forestall strict regulation. "We are going through a broad philosophical shift at the company," said Zuckerberg, wearing a dark suit and tie instead of his typical T-shirt and jeans.
Also Read: Facebook Judgement Day: Here's What Mark Zuckerberg Will Face Today
Investors appeared to welcome his performance. "Zuckerberg is conciliatory in his presentation," said Mariann Montagne, portfolio manager at Gradient Investments in Arden Hills, Minnesota. "The stock is running up on his comments. Maybe people like seeing Zuckerberg in a suit." Facebook shares closed up 4.5 percent at $165.04. Outside the U.S. Capitol building, online protest group Avaaz set up 100 life-sized cutouts of Zuckerberg wearing T-shirts with the words 'Fix Facebook.' Facebook faces a growing crisis of confidence among users, advertisers, employees and investors after acknowledging that up to 87 million people, mostly in the United States, had personal information harvested from the site by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that has counted U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign among its clients.
Also Read: What Social Media Websites, Search Engines Know About You And What They Sell
It is also struggling to deal with fake news and alleged foreign interference in elections, disclosed in September that Russians under fake names used the social network to try to influence U.S. voters in the months before and after the 2016 election, writing about inflammatory subjects, setting up events and buying ads. "We believe it is entirely possible that there will be a connection there," Zuckerberg said when asked if there was overlap between Cambridge Analytica's harvested user data and the political propaganda pushed by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency during the 2016 presidential election, which Facebook has said was seen by some 126 million people.
Also Read: Facebook Launches Bounty Program For Reports of Data Misuse by App Developers
In February, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies with interfering in the election by sowing discord on social media. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004, is fighting to prove to critics that he is the right person to go on leading what has grown into one of the world's largest companies. On Friday, Zuckerberg threw his support behind proposed legislation requiring social media sites to disclose the identities of buyers of online political campaign ads.
Watch: Nokia 6 (2018) Review: A Smooth Performer in a Striking New Design
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iPhone 8 Plus: Three Reasons To Buy it Now And Two To Skip
Apple announced the new iPhones at their September event this year and they are also available here in India. As with any new iPhone many consumers face a tough... Read More
Google assisting the Pentagon in developing AI for its drones
TensorFlow APIs are being used for object detection So far, it's unclear exactly what technology is being used and how involved Google are. But it's all part of Project... Read More
Intel Brings Core i9 Processor to Laptops as Its 'Highest-Performance Processor' Till Date
Intel has unveiled its first ever Intel Core i9 processor for laptops. Intel claims that the 8th Gen Intel Core i9 processor is its 'highest-performance laptop processor' ever built.... Read More | {
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Connecting You to a World of Ideas
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How To Protect Disabled Individuals From Sexual Abuse
By Dan Hurley • Apr 9, 2018
Women with intellectual disabilities suffer sexual assault at 12 times the rate of the general population.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, people with disabilities are at least 2.5 times more likely to experience violent victimization than those without disabilities. An NPR investigation released this January revealed Justice Department data on sex crimes that showed people with intellectual disabilities, both men and women, are victims of sexual assault more than seven times as frequently as people without disabilities.
The Project CARE (Community, Accessibility, Response, Education) collaborative provides comprehensive intervention and prevention services to people with intellectual or developmental disabilities in Greater Cincinnati.
Joining "Cincinnati Edition" to discuss protecting individuals with disabilities from sexual abuse are Project CARE self-advocate Bree Moss; YWCA of Greater Cincinnati Project CARE Manager Holly Watson; and from Hamilton County Developmental Disabilities Services, Behavior Support Coordinator Kimi Remenyi and Service and Support Administrator Amanda Stegall.
Project CARE partners include the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, Hamilton County Developmental Disabilities Services, Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health, Butler County SANE Network and Women Helping Women.
Tune in to "Cincinnati Edition" April 9 beginning at 1:00 p.m. to hear this segment.
24-hour hotlines to call in case of emergency
Hamilton County Developmental Disabilities Services: 513-559-6629
YWCA Domestic Violence (Hamilton County): 513-872-9259
House of Peace (Clermont, Brown and Adams counties): 513-753-7281
Women Helping Women: 513-381-5610
Butler County SANE Network: 513-330-6171
Primaries, Pensions and Protests: This Week's Top Stories
Jim Nolan / WVXU
The Ohio governor's race heats up as we get closer to the May primary. Two Cincinnati City Council members will lead an investigation of City Manager Harry Black. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin says he's not happy with the tax reform and budget bills passed by the General Assembly, as thousands of teachers protest a pension bill in Frankfort and throughout the state. And a local college student shares her story of sexual harassment.
The Trouble With Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is one of the most-challenged books in America. A library in Concord, Mass., banned the novel just after its 1885 release in the United States, and the book continues to be one of the most controversial books in classrooms and libraries today, with critics citing its racially insensitive language and depictions of African Americans.
This Nonprofit Aims To Make Cincinnati America's "Most Welcoming" City For Refugees
By Dan Hurley • Mar 27, 2018
RefugeeConnect's mission is to improve the lives of refugees in our region, to foster community acceptance and inclusion, and to construct a sustainable support system for the individuals and families who have made Greater Cincinnati their new home. Its goal is to make Cincinnati the most welcoming city in America for refugees. | {
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10 Great Things in Windows 10
Katherine Murray, author of My Windows 10, shares her 'top 10' list of new or improved features in Windows 10 that might finally persuade you to be an early adopter.
My Windows 10 (includes video and Content Update Program)
Are you excited about Windows 10? Even if you weren't thrilled with Windows 8 and you'd really prefer to keep using Windows 7 until your computer rusts, you may be pleasantly surprised by the easy, intuitive, and attractive features Microsoft has packed into Windows 10.
The latest version of Microsoft's popular operating system includes a long list of new and revised features—changes that make sense, add flexibility, and reduce unnecessary work for you. New universal apps like Photos, Music, and Movies & TV have a look-and-feel that maximizes the space for your content (which is the point, after all) and still keep your tools right where you can reach them.
This article spotlights 10 big changes in Windows 10 that are worth checking out now.
1: Windows 10 Knows the Mode You Need
When you first push the power button on your computer or device, Windows 10 automatically recognizes its current environment (desktop, tablet, or phone) and starts up with the interface that best fits the device's functionality. On a touch device, for example, Windows 10 Continuum—the name for tablet mode—appears by default so you can navigate easily with touch. On a desktop computer, you'll see the Windows 10 desktop, along with the return of the Start button. Windows 10 changes to Continuum automatically when you undock your tablet to take it on the road; even for 2-in-1 devices, Windows 10 adjusts to the interface you need.
2: Return of the Start Menu
One of the big criticisms of Windows 8 was the loss of the Start menu. Windows 10 restores the Start button—and the Start menu that appears when you click the button. The new Start menu goes beyond what was included in Windows 7 to give you control of your favorite app tiles; a Most Used list; access to Settings and All Apps; and a customizable space where you can add folders, apps, or tools for easy access (see Figure 1).
You can easily customize the look and function of the Start menu by resizing it (click and drag the edge of the menu), by adding app tiles or removing ones you don't use, by changing the color and transparency of the menu (go to Settings, choose Personalization, and choose Colors). You can also change the size of app tiles to create different effects on the Start menu, and you can name groups you create. There's lots of room for you to organize your apps in a way that feels natural for you. If you'd rather choose your apps from an alphabetical list, simply click All Apps in the Start menu to scroll through all available apps on your computer or device.
Figure 1 The Start menu gives you lots of options for getting to your programs, files, and settings.
3: More Personal Security with Windows Hello
These days we know it's important to keep our computers and devices secure, and Microsoft has included digital recognition technology in Windows 10 to help protect your system. If your computer or device is equipped with a fingerprint reader or a supported camera, you can use Windows Hello to sign in to Windows 10 with a touch or a glance at the screen. Windows Hello uses the latest in digital recognition technology to identify your fingerprint, face, or iris at login—which means no cryptic passwords to remember. Just be yourself, and Windows 10 will recognize you. Nice.
4: Easy and Powerful Searches
Now you can't miss the search box: It's just to the right of the Start button on the Windows 10 desktop. When you click in the search box and begin typing, Windows 10 instantly begins showing results from your recently used files, the Windows Store, your documents, and the Web (see Figure 2). To continue searching, you can click My Stuff (to search the content on your computer or device) or click Web to search online.
Figure 2 The search tool in Windows 10 gives you a variety of result types, instantly.
5: Cortana: Your Own Personal Digital Assistant
Microsoft's new personal digital assistant, Cortana, is available on your Windows 10 desktop or tablet computer. When you ask Cortana to find something (such as "Locate my book review"), it searches your computer, your OneDrive account, and finally the Web for files that match the description you offered. When you first set up Cortana, Windows 10 walks you through the process of teaching Cortana to recognize your voice, and you're able to set your preferences.
To start a voice search in Cortana, click the microphone tool on the right side of the search box, or just say, "Hey, Cortana!" and the app will tell you that it's listening. Speak what you're searching for, or ask Cortana a question like "Do I need a coat today?" You can also give Cortana tasks, such as "Wake me up in fifteen minutes," or "Set a lunch appointment with Darla for next Tuesday at noon." Cortana will open the needed app, enter the information, and carry out your task as instructed. You can also use the toolbar on the left side of the Cortana window to view Home information (with the latest news headlines, weather reports, and more), add information to your Cortana notebook, set reminders, and provide feedback on Cortana (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 Cortana responds to your voice commands to provide search results or complete tasks.
6: Universal Apps with a New Look
With Windows 10, Microsoft is moving to "universal apps," which have been designed to have the same look-and-feel whether you're using your desktop, tablet, or phone. The screen of the app will change to be optimized for the device, of course; you won't be able to view as much content in one screen on your phone as you would on your PC. But the basic functionality of the app will be consistent, no matter which device or computer you may be using.
What's more, the new universal apps have an appealing design with a menu at upper left and tools along the left edge of the app window. This design gives you the maximum amount of room onscreen to view the content of your apps—especially helpful in apps like Photos, Movies & TV, and News (see Figure 4). At the bottom of the left tool column is the Settings tool, which enables you to choose preferences for that app; just above it is your Microsoft account access.
Figure 4 The new universal app window has been redesigned to put content at center stage.
7: Easy-to-Find Settings
Earlier versions of Windows required you to go to the Control Panel to install or remove programs, change settings, set up user accounts, and much more. In Windows 10, you'll use Settings to perform most of the tasks you formerly accomplished with the Control Panel. You can display the Settings window by clicking Settings on the Start menu, swiping in from the right, or clicking the Notifications tool in the system tray. When the Action Center panel appears, choose Settings. The Settings window has a streamlined design, offering you nine different categories of settings you can tweak to your heart's content (see Figure 5).
Figure 5 Control features of various apps, devices, accounts, and more in the Settings window.
8: Brand New State-of-the Web Browser: Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is Microsoft's new browser, designed to offer a clean browsing and reading experience, with onscreen note-taking capabilities and seamless sharing with friends. Edge is much faster and friendlier than Internet Explorer 11, with tools that enable you to display Reading View (which hides extra elements on web pages so you can focus on the content); organize your favorites and build your Reading List; and use the Hub for easy access to all your downloads, favorites, history, and more. You can share web content on social media, in email, or with your OneNote notebook. Edge also includes a fun feature known as Web Note, which enables you to write notes on web pages and save or share your notes with other people (see Figure 6).
Figure 6 Microsoft Edge streamlines your browsing experience and adds fun organizing tools that let you save and use content that interests you.
9: Revamped Action Center
The Action Center in Windows 10 is no longer a prompt that alerts you when your security features need updating: Now Action Center is a robust notification system with a grid of quick tools for things you'll change or check often, such as your web connection, location, Bluetooth, brightness, and more (see Figure 7).
At the top of the Action Center are notifications of updates from email and all of your social media accounts. To read more, click the down arrow to the right of a notification item. To remove it from the list, click the close (X) button that appears when you hover the mouse over the item.
Figure 7 The new Action Center combines commonly used tools with notifications from mail and social media accounts.
10: Task View and Multiple Desktops
The new Windows 10 Task View displays open apps onscreen at thumbnail size. This layout makes it easy for you to see at a glance which apps are currently running on your system, and you can click any app you want to use. The Task View button is to the right of the search box on the Windows 10 taskbar.
In Task View, the lower-right corner of the screen shows a New Desktop tool. Click this tool to create a new desktop in Windows 10; for example, to use one set of apps at home and another at work. Switch back and forth between desktops whenever you like—simply click the Task View button and then click the desktop you want in the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 8).
Figure 8 Windows 10 can show all open apps in Task View, and you can easily create and switch among multiple desktops.
Windows 10 offers a number of great new features. Microsoft has been smart about the way these features are introduced, and their functionality fits naturally into the way we use our computers and other devices. Even if you're a Windows 7 holdout, Windows 10 is worth a closer look. | {
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SCHEDULE 13G
(Rule 13d-102)
INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN STATEMENTS FILED PURSUANT
TO § 240.13d-1(b), (c) AND (d) AND AMENDMENTS THERETO FILED
PURSUANT TO § 240.13d-2.
(Amendment No. )*
Moleculin Biotech, Inc.
(Name of Issuer)
Common Stock, $0.001 par value per share
(Title of Class of Securities)
60855D101
(CUSIP Number)
(Date of Event Which Requires Filing of this Statement)
Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed:
Rule 13d-1(b)
Rule 13d-1(c)
Rule 13d-1(d)
*The remainder of this cover page shall be filled out for a reporting person's initial filing on this form with respect to the subject class of securities, and for any subsequent amendment containing information which would alter the disclosures provided in a prior cover page.
The information required in the remainder of this cover page shall not be deemed to be "filed" for purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Act") or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that section of the Act but shall be subject to all other provisions of the Act (however, see the Notes).
CUSIP No: 60855D101
Names of Reporting Persons
CVI Investments, Inc.
Check the Appropriate Box if a Member of a Group (See Instructions)
SEC Use Only
Citizenship or Place of Organization
Beneficially
Person With
Sole Voting Power
Shared Voting Power **
Sole Dispositive Power
Shared Dispositive Power **
Aggregate Amount Beneficially Owned by Each Reporting Person
Check Box if the Aggregate Amount in Row (9) Excludes Certain Shares (See Instructions) o
Percent of Class Represented by Amount in Row (9)
Type of Reporting Person (See Instructions)
** Heights Capital Management, Inc. is the investment manager to CVI Investments, Inc. and as such may exercise voting and dispositive power over these shares.
Heights Capital Management, Inc.
Moleculin Biotech, Inc. (the "Company")
Address of Issuer's Principal Executive Offices
5300 Memorial Drive, Suite 950, Houston, TX 77007
Item 2(a).
Name of Person Filing
This statement is filed by the entities listed below, who are collectively referred to herein as "Reporting Persons," with respect to the shares of common stock of the Company, $0.001 par value per share (the "Shares").
(i) CVI Investments, Inc.
(ii) Heights Capital Management, Inc.
Item 2(b).
Address of Principal Business Office or, if none, Residence
The address of the principal business office of CVI Investments, Inc. is:
P.O. Box 309GT
Ugland House
South Church Street
The address of the principal business office of Heights Capital Management, Inc. is:
101 California Street, Suite 3250
Item 2(c).
Citizenship is set forth in Row 4 of the cover page for each Reporting Person hereto and is incorporated herein by reference for each such Reporting Person.
Item 2(d)
Title of Class of Securities
Item 2(e)
CUSIP Number
If this statement is filed pursuant to §§240.13d-1(b) or 240.13d-2(b) or (c), check whether the person filing is a:
Broker or dealer registered under section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78o).
Bank as defined in section 3(a)(6) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c).
Insurance company as defined in section 3(a)(19) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c).
Investment company registered under section 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (15 U.S.C. 80a-8).
An investment adviser in accordance with §240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(E);
An employee benefit plan or endowment fund in accordance with §240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(F);
A parent holding company or control person in accordance with §240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(G);
A savings association as defined in Section 3(b) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1813);
A church plan that is excluded from the definition of an investment company under section 3(c)(14) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (15 U.S.C. 80a-3);
A non-U.S. institution in accordance with §240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J);
Group, in accordance with Rule 13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(K). If filing as a non-U.S. institution in accordance with
§240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J), please specify the type of institution:____________________________
Provide the following information regarding the aggregate number and percentage of the class of securities of the issuer identified in Item 1.
The information required by Items 4(a) – (c) is set forth in Rows 5 – 11 of the cover page for each Reporting Person hereto and is incorporated herein by reference for each such Reporting Person.
The Company's Prospectus Supplement (to Prospectus dated August 11, 2017, Registration No. 333-219434), filed on April 24, 2019, indicates there were 43,759,030 Shares outstanding as of the completion of the offering of the Shares referred to therein.
Heights Capital Management, Inc., which serves as the investment manager to CVI Investments, Inc., may be deemed to be the beneficial owner of all Shares owned by CVI Investments, Inc. Each of the Reporting Persons hereby disclaims any beneficial ownership of any such Shares, except for their pecuniary interest therein.
Ownership of Five Percent or Less of a Class
If this statement is being filed to report the fact that as of the date hereof the reporting person has ceased to be the beneficial owner of more than five percent of the class of securities, check the following: o
Ownership of More than Five Percent on Behalf of Another Person
Identification and Classification of the Subsidiary Which Acquired the Security Being Reported on By the Parent Holding Company or Control Person
Identification and Classification of Members of the Group
Notice of Dissolution of Group
By signing below each of the undersigned certifies that, to the best of its knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect.
After reasonable inquiry and to the best of its knowledge and belief, each of the undersigned certifies that the information with respect to it set forth in this statement is true, complete, and correct.
Dated: May 2, 2019
By: Heights Capital Management, Inc. pursuant to a Limited Power of Attorney, a copy of which is attached as Exhibit I hereto
/s/ Brian Sopinsky
Brian Sopinsky
Joint Filing Agreement
Exhibit I
THIS LIMITED POWER OF ATTORNEY given on the 16th day of July, 2015 by CVI Investments, Inc. (hereinafter called "the Company"), whose Registered Office is situated at PO Box 309GT, Ugland House, South Church Street, George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.
WHEREAS, by agreement dated July 16, 2015, by and between the Company and Heights Capital Management, Inc., the Company expressly authorized Heights Capital Management, Inc. to enter into transactions in certain designated areas as defined in the Discretionary Investment Management Agreement attached hereto marked "Appendix l."
NOW THIS DEED WITNESSETH that William Walmsley, Director of the Company, hereby appoints on behalf of the Company the firm of HEIGHTS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, INC., which through its officers, directors and employees is hereby formally granted limited power of attorney for the purpose of entering into transactions on behalf and for the account of the Company; and to take all actions on behalf of the Company as may be necessary to consummate such transactions, including but not limited to making, negotiating; signing, endorsing, executing, acknowledging and delivering in the name of the Company all applications, contracts, agreements, notes, statements, certificates, proxies and any other instruments of whatever kind and nature as may be necessary or proper in connection with the entering into of such transactions, instructing the transfer of funds where necessary with respect to such transactions, and performing all of the services specified under the Discretionary Investment Management Agreement with respect to such transactions.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Company has caused this Limited Power of Attorney to take effect on the day and year above written.
/s/ William Walmsley
William Walmsley, Director
EXHIBIT II
This will confirm the agreement by and among the undersigned that the Schedule 13G filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on or about the date hereof with respect to the beneficial ownership by the undersigned of the shares of common stock of Moleculin Biotech, Inc., $0.001 par value per share, is being filed, and all amendments thereto will be filed, on behalf of each of the persons and entities named below in accordance with Rule 13d-1(k) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. This Agreement may be executed in two or more counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original, but all of which together shall constitute one and the same instrument.
Dated as of May 2, 2019
By: Heights Capital Management, Inc. pursuant to a Limited Power of Attorney | {
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public education is an essential element of a democracy.
public education is the only institution in America that provides every child the opportunity to move from one economic level to a better one.
that parents are owners of their public schools.
opportunities that prepare parents for the responsibilities of ownership.
A nation where families and communities are actively engaged in strengthening public schools for every child.
Parents for Public Schools advances the role of families and communities in securing a high quality public education for every child.
PPS reworks relationships between families, communities and schools so that parents are equal and actively engaged partners, not passive, external constituents of their public school systems.
PPS moves parents beyond a reactive, help-only-when-asked mode to identify problems and bring their talents and ideas to the policy table, not just the homework table.
PPS provides the resources and ideas that help parents work with educators to define and analyze issues and find solutions.
PPS challenges mediocrity at every level in public schools by setting high standards and helping students and educators meet these standards.
PPS paves the way for ongoing and significant involvement at all levels of the district by creating welcome spaces and meaningful roles for more parents.
PPS crosses racial, cultural and socioeconomic lines to develop partnerships among parents that are needed to effectively promote the best education for all students.
PPS does its local work as part of a national effort and shares resources and ideas with other PPS parents across the nation.
PPS answers a civic duty to help make public schools effective for all children and strong anchors of their communities.
Today, there are PPS chapters located across the country. Although each chapter has its own identity, the work of all chapters is enhanced as a part of a larger national network that provides a source of power, support, and expertise. Find the chapter in your area. | {
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Learn Piano in 30 Days Review – Is It a SCAM or LEGIT?
Keep reading this Learn Piano in 30 Days Review. We tell you all you need to know about Learn Piano in 30 Days Program.
Learn Piano WITHOUT Sheet Music!
Six Courses, 60 Total Video Lessons!
If you want to watch a video of Scott teaching simply the bare, bones version of the song first, click the link below.
Benoit and Houston discuss the importance of quality "seat time" PLAYING songs versus practicing. As a working musician, Benoit shares that he usually works from a lead sheet not from traditional sheet music.
First, David demonstrates the right hand melody line part then the left hand bossa nova beat. Houston and Benoit share a tip to use if you are struggling with hand independence when playing with both hands together.
Houston simply wants to help you teach yourself piano skills to get you having some fun at a piano as quickly as possible.
The video concludes with a great performance of "Song For My Father"on piano by David Benoit.
How do you play Amazing Grace? How do you take a hymn and make it sound more interesting? How do you reharmonize a song on the piano? What are some gospel chords, licks and fillers?
Here is a Piano Lesson that will get you started on Learning How To Play Amazing Grace. You will Learn To Play this song from the very beginning in these Free Online Piano Lessons.
In these Free Piano Lessons you will learn the very basics of putting together Amazing Grace.
In the full version available at www.easypiano.com you will expand upon the knowledge you gain here and learn to play the more advanced version with fill-in licks, chords and more!
All Lessons in these Instructional videos are kept very simple and easy to understand.
The Piano For All course, created by Robin Hall, is a complete piano and keyboard course that centers around creating a foundation and then building on that knowledge. I recently purchased and downloaded this program and plan on sharing my experience as I go. I want to share some facts about the program, what the claims are, and my experience so far.
One of the remarkable things that Robin Hall is claiming is that within days, you can achieve professional sounding results! Because of this, the immediate accomplishments motivate you and you begin to look forward to the upcoming lessons. Piano For All uses a unique combination of audio and visual learning aids to not only learn piano and keyboard, but also how to read music and play by both ear and sight. The system includes 10 e-books, 500 audio piano lessons and 200 video piano lessons. Both the audio and video lessons are embedded within the e-books which makes it easy to follow along with the proper lessons.
Piano For All is designed to be used by beginners, by people who have some experience but want to improve their playing, by someone that plays another type of instrument and wants to diversify or even for the teacher to learn new techniques. | {
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John Guilfoil Public Relations LLC
PR for Police, Fire, Schools and Municipal Government
COVID-19 Crisis Communications
JGPR News
Dartmouth Police Department Receives $25,000 in Grant Funds
DARTMOUTH -- Chief Brian Levesque is pleased to announce that the Dartmouth Police Department has been awarded a total of $25,000 in federal grant funds allocated by the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security's Office of Grants and Research (OGR).
December 3, 2020 Taylor O'Neil Client News, Police News
December 3, 2020 by Taylor O'Neil
DARTMOUTH — Chief Brian Levesque is pleased to announce that the Dartmouth Police Department has been awarded a total of $25,000 in federal grant funds allocated by the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security's Office of Grants and Research (OGR).
The Dartmouth Police Department received a $25,000 grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The funds from this grant will be used to purchase three handheld battery operated radar units with spare batteries and two chargers, and two pole mounted solar powered speed enforcement signs. In addition, the grant funds will be put toward traffic enforcement patrols throughout the year.
The grants were part of $7.8 million in funding that the Baker-Polito Administration allocated yesterday to provide access to equipment and strengthen training, crime prevention and enforcement initiatives across the Commonwealth.
The NHTSA provided $3.2 million to fund traffic enforcement campaigns, safety equipment, and non-enforcement activities to help reduce vehicle crashes and the resulting injuries and loss of life. The funds are allocated to local agencies by the OGR.
The Dartmouth Police Department is among more than 160 law enforcement agencies across the Commonwealth that were awarded grant funding.
Client News, Police News
baker-polito administration, dartmouth, Dartmouth Police Department, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security's Office of Grants and Research, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Dartmouth Police Department
Brian P. Levesque,
1390 Tucker Road
Dartmouth, MA 02747
Media Contact: Taylor O'Neil
Email [email protected] if you wish to be placed on a SPECIFIC email list for your beat, agency or community. Or enter your email address here to subscribe for ALL updates from JGPR and our clients.
Town of Hingham Announces COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic for First Responders in Town January 16, 2021
Towns of Hingham, Hull, Scituate and Cohasset Continue to Advocate for Transit Services as Schedule Changes Soon to Take Effect January 15, 2021
North Reading Fire Department Reminds Residents of Ice Safety Tips January 15, 2021
Enfield Fire District 1 Shares Cold Weather, Ice Safety Tips January 15, 2021
Ipswich Town Hall and Council on Aging to Temporarily Close Due to Local Rise in COVID-19 Cases January 15, 2021
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Jones Family of Companies Celebrates 80 Years in Business
Thu March 2, 2017
Jones Family of Companies celebrated its 80th anniversary in business in 2016, a year that led to major milestones for the company. Founded in 1936, Jones quickly became a leader in the textile industry. The company was formed through a partnership between two brothers and today is led by a Senior Leadership Team committed to these same standards. The company is made of two distinct divisions: Jones Yarn, which began operations in 1936 and Jones Nonwovens, which was acquired in 1981.
The Senior Leadership Team decided the company's 80th year in business was the perfect time for a change and announced the newly rebranded Jones Family of Companies early in the year.
"We're very much a company committed to meeting expectations and achieving the results that we intend to achieve," said Richard Ayers, CEO/CFO, Jones Family of Companies. "Our decision to rebrand is one that we feel will allow us to best continue maintaining a high quality in our relationships, products and services."
The company, which is headquartered in Humboldt, Tennessee, has two additional locations in Morristown, TN and North Las Vegas, Nevada. Each of these facilities commemorated their 80th year with Employee Appreciation dinners where the company's history was celebrated and employee milestones were recognized.
Associates and their guests attended the dinners where drawings for prizes were held throughout the celebration. A short video about the company, its foundation and core beliefs was enjoyed by all. Employee service awards were presented to those associates with 5 years of service or more with the company. At the end of the night, a grand prize drawing for a mattress set was held and awarded to the lucky associate.
The celebrations were focused on the associates, both current and past, who helped build and make Jones Family of Companies successful. Without the associates, there would be no Jones Family of Companies and no 80th celebration.
The company's foundation was built on strong core values, which continue to be the foundation of its success. Customer focus, results-oriented, corporate stewardship, integrity/honesty and respect of person make up their core beliefs. These values are summed up in the Jones Family of Companies Mission Statement of Purpose:
The Jones Family of Companies will effectively serve our customers and stakeholders by being people-oriented, quality-driven and value-focused. At no time will these aspirations sacrifice the dignity of the individual: be it associate, customer, supplier or owner.
Jones Family of Companies was founded because of a relationship between two brothers. The company continues to be successful because of the relationships it shares with its owners, suppliers, customers and associates. We thank each of you for the relationship you share with us and the value you bring to our Family.
For more information on the Jones Family of Companies, please visit jonesfamilyco.com or view a story of their history on YouTube. | {
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Folklore From a Friend
A teacher shares how a folklore from her childhood lives on.
Hannah F., a teacher and new mother one wrote:
"When I was 12 years old, a friend of mine told me that if I said 'rabbit' to someone the first day of the month before he or she said 'rabbit' to me, I would have good luck for the rest of the month. That evening when I got home, I said 'rabbit' to my mother, and when my father came home I said 'rabbit' to him. I explained the good luck theory to them and they were amused. Since then, my father and I go to great lengths to say 'rabbit' to each other on the first of the month. This past summer he was in Leningrad and when the first of August rolled around I had no way of getting in touch with him. But about two weeks later, I got a postcard that said 'Rabbit! I tried to call you, but the logistics were overwhelming!'"
Note: This piece of friendship folklore was written in 1991 — before the collapse of the Soviet Union! Today, if Hannah's father were writing from the same city, it would be called St. Petersburg.
Listening and Speaking Writing Process | {
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Washington College women's soccer head coach Tom Reilly was inducted into the Soccer Coaches Association of New Jersey (SCANJ) Hall of Fame yesterday during that organization's annual induction banquet at Pines Manor in Edison, N.J. Reilly had a long and highly-successful career as a high school coach in New Jersey before coming to Washington College.
Senior midfielder Arianna Sabatino has been named to the United Soccer Coaches Division III Scholar All-South Region first team. The Scholar All-Region teams recognize the student-athletes with high levels of both academic and athletic accomplishment.
The Washington College women's soccer team will be hosting an ID Clinic on Sunday, March 17th. Registration begins at 9:00 a.m. with the clinic running through 4:00 p.m.
Senior midfielder Arianna Sabatino has become the first student-athlete in Washington College women's soccer history to earn All-Region honors. The United Soccer Coaches Division III All-Region teams were announced today and Sabatino was named to the All Mid-Atlantic Region third team.
Washington College senior midfielder Arianna Sabatino has been named the Centennial Conference Women's Soccer Scholar-Athlete of the Year. In addition, she and twin sister Olivia Sabatino have been named Academic All-Centennial Conference and are two of eight student-athletes from the Washington College women's soccer team to have qualified for the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports.
Three Washington College women's soccer players garnered All-Centennial Conference honors in a vote conducted by the conference's 11 head coaches. Senior midfielder Arianna Sabatino was named All-Centennial second team and both senior midfielder/forward Olivia Sabatino and freshman forward Emily Jacoby received all-conference honorable mention. This is the first time Washington College has placed three players on the all-conference team as the Shorewomen had two players make all-conference in 2010 and 2017.
Senior soccer players Olivia and Arianna Sabatino share this week's Shorewoman of the Week honor. The two twin sisters both scored in their final collegiate game and finished tied for the school record in career goals.
The Washington College women's soccer team secured its first-ever winning season at 8-6-1 by downing visiting Muhlenberg for the first time, 2-0, in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Saturday afternoon at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium in the season finale for both squads.
Host Ursinus was outshot by visiting Washington College, 15-6, but got the match's lone goal in the 77th minute by Kelly Gardus from Mackenzie Groff in a 1-0 win for the home side at Patterson Field in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Wednesday night.
Visiting Washington College rallied twice from one-goal deficits to tie with host Stockton, 2-2, in double overtime at G. Larry James Stadium in non-conference women's soccer action on Sunday afternoon. The Shorewomen, who are now 7-5-1 on the year, clinch their first-ever non-losing season in team history, while the Ospreys are 12-3-4 on the year.
Tonight's women's soccer game between host Washington College and visiting Wesley College has been canceled due to a lack of officials. The game will not be made up; the Shorewomen's Senior Day game will now be next Saturday at home against Muhlenberg at 4 p.m.
Senior soccer player Arianna Sabatino is this week's Shorewoman of the Week. Sabatino tied the school record for career goals in a 2-0 win at Franklin & Marshall Saturday.
The Washington College women's soccer team has clinched its best-ever Centennial Conference record in a season by picking up its third league victory of the year, 2-0, over host Franklin & Marshall this afternoon. Arianna Sabatino pulled into a tie for the school record for career goals with twin sister Olivia Sabatino in the victory.
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Visiting Haverford scored off of a corner kick in the 55th minute to record a 1-0 win over host Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game played tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Dickinson College pulled out a hard-fought 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory this afternoon over host Washington College on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
United Soccer Coaches announced today the Team Academic Award winners for the 2017-18 academic year and both the Washington College men's and women's soccer teams qualified for the honor. Washington College is one of 191 schools across all divisions to have both of their teams qualify for the award.
19th-ranked host Swarthmore College remained undefeated this season with a 2-0 win over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight on Clothier Field.
Visiting McDaniel College rallied from a 1-0 halftime deficit to post a 2-1 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Erin O'Reilly scored two goals and Arianna Sabatino tied the school record for career goals as the host Washington College women's soccer team topped visiting Cabrini, 3-0, in a non-conference game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
BALTIMORE, Md. — Michelle Santangelo scored a hat trick to lead host and eighth ranked Johns Hopkins to a 4-1 win over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game played tonight on Homewood Field in Baltimore, Maryland.
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Freshman forward Emily Jacoby (Jackson, N.J. / Jackson Memorial) broke the Washington College program record for assists in a season and equaled the program record for assists in a match as the host Shorewomen cruised to an 8-1 win over visiting Bryn Mawr in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match played tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The win also gives the Shorewomen their first ever five match winning streak, and their first 2-0 start in Centennial Conference play in the history of the program.
Freshman soccer player Erin O'Reilly is this week's Shorewoman of the Week. O'Reilly scored two goals and added one assist in a 2-0 week for the Shorewomen, who improved to 4-0 for the first time ever.
As part of Washington College's REACH: Prevention, Education, Advocacy Center's weeklong "These Hands Don't Haze" collaborative anti-hazing campaign, the College's athletic home games on Saturday, September 29th will be "These Hands Don't Haze" games and will feature several hazing awareness activities, including a tailgate.
Freshman forward Erin O'Reilly has been named the Centennial Conference Offensive Player of the Week for women's soccer for the week ending September 16th by the conference office.
The visiting Washington College women's soccer team defeated host Gettysburg College, 3-2, in the Centennial Conference opener for both teams this afternoon at Clark Field. The win was the first-ever for the Shorewomen over the Bullets and improved their overall record this season to a program-best 4-0.
The Washington College women's soccer team improved to 3-0 for the first time ever with a 2-1 win over host Hood College this afternoon in Frederick, Md. Senior Olivia Sabatino took sole possession of the Washington College school record for career assists during the game.
Freshman soccer player Emily Jacoby is this week's Shorewoman of the Week. Jacoby scored the first goal in the Shorewomen's 2-0 win over Rutgers-Camden Saturday.
Sophomore goalkeeper Annalie Buscarino has been named the Centennial Conference Defensive Player of the Week for women's soccer for the week ending September 9th by the conference office.
The Washington College women's soccer team will be hosting an ID Clinic on Sunday, August 19th. Registration begins at 9:00 a.m. with the clinic running through 4:00 p.m.
Ten student-athletes from the Washington College women's soccer team have qualified for the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports. Among those 10 are juniors Arianna and Olivia Sabatino, who were also named Academic All-Centennial.
Washington College women's soccer juniors Arianna and Olivia Sabatino, who are twin sisters, have both been named to the 2017 All-Centennial Conference second team in a vote conducted by the conference's 11 head coaches.
Host Muhlenberg got a pair of goals from Makenzie O'Brien to take a 2-0 lead on its way to a 2-1 win over visiting Washington College at Varsity Field in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Saturday evening. Despite the loss, the Shorewomen finish with their best winning percentage ever as they had a .441 winning percentage this year going 7-9-1.
Despite being outshot, 16-2, visiting Ursinus College came away with a 1-0 double-overtime win over host Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Junior soccer player Olivia Sabatino became the Shorewomen's all-time leader in career points with a first-half goal in a 2-1 overtime win over Franklin & Marshall Saturday.
Despite outshooting host Cabrini 28-7, the visiting Washington College women's soccer team had to settle for a 1-1 double overtime draw at the Edith Robb Dixon Field in non-conference women's soccer action on Tuesday night.
Washington College junior forward Olivia Sabatino became the team's all-time leader in career points and her twin sister Arianna scored the game-winning goal as the host Washington College women's soccer team scored a 2-1 Centennial Conference overtime win over visiting Franklin & Marshall on Senior Day today.
Host Haverford took a 2-0 lead into halftime and added one more in the second half to register a 3-0 victory over visiting Washington College at Walton Field in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Wednesday afternoon.
Host Dickinson overcame a 1-0 halftime deficit with three second half goals on its way to a 3-1 victory over visiting Washington College at Miller Memorial Field in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Saturday afternoon. In the loss, junior forward Olivia Sabatino becomes the second Washington women's soccer player to reach the 40-point career mark.
23rd-ranked Swarthmore College defeated host Washington College, 3-1, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Host McDaniel College scored the first four goals of the game en route to a 5-1 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over visiting Washington College this afternoon in Westminster, Md.
The Washington College women's soccer team scored a season-high six goals on its way to a 6-1 victory over host Bryn Mawr at the Applebee Field in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Tuesday afternoon. Junior midfielder Maribeth Harrington factored into three of the six goals as she totaled career-highs of two assists and four points to go along with one goal.
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — 11th-ranked Johns Hopkins got a goal in each half and defeated host Washington College 2-0 in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game played today on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Host Washington College scored three times in the second half to turn a 1-0 halftime deficit into a 3-1 victory over visiting Delaware Valley at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium in non-conference women's soccer action on Wednesday evening.
Junior soccer player Lindsay Russell is this week's Shorewoman of the Week. Russell had a pair of goals in a 1-1 for the Shorewomen.
Visiting Gettysburg College defeated host Washington College, 4-2, in the Centennial Conference women's soccer opener for both schools this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Junior midfielder Lindsay Russell scored the only goal of the game in the 99th minute as the visiting Washington College women's soccer team defeated Gwynedd Mercy, 1-0, in overtime this evening in non-conference action. The Shorewomen improved to 4-1 for the second time in team history with the win, matching their best-ever five-game start.
This Saturday, September 16th, between the home women's and men's soccer games (approximately 6 p.m. - 7 p.m.), join Washington College President Kurt Landgraf for a tailgate in the Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium parking lot.
Washington College freshman goalkeeper Annalie Buscarino has been named the Centennial Conference Defensive Player of the Week for women's soccer for the week ending September 10th. Buscarino did not allow a goal in 83:23 of action to help the Shorewomen to a pair of wins at the UMW Classic over the weekend.
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Washington College scored on their first three shots less than 15 minutes into the game en route to a 4-0 win over Marymount (Va.) in a non-conference women's soccer game played today at Battleground Grass Field on the campus of Mary Washington at the UMW Classic in Fredericksburg, Virginia. With the win, the Shorewomen are now 3-1 through the team's first four games for the first time since the 2009 season.
Senior defender Steph Scott scored the game's only goal on a penalty kick in the 87th minute as the visiting Washington College women's soccer team stunned host University of Mary Washington, 1-0, on the opening day of the UMW Classic.
Junior forward Olivia Sabatino has been named the Centennial Conference Offensive Player of the Week for women's soccer for the week ending September 4th by the conference office.
SALISBURY, Md. — Host Salisbury University got a pair of goals in the opening 12:15 of the contest and defeated visiting Washington College 3-1 in a non-conference women's soccer game played this afternoon at the Sea Gull Soccer Stadium in Salisbury, Maryland.
DOVER, De. — Visiting Washington College got a goal and an assist from Olivia Sabatino and dominated possession en route to a 4-0 win over host Wesley in a non-conference women's soccer game played tonight at Miller Stadium in Dover, Delaware. It was the season opener for both teams, as well as the first career win for Shorewomen Head Coach Tom Reilly.
Senior defender Lexi Young joins returning captains, senior defender Steph Scott and junior midfielder Arianna Sabatino, as the captains of the 2017 Washington College women's soccer team.
In 2016, the Washington College women's soccer team had its best non-conference record in the history of the program as they went 5-1-1 and scored nine more goals than the season prior. In 2017, the team seeks to improve on its Centennial Conference slate and become a contender for the Centennial Conference Tournament under the guidance of first-year head coach Tom Reilly.
Steph Scott of the women's soccer team spent the Spring 2017 semester in Hong Kong and writes about her time in the Far East. Here is her experience.
Lauren Neary of the women's soccer team spent the Spring 2017 semester in Scotland and writes about her time in the Northern British Isles.
The Washington College women's soccer team will be hosting an ID Clinic on Sunday, August 20th. Registration begins at 8:00 a.m. with the clinic running through 2:00 p.m.
Washington College Director of Athletics Thad Moore has announced the hiring of Tom Reilly, winner of 446 high school soccer games and an inductee into the New Jersey Scholastic Coaches Association Hall of Fame, as the College's new head women's soccer coach.
Washington College will be opening a search for a new head women's soccer coach to replace Kerry Smith, who served in that role for the past three seasons. During the search, assistant coach Julia Kantor will handle the program's recruiting efforts as well as its non-traditional spring practice season.
Nine student-athletes from the Washington College women's soccer team have been named to the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports.
Washington College sophomore forward Arianna Sabatino has been named an All-Centennial Conference honorable mention in a vote conducted by the conference's 10 head women's soccer coaches.
Host #22 McDaniel scored three times in the first half on its way to a 4-0 win over visiting Washington College at the Green Terror Soccer Complex in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Saturday afternoon in the season finale for the Shorewomen.
Visiting Haverford College clinched a spot in the upcoming Centennial Conference Tournament with a 3-0 win over host Washington College in a women's soccer game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Franklin & Marshall scored the game's only goal in the 63rd minute to earn a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. — Host Ursinus got goals from three different players en route to a 3-0 win over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight on Patterson Field in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
Host Dickinson College scored the final five goals of the game en route to a 5-1 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over visiting Washington College this afternoon in Carlisle, Pa. Washington College sophomore forward Olivia Sabatino tied the Shorewomen's single-season school record for assists in the loss.
Visiting Muhlenberg College scored the game-winning goal in the 81st minute of a 2-1 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon on a rainy Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
The Washington College women's soccer team boasted the fifth-best team grade-point average in the nation, among all divisions, for the 2015-16 academic year according to the list of College Team Academic Award-winning programs released today by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA).
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Visiting sixteenth ranked Swarthmore College got a goal early in the second half and survived a valiant effort and hard fought contest with host Washington College to post a 1-0 victory in Centennial Conference women's soccer action tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Garnet improved to 10-1 overall and 3-1 in the CC with the win, while the Shorewomen slipped to 5-4-1 overall and 0-3 in the CC with the loss.
The Washington College women's soccer team won its final non-conference game of the season tonight, topping host Delaware Valley University, 2-0. The Shorewomen finish the non-conference portion of their schedule with a 5-1-1 non-conference record - the best non-conference record in the 19 seasons of varsity women's soccer at Washington College.
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Host Gettysburg College scored once in each half en route to a 2-0 win over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game played this afternoon on Clark Field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Bullets improve to 5-2 overall and 2-0 in the CC with the win, while the Shorewomen slip to 4-3-1 and 0-2 in the CC with the loss.
Visiting Washington College doubled up host Immaculata University, 2-1, in a non-conference women's soccer victory tonight. All three goals in the game were scored in the second half.
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Visiting #22 Johns Hopkins scored twice in the first half and three more times in the second to post a 5-1 win over host Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. It was the Centennial opener for both teams.
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Olivia Sabatino scored a pair of goals 6:14 apart in the first half, both assisted by Laura Tocci, as the host Washington College women's soccer team posted a 2-1 non-conference win over visiting Goucher in a game played tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. Both teams are now 3-1-1 for the season. The 3-1-1 start by Washington is the team's best five-game start since the 2000 team started the season 4-1.
Visiting Washington College played to a 2-2 double-overtime tie with host Widener University in a non-conference women's soccer game today in Chester, Pa. Sophomore midfielder Arianna Sabatinoscored both of the Shorewomen's goals in the game.
Due to excessive heat in the forecast, tomorrow's women's soccer game between host Widener University and visiting Washington College has been changed to a 10 a.m. start. The game was scheduled for 2:30 p.m.
Host St. Mary's (Md.) scored five times in the second half to break a scoreless tie on its way to a 5-0 win over visiting Washington College at Seahawk Stadium in non-conference women's soccer action on Wednesday afternoon. Both teams are now 2-1-0 on the season.
Sophomore soccer players Arianna and Olivia Sabatino share this week's Shorewoman of the Week. The twin sisters combined for five goals and four assists as the Shorewomen got off to their first 2-0 start to a season in 14 years.
Washington College sophomore midfielder Arianna Sabatino has been named the Centennial Conference Offensive Player of the Week for women's soccer for the week ending September 6th.
Host Washington College scored twice in the first 10 minutes and controlled most of the game en route to a 2-1 non-conference women's soccer victory over visiting Gwynedd Mercy this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Shorewomen improved to 2-0 for the first time in 14 years with the victory, while the Griffins fell to 1-1 with the loss.
CHESTERTOWN, Md. — Host Washington College scored four goals in each half en route to scoring their most goals in a game in 12 years as the Shorewomen defeated visiting Rosemont 8-0 in a non-conference women's soccer game played tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. It was the season opener for both teams.
After setting a team record for fewest goals allowed for the second year in a row last fall, the Washington College women's soccer team will look to step things up on the offensive end of the field and continue their improvement on defense as the Shorewomen aim to move up the Centennial Conference standings in head coach Kerry Smith's third season.
Senior forward Paige Cahoon, sophomore defender/midfielder Arianna Sabatino, junior defender Steph Scott, and senior midfielder Laura Tocci will serve as the captains of the Washington College women's soccer team for the upcoming 2016 season.
The Washington College women's soccer team will host an ID Clinic Sunday, February 28th, with sign in beginning at 9:30 a.m.
Women's soccer player Erin Smedley spent the Spring 2015 semester in Peru and writes about her time on South America's Pacific Coast. Here is her experience.
Women's soccer player Julia Jakus spent the this past's spring semester in Turkey and writes about her time from the Crossroads of Europe and Asia. Here is her experience.
The Washington College women's soccer flash store is open until November 25th. This is your chance to purchase Shorewomen soccer gear and support the team in the process.
Seven Washington College women's soccer student-athletes have qualified for the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports. In order to qualify for the Academic Honor Roll, a student-athlete must be a sophomore, junior or senior and carry at least a 3.40 cumulative grade-point average.
Junior midfielder Julia Jakus is the Washington College women's soccer team's representative on the 2015 Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship Team, which was announced today.
The visiting 19th-ranked McDaniel College women's soccer team clinched the third seed and a first-round bye in the upcoming five-team Centennial Conference Tournament with a 1-0 win over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Host Haverford College scored once in the first half and twice in the second to post a 3-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon.
Today's scheduled women's soccer game between host Haverford College and visiting Washington College has been postponed until tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. due to rain impacting Haverford's home field, which has a natural grass surface.
The Washington College women's soccer team played to a 0-0 double-overtime draw with Centennial Conference rival and host Franklin & Marshall this afternoon.
Visiting Ursinus College scored in the 18th minute and that early goal held up as the Bears posted a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
enna Lamb scored the game's only goal in the 47th minute to give visiting Dickinson College a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Bryn Mawr College scored three times in the final 6:14 of the game to rally for a 3-2 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
A goal in the 16th minute was all host Muhlenberg College needed in a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory against visiting Washington College this afternoon.
#11 Swarthmore's Marin McCoy scored two goals and assisted on another score as Swarthmore downed visiting Washington College, 5-0, at Clothier Field in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match on Wednesday evening. The contest was called with 18:44 to go due to issues with the lights.
Sophomore soccer player Emani Silva is this week's Shorewoman of the Week. Silva tied a school record with three assists and scored two other goals in a 6-0 win over Immaculata Tuesday.
Sophomore forward Emani Silva has been named the Centennial Conference Co-Offensive Player of the Week in women's soccer for the week of September 28-October 4 by the conference office. This is the first time that Silva has won the conference's weekly award. Silva shared the award with McDaniel's Nicole Hill.
Sophomore forward Emani Silva dished out a Washington College Women's Soccer single-match record four assists and tied the program mark for points in a single match with eight as the host Shorewomen shut out visiting Immaculata, 6-0, on Tuesday night at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby Jr. Stadium in a non-conference women's soccer match. The Shorewomen, who also set a record for assists in a single contest with nine, improve to 3-4-1 overall, while the Mighty Macs slip to 2-6-1.
A goal in the 16th minute proved to be all the scoring visiting Gettysburg College would need in a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
The Washington College men's and women's soccer teams have both qualified to receive a College Team Academic Award from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) for the 2014-15 academic year.
Host Goucher College got one goal each from three different players in a 3-0 non-conference women's soccer win over visiting Washington College this afternoon on Beldon Field.
Host Johns Hopkins University scored four of its goals in the first half of a 5-1 victory over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon at Homewood Field. The game was the first conference match-up of the season for both teams.
Visiting Washington College got a pair of goals in the second half to tally a 2-0 victory over host Gwynedd Mercy at the Gwynedd Mercy Athletic Complex in non-conference women's soccer action on Tuesday evening. The Shorewomen improve to 2-1-1 on the year, while the Griffins fall to 2-2-1.
The women's soccer game between host Penn State-Harrisburg and visiting Washington College was suspended with 1:39 remaining in the first half due to heavy rain and a flooded field. Penn State-Harrisburg was leading, 2-0. There is no word yet whether or not the game will be completed at a later date.
One goal in each half turned out to be enough for visiting St. Mary's College of Maryland in a 2-1 non-conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. Senior forward Bailey Howard scored as time expired for the Shorewomen in the loss.
Despite some chances late in the game, neither team could find the back of the goal this afternoon as homestanding Washington College and visiting Widener University played to a 0-0 double-overtime women's soccer draw on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The game was the Shorewomen's home opener.
Check out the women's soccer roster video, complete with outtakes!
Sophomore defender Lexi Young scored off an assist from junior forward Melissa Barry in the 97th minute to give visiting Washington College a 1-0 overtime win over host Rosemont tonight in the collegiate women's soccer opener for both schools.
Senior midfielder Bailey Howard will serve as the captain of the Washington College women's soccer team this season.
Do you like baseball, food, music, and outdoor games? The Washington College women's soccer team is hosting an event this Friday, April 24th, from 3:00-6:00 p.m. outside Sassafras Hall, next to Athey Park.
The Washington College women's soccer team will host a Spring ID Clinic on Sunday, April 26th, from 9:30 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. The clinic is open to players ages 14-18. Cost is $75, but a $10 discount will be applied to registrations completed by March 30th.
Three Washington College women's soccer student-athletes returned to campus early this semester to take part in a Leadership Seminar. Freshman Taylor Stofko shares her experience.
The National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) recently announced the 883 collegiate soccer teams to receive a College Team Academic Award for the 2013-14 academic year and the Washington College women's soccer team was among those honored.
Eight student-athletes from the Washington College women's soccer team have qualified for the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports.
Washington College freshman midfielder/forward Emani Silva has been selected as an All-Centennial Conference honorable mention in women's soccer via a vote conducted by the conference's 11 head coaches. In addition, sophomore goalkeeper Melissa Barry was chosen as the Shorewomen's representative on the Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship Team.
Host McDaniel scored once in the first half and twice in the second half to down visiting Washington College, 3-0, at the Green Terror Soccer Complex on Saturday afternoon in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match.
Visiting Haverford College scored the game's only goal in the 55th minute of a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Fords improved to 7-6-3 overall and 3-5-1 with the win, while the Shorewomen fell to 3-10-3 and 0-7-2 with the loss.
Shorewomen Soccer Tackles "Shake It Off"
The Washington College women's soccer team puts their own special spin on Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off."
The Washington College and Franklin & Marshall College women's soccer teams played to a 1-1 Centennial Conference double-overtime tie this afternoon on Washington's Lower Bermuda Grass Field.
The installation of the new turf on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium is wrapping up this weekend and the facility is scheduled to host this season's remaining home varsity soccer and field hockey home contests beginning Tuesday.
Jeannie Jasinski scored the lone goal of the match in the 23rd minute as host Ursinus downed visiting Washington College, 1-0, at Patterson Field in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match on Wednesday evening.
Host #22 Dickinson raced out to a 3-0 halftime lead en route to a 4-0 win over visiting Washington College at Miller Field on Saturday afternoon in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match.
The Washington College women's soccer team played to a 0-0 double overtime tie with host Bryn Mawr in a Centennial Conference game this afternoon.
Today's women's soccer game between host Bryn Mawr College and visiting Washington College has been postponed until tomorrow at 4:00 p.m.
Visiting Muhlenberg College made a 10th-minute goal stand up in a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon. The Mules improved to 7-3-2 overall and 3-2 in Centennial Conference play with the win, while the Shorewomen fell to 3-7-1 and 0-4 with the loss.
Elizabethtown's Lauren Berry scored three goals as the host Blue Jays downed visiting Washington College, 4-1, in a non-conference women's soccer match on Wednesday night at Ira R. Herr Field.
Freshman midfielder/forward Emani Silva and freshman forward/midfielder Maribeth Harrington each scored one goal as the host Washington College women's soccer team posted a 2-0 non-conference win over visiting Delaware Valley College this afternoon.
Host Gettysburg scored three times in the second half to break open a 1-0 halftime lead en route to a 4-0 win over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match at Clark Field on Saturday night.
Visiting Swarthmore scored a pair of goals in the first half en route to a 2-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College on Tuesday afternoon at the WC Lower Bermuda Field.
Support Washington College women's soccer by purchasing some great gear from the Shorewomen's flash store. Store open until Monday, September 29th.
Visiting #9 Johns Hopkins scored three goals in a span of 17:46 in the second half to turn a scoreless tie into a 3-0 win on Saturday afternoon at the WC Lower Bermuda Field in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match.
Sophomore goalkeeper Melissa Barry recorded her school record-breaking eighth career shutout as the host Washington College women's soccer team played to a double-overtime scoreless draw with visiting Rutgers-Camden in non-conference action this afternoon in Chestertown.
Sophomore goalkeeper Melissa Barry has been named the Centennial Conference Women's Soccer Defensive Player of the Week for the week of September 8-14 by the conference office. This is the first time she won the Centennial's weekly award.
Host Washington College had three players notch multiple points and scored two late goals to break open a 1-0 lead en route to a 3-0 victory over visiting Penn State Harrisburg on Thursday afternoon at the WC Lower Bermuda Field in a non-conference women's soccer match.
Widener's Eva Reyes scored the lone goal of the match at the 72:53 mark to give the host Pride a 1-0 win over visiting Washington College on Saturday afternoon at Leslie C. Quick Stadium in a non-conference women's soccer match. The Pride and Shorewomen are both now 1-2-0 on the season.
Host Cabrini College improved to 1-1 on the season with a 3-0 win over visiting Washington College in non-conference women's soccer action this afternoon in Radnor, Pa.
Sophomore midfielder/back Kelsey McCurdy (Walkersville, Md./Walkersville) scored on a penalty kick in the 61st minute to give host Washington College a 1-0 non-conference women's soccer win over visiting Gwynedd Mercy on Sunday afternoon at the Washington College Lower Bermuda Field in the season opener for the Shorewomen. The victory was also the first win for head coach Kerry Smith in her Shorewomen Soccer head coaching debut.
The student-athletes of the Washington College women's soccer team introduce themselves around campus and Chestertown in this video, edited by freshman defender Breanna Caruso.
Freshman women's soccer player Katie Doyle reflects on her experience volunteering at the Special Olympics Maryland Unified Bocce Ball event hosted by the Washington College Student-Athlete Mentors May 2nd.
Kerry Smith has been hired as the new head coach of the Washington College women's soccer team. Smith, a former Women's Premier League player and veteran assistant coach at the NCAA Division I level, will be making her collegiate head coaching debut with the Shorewomen.
Women's soccer player Erin Smedley '17, participated in the First-Year Reading for freshman creative writing students on November 21 at the Rose O'Neill Literary House on the Washington college campus. She read about watching the band Galilei perform. Here is her experience.
Kanute Drugan has announced his resignation as the head women's soccer coach at Washington College, effective February 19th, after two seasons. Drugan is leaving Washington College to accept the head coaching position at Texas-Dallas.
Junior forward Marisa Atkins has been named as a captain of the Washington College women's soccer team.
Sophomore forward Bailey Howard has been named as a captain of the Washington College women's soccer team.
Four members of the Washington College women's soccer team have earned spots on the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports.
Washington College senior midfielder Kathleen Maleski s the Shorewomen soccer team's representative on the 2013 Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship Team.
Host Swarthmore broke open a 1-0 halftime lead with three goals in the first 5:57 of the second half en route to a 6-0 win over visiting Washington College at Clothier Field in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match on Saturday night.
Catholic's Lindsay Aleman scored the only goal of the contest 5:17 into overtime to lift visiting Catholic to a 1-0 victory over host Washington College at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby Jr. Stadium in a non-conference women's soccer match on Tuesday night in the home finale for the Shorewomen.
Visiting McDaniel scored a pair of first half goals en route to a 3-0 win over host Washington College at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium on Saturday afternoon in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match.
Host Haverford College defeated visiting Washington College, 4-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon in Haverford, Pa. The Fords improved to 11-4 overall and 5-3 in conference play with the win, while the Shorewomen slipped to 4-9-2 and 1-7 with the loss.
Stephanie Bartner of host Franklin & Marshall scored the golden goal at 2:53 of the first overtime to lift the Diplomats past visiting Washington, 1-0, in overtime at Tylus Field in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match on Saturday afternoon. The Diplomats improve to 5-53 overall and 3-2-2 in the Centennial, while the Shorewomen fall to 4-8-2 and 1-6 respectively.
Visiting Ursinus scored the lone goal of the match in the 31st minute en route to a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College on Wednesday afternoon at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Dickinson College improved to 6-5-2 overall and 2-2-2 in Centennial Conference play with a 3-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Shorewomen fell to 4-6-2 and 1-4 with the loss.
Senior midfielder Heather Smith scored the only goal of the game on a penalty kick in the 83rd minute to give host Washington College a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over visiting Bryn Mawr tonight on a rain-soaked Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. freshman goalkeeper Melissa Barry recorded her school-record fifth shutout of the season for the Shorewomen (4-5-2, 1-3 Centennial) in the win.
A goal by Abby Lazofsky in the 60th minute proved to be all the offense host Muhlenberg College needed today en route to a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over visiting Washington College.
Visiting Washington College and host Delaware Valley College played to a 0-0 double-overtime tie in a non-conference women's soccer game today in Doylestown, Pa. The tie snapped a six-game losing streak for Delaware Valley as the Aggies are now 2-8-1 on the season. The Shorewomen's record now stands at 3-4-2.
Visiting Goucher College scored the game's only goal in the 64th minute to defeat host Washington College, 1-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Gophers improved to 3-5-1 with the win, while the Shorewomen slipped to 3-4-1 with the loss.
Visiting Washington College scored three second-half goals to defeat host Penn State-Harrisburg, 3-0, in non-conference women's soccer action today in Harrisburg, Pa. The Shorewomen improved to 3-3-1 with the win, while the Lions fell to 5-3 with the loss. Senior midfielder Heather Smith scored twice in the victory for Washington.
Visiting Gettysburg raced out to a 3-0 halftime lead en route to a 4-0 win on Saturday evening over host Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match.
This year's Homecoming and Family Weekend both fall on the same weekend - this weekend - and Washington College Athletics has a full slate of varsity events and alumni games on campus scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.
Junior forward Suzanne Patinella scored both of the goals for visiting Washington College and held off a late rally from host Wesley as the Shorewomen downed the Wolverines, 2-1, at Scott D. Miller Stadium in a non-conference women's soccer match on Monday night. The contest was originally supposed to be played this past Thursday night, but was postponed until tonight due to a lightning storm that hit the Delmarva Peninsula on Thursday.
Top-ranked host Johns Hopkins University jumped out to a 2-0 halftime lead en route to a 4-0 victory over visiting Washington College in the Centennial Conference women's soccer opener for both schools tonight on Homewood Field. The Blue Jays improved to 7-0 overall, while the Shorewomen fell to 1-2-1.
Last night's women's soccer game between visiting Washington College and host Wesley College, which was postponed due to lightning, will be made up this Monday, September 16th, at 7:00 p.m.
Visiting Widener got two goals and one assist from Karen Thomas and one goal and two helpers from Kelly Buckley en route to a 3-0 victory over host Washington College on Saturday afternoon at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby Jr. Stadium in a non-conference women's soccer match.
Host Washington College and visiting DeSales played to a 0-0 tie in a non-conference women's soccer match on Saturday evening at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. Both teams are now 1-0-1 so far this season.
Freshman midfielder Laura Tocci scored her first collegiate goal to give host Washington College a 1-0 season-opening win over visiting Neumann University in non-conference women's soccer action tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
The 2013-14 regular season in Washington College varsity athletics gets underway Friday as field hockey, men's and women's soccer, and volleyball all open their 2013 campaigns.
Paul Kohorn, the assistant women's soccer coach at Washington College has been selected as an instructor for the EXACT Soccer ID Camp, which will take place at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL on July 10-11.
Women's soccer player Gabby Antalffy and field hockey player Erin Lewns reprsented Washington College at the 14th Annual Snell-Shillingford Coaching Symposium held January 25-27 at Muhlenberg College. The event was sponsored by the Centennial Conference and the NCAA Committee for Women's Athletics. This symposium is a chance for female athletes to network and learn about opportunities in the coaching arena.
Women's soccer sophomore Kelley Holocker spent her spring break in Georgia participating in Washington College's Habitat For Humanity. She was one of three student-athletes who were on the trip, the other two being sophomore field hockey players Meredith Andrews and Brit Barr. Here is her experience.
We asked you to vote for 2012's Most Amazing Performance in Washington College Athletics and you did. Check out which performance won.
Washington College head women's soccer coach Kanute Drugan recently announced the team's captains for the 2013 season: junior midfielder/forward Heather Smith, junior midfielder Kathleen Maleski, sophomore midfielder/forward Suzanne Patinella, and sophomore defender Taylor Matteson.
Senior defender Kim McClellan is the Washington College women's soccer team's representative on the Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship Team for fall sports.
Five members of the Washington College women's soccer team have earned spots on the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll for fall sports.
Visiting McDaniel College topped host Washington College, 2-1, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The game was the season finale for both the victorious Green Terror (7-10-1, 2-7-1 Centennial) and the Shorewomen (6-9-1, 2-7-1).
Host Haverford College outshot visiting Washington College, 32-6, en route to a 6-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory this afternoon on Walton Field.
Paul Kohorn, who is spending this fall as an assistant coach for the Washington College women's soccer team, has been named the 2012 Girls High School Coach of the Year by the Illinois High School Association.
Washington College sophomore goalkeeper Rebecca Potochney has been named the Centennial Conference Defensive Player of the Week for women's soccer for the week ending October 21st. Potochney made 15 saves and did not allow a goal in 200 minutes of action in a 1-0-1 week for the Shorewomen.
Washington College sophomore goalkeeper Rebecca Potochney recorded her school-record fourth solo shutout of the season as the visiting Shorewomen played to a 0-0 double-overtime tie with host Franklin & Marshall in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon in Lancaster, PA.
Junior midfielder Brittany Weaver scored the game's only goal and sophomore midfielder/forward Suzanne Patinella broke the school record for assists in a season as host Washington College defeated visiting Ursinus College, 1-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Shorewomen beat the Bears for the first time since 2002.
Visiting Dickinson College defeated host Washington College, 2-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Host Washington College ran off five goals in a span of 8:47 during the second half en route to a 7-0 win over Division II Washington Adventist University in women's soccer action tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The seven goals in the game for the Shorewomen (5-6) were their most in a game in over eight years.
Antalffy Reflects on the Origin of "Girls on Fire"
Women's soccer senior Gabby Antalffy writes about her and her team's experience in dealing with the bus fire they went through on August 31 just south of Chestertown on their way to Randolph-Macon for the season opener and how they got ready for their next match 48 hours later at Cedar Crest.
Host Muhlenberg College scored three of the game's goals in a span of less than seven minutes en route to a 4-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon in Allentown.
Host Swarthmore College topped visiting Washington College, 3-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight in Swarthmore, PA. The Garnet improved to 6-3 overall and 4-1 in conference play with the win, while the Shorewomen fell to 4-5 and 1-3 with the loss.
Junior midfielder/forward Heather Smith scored two goals to lead host Washington College to a 4-2 non-conference women's soccer win over visiting King's College tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Gettysburg College improved to 5-2 overall and 2-1 in Centennial Conference play with a 4-0 win over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
This year's Homecoming and Family Weekend both fall on the same weekend - this weekend - and Washington College Athletics has a full slate of varsity events scheduled for Saturday.
The host Washington College women's soccer team topped visiting Bryn Mawr, 2-1, in a Centennial Conference game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Shorewomen improved to 3-3 overall, surpassing their win total from all of last season, and 1-1 in conference play with the win. The Owls fell to 2-3-1 and 0-1 with the loss.
Due to the imminent threat of severe weather, tonight's scheduled women's soccer game between host Washington College and visiting Bryn Mawr College has been postponed. The game has been rescheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:00 p.m.
Hannah Kronick scored all four goals as host Johns Hopkins University, ranked sixth in the nation by D3Soccer.com, shut out visiting Washington College, 4-0, in the Centennial Conference women's soccer opener for both schools tonight at Homewood Field in Baltimore.
Host Washington College won its home opener over visiting Immaculata University, 2-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Shorewomen improved to 2-2 with the win, while Immaculata fell to 0-4 with the loss.
Host Goucher College broke a scoreless tie in the 50th minute and made that goal stand up as the Gophers (3-0) defeated visiting Washington College, 1-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game today in Towson, MD.
Host Neumann University shut out visiting Washington College, 1-0, this afternoon in a non-conference women's soccer game that included a 105-minute lightning delay.
The Washington College Shorewomen added another meaning to their new "Girls on Fire" moniker this afternoon by opening their 2012 campaign with a 5-0 win at Cedar Crest, their first five-goal performance in nearly four years.
Today's women's soccer game at Randolph-Macon has been postponed. It may or may not be rescheduled.
Four Washington College student-athletes have been named to the Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship Team for fall sports. Each Centennial Conference member institution was permitted to nominate one student from each fall program who exemplifies the best in sportsmanship.
Washington College senior goalkeeper Tori Ripple has been named an All-Centennial Conference honorable mention in a vote conducted by the conference's head coaches. In addition, six of her women's soccer teammates have earned a spot on the Centennial Conference Academic Honor Roll.
Hilary Hanus scored at the 97:30 mark to give host McDaniel College a 2-1 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory in overtime over visiting Washington College in the season finale for both team this afternoon in Westminster, MD.
The women's soccer season finale between host McDaniel College and visiting Washington College that was snowed out on Saturday has been rescheduled for Wednesday at 4:00 p.m.
Katie Van Aken scored on the first shot of the game to provide all of the scoring a 1-0 win for 24th-ranked Haverford College over Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Franklin & Marshall defeated host Washington College, 1-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Five new members of the Washington College Hall of Fame will be inducted Saturday night on the most action-packed induction Saturday in the Hall's history. Four teams will celebrate Senior Day and two home contests will benefit cancer research.
Host Ursinus College scored four unanswered goals in a 4-2 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over visiting Washington College tonight in Collegeville, PA.
Tonight's scheduled women's soccer game betwee host Ursinus College and visiting Washington College has been postponed until tomorrow at 7:00 p.m.
Host Dickinson College downed visiting Washington College, 4-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon in Carlisle, PA. The Red Devils improved to 9-3-1 overall and 5-2 in conference play with the win, while the Shorewomen fell to 2-9-1 and 0-5-1 with the loss.
Visiting Muhlenberg College defeated host Washington College, 2-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Mules improved to 5-5-2 overall and 2-2-1 in conference play with the win, while the Shorewomen fell to 2-8-1 and 0-4-1 with the loss.
Visiting Swarthmore College defeated host Washington College, 2-1, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Host Cabrini College scored twice in the first half and hung on for a 2-1 non-conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon in Radnor, PA.
Sophomore midfielder/forward Heather Smith scored the only goal of the game in the 20th minute to give visiting Washington College a 1-0 win over host Hood College in non-conference women's soccer action this afternoon.
Host Gettysburg College blanked visiting Washington College, 7-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon in Gettysburg, PA.
Visiting Washington College and host Bryn Mawr College played to a 0-0 tie in Centennial Conference women's soccer action on Wednesday afternoon at Applebee Field.
Visiting Washington College picked up its first win of the season tonight as the Shorewomen topped host King's College, 3-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game in Wilkes-Barre, PA.
Fifth-ranked Johns Hopkins scored four times in the first half en route to a 5-0 win over host Washington College in the Centennial Conference women's soccer opener for both schools this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
The Washington College Student Government Association presents Homecoming 2011 this weekend. Homecoming will kick-off with a tailgate and pep rally Friday night and continues with a full slate of home athletic events Saturday.
An opportunistic transition offense for visiting Goucher College netted three goals for the Gophers in the second half of a 3-0 non-conference women's soccer win over host Washington College this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. The Gophers (2-1) picked up the three-goal win despite getting just five shots off in the game, compared to 20 for the Shorewomen (0-3).
Zena Tracey scored 41 seconds into overtime as host Immaculata defeated visiting Washington College, 1-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game this afternoon. Immaculata improved to 1-1 with the win, while the Shorewomen fell to 0-2 with the loss.
Visiting Neumann University spoiled the season opener for host Washington College, defeating the Shorewomen, 1-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
With seven seniors among 15 returning players, the Washington College women's soccer team will have a wealth of veteran leadership during the 2011 season.
Washington College head women's soccer coach Julika Blankenship has announced that seniors Gabby Devaud, Jennifer Kiarsis, Kelsey Newborn, and Tori Ripple will serve as the Shorewomen's captains for the 2011 season.
Women's soccer players Kira Pancotti and Mallory Kahn-Johnston spent the spring semester abroad. Pancotti spent the semester in Australia and writes about her experience in the Land Down Under, while Kahn-Johnston was in Israel for the semester and chronicles her time in the Middle East.
Four Washington College student-athletes have been named to the Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship Team for fall sports. Sophomore Kim McClellan represented the women's soccer team.
Thirteen Washington College student-athletes have been named to the Centennial Conference's Academic Honor Roll for fall sports. The women's soccer team had six student-athletes qualify for the distinction.
For the first time in team history, two Washington College women's soccer players have earned All-Centennial Conference recognition. Junior midfielder Gabby Devaud and junior goalkeeper Tori Ripple have been chosen as all-conference honorable mentions in a vote conducted by the conference's head coaches.
Visiting Dickinson College scored in both halves in a 2-0 win over Washington College on Saturday afternoon in Centennial Conference women's soccer action at Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. Junior goalkeeper Tori Ripple made 11 saves for WC.
Host Bryn Mawr College scored three times in the second half to post a 3-2 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon. Jennifer Kiarsis and Katie Weida scored for the Shorewomen.
Tuesday's women's soccer game at Bryn Mawr has been moved up to a 3:30 p.m. start. It was originally scheduled for 4:00 p.m.
Host McDaniel College scored the game's only goal in the ninth minute of a 1-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon in Westminster, MD.
Join us for the first-ever "WAC Attack" on October 23rd at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD.
Host Haverford College scored twice in the first half to post a 2-0 win over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon in Haverford, PA.
Visiting Gettysburg College scored three times in the first half to post a 3-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon.
The Washington College men's and women's soccer teams were scheduled to host a youth clinic tonight, but the event has been canceled.
Visiting Ursinus College defeated host Washington College, 3-2, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. Junior midfielder Gabby Devaud scored one goal and assisted on another for the Shorewomen in the loss.
Host Muhlenberg College topped visiting Washington College, 4-0, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this evening in Allentown, PA.
Junior forward/midfielder Kira Pancotti scored two goals as visiting Washington College to a 3-1 win over host Penn State-Berks in a non-conference women's soccer game this afternoon in Reading, PA.
Today's women's soccer game at Penn State-Berks has been postponed due to field conditions and tentatively rescheduled for Thursday at 4:00 p.m.
Visiting Swarthmore College scored one goal in each half to post a 2-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College tonight on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Franklin & Marshall topped host Washington College, 3-1, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium. Freshman forward/midfielder Heather Smith scored for the Shorewomen in the loss.
Join Sports Information Director Phil Ticknor as he live-blogs from tonight's women's soccer game at Wesley College.
Visiting Washington College scored a pair of second-half goals to defeat host Wesley College, 2-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game tonight in Dover, DE. The Shorewomen improved to 3-2-1 with the win, while the Wolverines fell to 1-5-1 with the loss.
Seventh-ranked host Johns Hopkins scored four first-half goals and went on to post a 7-0 win over visiting Washington College in the Centennial Conference women's soccer opener for both teams this afternoon. Junior goalkeeper Tori Ripple made a career-high 19 saves for the Shorewomen.
Junior goalkeeper Tori Ripple made 11 saves and the Washington College women's soccer team scored a pair of second-half goals to blank visiting Hood College, 2-0, this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Visiting Cabrini College scored a pair of second-half goals to secure a 2-0 win and spoil the home opened for the Washington College women's soccer team this afternoon on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium.
Junior goalkeeper Tori Ripple saved a shot by Goucher's Sisley Pumilia with two seconds left in the second overtime to preserve a 1-1 tie for the Washington College women's soccer team in its season opener.
Four Washington College teams open the fall 2010 season this weekend, with a men's soccer home night game headlining the action. The volleyball, women's soccer, and field hockey teams each open on the road.
Shorewomen Soccer to Take "Shots for MS"
The Washington College women's soccer team will partner with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for "Shots for MS," a fundraiser to help in the battle against the disease.
The good news? The 2009 seasons was the best in seven years for the Washington College women's soccer team. The better news? Nine starters return for the Shorewomen, who turned a corner last season and look to continue their progress in 2010.
Washington College head women's lacrosse and women's soccer coach Julika Blankenship recently announced the hiring of Leanne Hollinger as an assistant coach for both sports.
Four Washington College student-athletes have been named to the All-Centennial Conference Sportsmanship Team for fall sports. Sophomore defender Corinne Welker represented Washington's women's soccer team.
Fourteen Washington College student-athletes, including five from the women's soccer team, have been named to the Centennial Conference's Academic Honor Roll for fall sports.
Host Dickinson College scored four second-half goals en route to a 6-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over visiting Washington College this afternoon.
Host Washington College scored twice in the first half en route to a 3-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over visiting Bryn Mawr tonight. Freshman Jen Stafford tallied a goal and an assist for the Shorewomen.
Visiting McDaniel College posted a 1-0 win over host Washington College today on Kibler Field at Roy Kirby, Jr. Stadium in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game. The game was interrupted by a 90-minute lightning delay.
Visiting Haverford College scored two goals in each half of a 4-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College tonight.
Host Gettysburg College topped visiting Washington College, 2-1, in a Centennial Conference women's soccer game this afternoon. Washington freshman Katie Bradley scored her first collegiate goal in the loss.
Host Ursinus College netted four second half goals and went on to post a 4-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon.
Visiting Muhlenberg College scored both of its goals in the second half of a 2-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer win over host Washington College this afternoon.
Host Cabrini College scored a pair of second-half goals to post a 2-0 non-conference women's soccer victory over visiting Washington College this afternoon.
Host 20th-ranked Swarthmore College scored three goals in the first half and went on to a 4-0 victory over visiting Washington College in a Centennial Conference women's soccer match on Tuesday evening.
Freshman Jen Stafford scored the game's only goal as visiting Washington College snapped a 31-game Centennial Conference losing streak with a 1-0 overtime win over host Franklin & Marshall.
Visiting Washington College fired off a school-record 40 shots and recorded 18 corner kicks in a 3-0 non-conference women's soccer win over host Trinity University this afternoon.
Visiting Washington College and host Hood College played to a 2-2 tie in a non-conference women's soccer match this afternoon. Sophomore Gabby Devaud and freshman Jen Stafford scored the Shorewomen's goals.
Seventeenth-ranked Johns Hopkins University scored four goals in a span of less than 12 minutes in the second half to turn a 1-0 halftime lead into a 5-0 Centennial Conference women's soccer victory over host Washington College this afternoon.
The Washington College women's soccer team posted its third consecutive shutout this afternoon by defeating visiting Penn State-Berks, 2-0. The win marks the second time in school history that the Shorewomen, off to a 3-1 start for the first time since 2002, have recorded three straight shutouts.
Sophomore forward Kira Pancotti scored one goal and assisted on the other as host Washington College blanked visiting Neumann, 2-0, in a non-conference women's soccer game this afternoon.
Freshman defenders Gabby Antalffy and Tara Keefe each scored a second-half goal to give host Washington College a 2-0 win over visiting Goucher in non-conference women's soccer action tonight.
Visiting Wesley College scored once in each half of a 2-0 women's soccer victory over host Washington College tonight. | {
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Vicom Limited (SGX: V01) released its first quarter results on Thursday. It is the largest technical testing and vehicle inspection company in Singapore and is more than 60% owned by land transport company, ComfortDelGro Corporation (SGX: C52).
For the quarter, revenue rose 3.3% year-on-year to $26.9 million on the back of higher business volume. Net profit was at S$8 million, $0.6 million or 7.4% higher than last year.
As of 31March 2014, the firm had a clean balance sheet with a cash balance of S$85 million and no debt. End of last year, the cash balance was at S$78.5 million.
It generated cash flow from operations of S$7.8 million for the quarter, up from S$6.9 million last year.
Going forward, Vicom said that the demand for the vehicle testing services is expected to moderate as more vehicles are expected to be deregistered in the year. The non-vehicle testing business is expected to grow in spite of keen competition.
Over the years, the firm has been a consistent dividend grower. From 2008 to 2013, total dividends have grown from 9.25 Singapore cents per share to 22.5 Singapore cents per share, giving a compounded annual growth rate of 19.5%.
Vicom shares closed at S$5.83, valuing it at a historical PE ratio of 18. It has a dividend yield of 2.8%. | {
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I'm very excited to share that I'm investing in reddit (personally, not via Y Combinator).
I have been a daily reddit user for 9 years—longer than pretty much any other service I still use besides Facebook, Google, and Amazon—and reddit's founders (Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian) were in the first YC batch with me. I was probably in the first dozen people to use the site, and I shudder to imagine the number of hours I have spent there
reddit is an example of something that started out looking like a silly toy for wasting time and has become something very interesting. It's been an important community for me over the years—I can find like-minded people that I can't always find in the real world. For many people, it's as important as their real-world communities (and reddit is very powerful when it comes to coordinating real-world action). There are lots of challenges to address, of course, but I think the reddit team has the opportunity to build something amazing.
In several years, I think reddit could have close to a billion users.
Two other things I'd like to mention.
First, it's always bothered me that users create so much of the value of sites like reddit but don't own any of it. So, the Series B Investors are giving 10% of our shares in this round to the people in the reddit community, and I hope we increase community ownership over time. We have some creative thoughts about the mechanics of this, but it'll take us awhile to sort through all the issues. If it works as we hope, it's going to be really cool and hopefully a new way to think about community ownership.
Second, I'm giving the company a proxy on my Series B shares. reddit will have voting control of the class and thus pretty significant protection against investors screwing it up by forcing an acquisition or blocking a future fundraise or whatever.
Yishan Wong has a big vision for what reddit can be. I'm excited to watch it play out. I believe we are still in the early days of importance of online communities, and that reddit will be among the great ones. | {
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The Redhall Group provides high integrity manufacturing and services.
Booth Industries Manufactures high integrity fire and blast doors
Jordan Manufacture and fabrication of bespoke equipment
Jex 40 years experience in the food and pharmaceutical
Networks Specialists in the telecommunications sector
Rule 26 disclosure
Circular to Shareholders 18th September 2015
Placing and Debt Conversion June 2017
The information below is being disclosed for the purposes of AIM Rule 26 and was last updated on
Description of the business activities.
Names of all directors and brief biographical details on each.
Description of the Company's Corporate Governance arrangements is given here.
UK City Code on Takeovers and Mergers:
Redhall is incorporated in the UK with its registered and principal office in the UK and is therefore subject to the UK City Code on Takeovers and Mergers.
Description of the responsibilities of the members of the board of directors and any sub-committees thereof. The sub-committees comprise the following:
Redhall Group plc is incorporated in England and Wales and its operations are carried out mainly in the UK.
The Audit Committee which meets with the external auditors to review the Group's annual accounts. The committee keeps under review the nature and extent of non-audit work carried out by the independent external auditors with a view to maintaining the auditors' objectivity.
The Remuneration Committee which determines the remuneration and terms of service of the Executive Directors including incentive arrangements and duration of notice periods.
The Nominations Committee which is responsible for proposing candidates for appointment to the Board, having regard to the balance and structure of the Board. In appropriate cases, recruitment consultants are used to assist the process.
Current constitutional documents. Articles of Association.
The holdings of significant shareholders and those not in public hands as at 8 May 2019 are as follows;
Significant Shareholders
Shares held at 8 May 2019
Lombard Odier Asset Management
Downing LLP
Ruffer LLP
Cavendish Asset Management Ltd
Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.
Directors' Shareholdings
Martyn Everett
Total shares in issue
Ordinary Shares of 0.01p
Shares not in public hands include those held by Lombard Odier Asset Management, Downing LLP, Ruffer LLP (each of which hold more than 10% of the shares in issue) and those held by the Directors. In total these holdings amount to 220,137,179 shares (66.13%).
There are no shares held in treasury. Redhall Group plc has not applied or agreed to have any of its securities (including its AIM securities) admitted or traded on any other exchanges or trading platforms. There are no restrictions on the transfer of the AIM securities.
The most recent annual report published pursuant to Rule 19 (published within 6 months from end of accounting reference date) and all half-yearly or similar reports published since the last annual report pursuant to Rule 18.
Notifications the Company has made in the past 12 months.
Copies of any prospectus, most recent admission document, circular 1 and circular 2 or similar shareholder publication published within the past 12 months.
Details of nominated adviser and other key advisers.
Please note that some of the older documents posted on this website, including the Admission Document and Articles of Association, refer to Booth Industries Group plc, which was the former name of Redhall Group plc.
CHEQ
Booth Industries
© Copyright Redhall Group PLC 2020. All Rights Reserved
Website by We Are Impression | {
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First Bank of Nigeria Limited is a Nigerian multinational bank and financial services company in Lagos, Nigeria. It is the premier bank in West Africa. The First Bank of Nigeria Limited operates as a parent company, with the subsidiaries 'FBN Bank' in the Republic of Congo, Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Sierra-Leone and Senegal; FBN Bank UK Limited in the United Kingdom with a branch in Paris; First Bank Representative Office in Beijing to capture trade-related business between geographies. First Bank also operates First Pension Custodian Nigeria Limited, Nigeria's foremost pension custodian. The customers of the First Bank Group are serviced from a network of over 700 business locations across Africa. To promote financial inclusion and reach the unbanked, First Bank has an extensive Agent Banking network, with over 53,000 locations across Nigeria.
The Bank specializes in retail banking and has the largest client base in West Africa, with over 18 million customers. For eight consecutive years (2011 - 2018) First Bank Nigeria received the Best Retail Bank in Nigeria award by The Asian Banker.
First Bank as a Group employs over 16,000 staff, and owns multiple 'Best Place to Work awardee'. It operates four key Strategic Business Units (SBUs) – Retail Banking, Corporate Banking, Commercial Banking, and Public Sector Banking. It was previously structured as an operating holding company before the implementation of a non-operating Holding Company structure (FBN Holdings) in 2011/2012.
For the half year ending June 30, 2022 FBN Holdings reported that its profit before tax rose by 45 percent, compared to the same period a year earlier.
Overview
, the Bank had assets worth NGN5.9 trillion. The Bank's profit before tax for the twelve months ending 31 December 2019 was approximately NGN70.8billion. First Bank is owned by FBN Holdings PLC, which in itself has diversified ownership, with over 1.3 million shareholders. The bank was founded in 1894 and is Nigeria's oldest bank. It converted to a public company in 1970 and was listed on The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in 1971. However, as part of the implementation of the non-operating holding company structure, it was delisted from the NSE and replaced with FBN Holdings Plc. in 2012.
First Bank has been named "Best Bank Brand in Nigeria" for six years in a row – 2011 to 2016 – by The Banker magazine of the Financial Times Group; it was awarded "Most Innovative Bank in Africa" in the EMEA Finance African Banking Awards 2014; it has clinched the "Best Bank in Nigeria" award by Global Finance Magazine 15 times and the "Best Private Bank in Nigeria" by World Finance Magazine seven times. Some other recent awards received by the Bank are "Best Banking Brand Nigeria, 2019" by Global Brands Magazine; "Best Mobile Banking App – Nigeria, 2019" by Global Business Outlook and "Best Financial Inclusion Program – Nigeria, 2019 by International Investor.
Subsidiaries
The subsidiaries of First Bank of Nigeria include the following:
FBN Bank (DRC) Formerly Banque International de Credit (BIC) – Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo – (75% shareholding) is a subsidiary of First Bank of Nigeria Limited, and was until September 2014 called BIC which was founded in April 1994
FBN Bank (China) – Beijing, China – representative office
FBN Bank (Ghana) – Accra, Ghana – 100% shareholding
FBN Bank (Guinea) – Conakry, Guinea – 100% shareholding
FBN Bank (Senegal) – Dakar – 100% shareholding
FBN Bank (Sierra Leone) – Freetown, Sierra Leone – 100% shareholding
FBN Bank (South Africa) – Johannesburg, South Africa – representative office
FBN Bank (UAE) – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates – representative office
FBN Bank (UK) – London, United Kingdom – 100% shareholding – savings products sold under FirstSave brand
FBN Bank (UK/Paris) – Paris, France – a branch of the subsidiary in the UK
First Pension Custodian Limited
FBN Mortgages Limited
FBN Bank (Gambia)
FBN Holdings
In 2010, the Central Bank of Nigeria revised the regulation covering the scope of banking activities for Nigerian banks. The universal banking model was discontinued and banks were required to divest from non-core banking businesses or adopt a holding company structure. FirstBank opted to form a holding company, FBN Holdings Plc., to capture synergies across its already established banking and non-banking businesses. The new structure resulted in a stronger platform to support the group's future growth ambitions domestically and internationally.
FBN Quest – FBN Quest is the brand name of the Merchant Banking and Asset Management businesses of FBN Holdings Plc, which comprises FBNQuest Merchant Bank, FBN Quest Capital Limited, FBN Quest Securities Limited, FBN Quest Capital Asset Management Limited, FBN Quest Trustees Limited, FBN Quest Funds Limited and FBN Capital Partners Limited.
History
Pre-independence
FirstBank commenced business in 1894 in what was then the British controlled areas, as the Bank of British West Africa. The bank originally served British shipping and trading agencies in Nigeria. The founder, Alfred Lewis Jones, was a shipping magnate who originally had a monopoly on importing silver currency into West Africa through his Elder Dempster shipping company. According to its founder, without a bank economies were reduced to using barter and a wide variety of mediums of exchange, leading to unsound practices. A bank could provide a secure home for deposits and also a uniform medium of exchange. The bank primarily financed foreign trade, but did little lending to indigenous Nigerians, who had little to offer as collateral for loans.
Post-independence
After Nigeria's independence in 1960, the Bank began to extend more credit to indigenous Nigerians. At the same time, citizens began to trust British banks since there was an 'independent' financial control mechanism and more citizens began to patronize the new Bank of West Africa.
In 1965, Standard Bank acquired the Bank of West Africa and changed its acquisition's name to Standard Bank of West Africa. In 1969, Standard Bank of West Africa incorporated its Nigerian operations under the name Standard Bank of Nigeria. In 1971, Standard Bank of Nigeria listed its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and placed 13% of its share capital with Nigerian investors. After the end of the Nigerian civil war, Nigeria's military government sought to increase local control of the retail-banking sector. In response, now Standard Chartered Bank reduced its stake in Standard Bank Nigeria to 38%. Once it had lost majority control, Standard Chartered wished to signal that it was no longer responsible for the bank and the bank changed its name to First Bank of Nigeria Limited in 1979. By then, the bank had re-organized and had more Nigerian directors than ever.
In 1991 the Bank changed its name to First Bank of Nigeria Plc following listing on The Nigerian Stock Exchange. In 2012, the Bank changed its name again to First Bank of Nigeria Limited as part of a restructuring resulting in FBN Holdings Plc ("FBN Holdings"), having detached its commercial business from other businesses in the First Bank Group, in line with the requirements of the Central Bank of Nigeria. First Bank had 1.3 million shareholders globally, was quoted on The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), where it was one of the most capitalized companies and also had an unlisted Global Depository maga communication Receipt (GDR) programme, all of which were transferred to its Holding Company, FBN Holdings in December 2012.
In 1982 FirstBank opened a branch in London, which it converted into a subsidiary, FBN Bank (UK), in 2002. Its most recent international expansion was the opening in 2004 of a representative office in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2005 it acquired FBN (Merchant Bankers) Ltd. Paribas and MBC International Bank Ltd, a group of Nigerian investors, had founded MBC in 1982 as a merchant bank, and it became a commercial bank in 2002.
In June 2009, Stephen Olabisi Onasanya was appointed group managing director/chief executive officer, replacing Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who had been appointed governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Onasanya was formerly executive director of banking operations & services. He retired on 31 December 2015 and Adesola Adeduntan took over as managing director/chief executive officer, First Bank of Nigeria Ltd and subsidiaries effective 1 January 2016, with Gbenga Shobo as deputy managing director.
In April 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria fired the whole board of the First Bank of Nigeria which was in a «grave financial condition».
Key milestones
1894 – Incorporated and headquartered in Marina, Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa's commercial nerve centre.
1912 – Calabar branch, the second branch in Nigeria, was opened by King Jaja of Opobo; Zaria branch was also opened as the first branch in northern Nigeria.
1947 – FirstBank advanced the first long-term loan to the then colonial government, followed in 1955 by a partnership with the government to expand the railway lines.
1971 – First listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
1991 – First Automated Teller Machine (ATM) introduced at 35 Marina as part of convenient, online real time banking.
1994 – Launched first university endowment programme in Nigeria.
2002 – Established FBN UK regulated by the FSA, the first Nigerian Bank to wholly own a full-fledged bank in the UK.
2004 – Launched a new brand identity which introduced substantial changes in the look and feel of the FirstBank brand.
2007 – Introduced Finnone credit administration software as the first bank in Africa to pioneer the service.
2011 – Launched the first biometric ATM and cash deposit ATM in Nigeria.
2012 – Became a subsidiary group of FBN Holdings Plc.
2013 – Completed the acquisition of ICB asset in Guinea, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Ghana as part of an ongoing Pan African expansion program.
2014 – Initiated, at 120 years, the launch of a new corporate identity.
2016 – Launched FirstLounge, the first landside lounge at Murtala Muhammed International Airport.
Leadership
Chairman – Tunde Hassan-Odukale
Managing Director/CEO – Adesola Kazeem Adeduntan
Deputy Managing Director – Olugbenga Francis Shobo
Executive Director, Public Sector Group – Abdullahi Ibrahim
Executive Director, Corporate Banking – Oluwatosin Adewuyi
Executive Director – Patrick Iyamabo.
See also
List of banks in Nigeria
Economy of Nigeria
International Commercial Bank
References
External links
Companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange
Banks of Nigeria
Banks established in 1894
Multinational companies based in Lagos
1894 establishments in the British Empire | {
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Red Tomatoes - 6 lb bag - WOW!
PLEASE NOTE THAT PEACHES SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE PLASTIC BAGS AND ALLOWED TO RIPEN OPEN ON THE COUNTER. AS SOON AS THEY ARE RIPE THEY SHOULD BE STORED IN THE REFRIGERATOR.
Thursday/Friday - To be decided.
More tomatoes this week! A whopping 6 lbs of Red Tomatoes and a full quart of Cherry Tomatoes! Green Beans for the last time this month. They're on the larger side, but still tender when lightly steamed. Chioggia Beets (striped white and red when sliced) are in the share without the tops. The tops had some damage and took up too much space in the box, so we decided to cut them off. They're beautiful when sliced on a plate! Yellow Onions for your cooking, Sweet Basil to pair with your tomatoes in salads or as a pesto, and a Spaghetti Squash! The first of our winter squash harvest - see recipe and more info below.
We probably don't have to tell you that we're swimming in tomatoes here... If you're thinking about canning some, now is the time! We have plum tomatoes shares available and all the details are below.
In other news, we've been busy seeding the remainder of our fall and winter root crops like carrots, rutabagas and beets. We're also just beginning to harvest our winter squash crop. This week we kick off the season with a spaghetti squash, soon followed by acorn and sweet dumplings. These are the earliest squash to make an appearance in the shares because they don't require curing. Coming a little later this fall will be sunshines, butternuts and baby blue hubbards.
$35 for a 20lb box of Plum Tomatoes for canning and cooking. To order, please e-mail [email protected] with your requested number of shares and where you will be picking them up. Your choice for pick-up is: Port Washington Farmers' Market (Saturday), Islip Farmers' Market (Saturday), or Huntington Farmers' Market (Sunday). We are now taking orders for pick-up on 8/25 and 8/26 ONLY. If we have more shares available for pick-up the following weekend we will post a notice in next week's newsletter. | {
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79 year old Larry King, well known TV and radio talk show host has accomplished many achievements that are really uncountable. However, according to Forbes Magazine, Larry King also has a special gift at picking NFL spreads. So far this season King has hot on14 of his 16 picks and has a betting average of .875 and his streak continues hitting the last 11 right on the money.
King chose the New York Giants to cover the five-point spread against the New Orleans Saints because the Giants were coming off a loss against the Washington Redskins and the Saints' defense is weak. He was right again! What is King's secret? You can follow him on Twitter where he shares his weekly picks with his 2.3 million followers. He does admit that he looks for spreads first that are out of whack, in his words. He also never bets on the Miami Dolphins, his home team. King usually bets $500 on the game but sometimes will bet a grand.
King's strategy starts by looking over the spreads, adding up the numbers, and analyzing the circumstances for both teams leading up to the games. He has his own way of choosing the spreads but whatever he is doing it is working thus far! | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
Canadian Jewish Record | News, Commentary, Lifestyles
Canadian Jewish Record is a not-for-profit online publication including community, food, rabbinic, editorial, obituary and opinion sections.
Rabbinic Reflections
Canada Votes at the UN: A Response to Jon Allen
By MICHAEL MOSTYN
In his Nov. 25 defence in the CJR of Canada's recent vote for what is, in fact, an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations, Jon Allen failed to properly address a number of key issues.
First, it is surprising to see Mr. Allen express consternation at the idea of Canada changing its vote from last year, when Canada altered its vote in favour of the same resolution. Since the days of the Liberal government under Paul Martin, Canada decided against voting any longer for one-sided, polemical anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. Last year's vote for the resolution in question was a shocking departure from that principled policy, and so Canada's vote against the resolution this year would have been an expected course-correction.
Second, we should not pretend that the problem with the resolution is its support for Palestinian self-determination or a Palestinian state. Israel itself has recognized the inevitability of that proposition on multiple occasions, including making generous offers in 2000, 2001, and 2008 for the creation of a Palestinian state. Tragically, the Palestinian leadership consistently rejected these offers because – bottom line – they refuse to accept the idea of a Jewish state. The persistent Palestinian rejection of Jewish self-determination is the core of the conflict, which this UN resolution only exacerbates.
The resolution makes peace far less likely by pre-determining that all areas east of the June 4, 1967 lines (also called the "Green Line") are "the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem," which therefore – absurdly – includes the holiest sites in Judaism: the Western Wall and Temple Mount, plus the Jewish Quarter of the Old City; and everything else, east to the Jordan River.
Crucially, and contrary to what Mr. Allen writes, Canada's support of this resolution contradicts a key element of our own foreign policy. After all, in its official policy on "Support for a Comprehensive Peace Settlement," Canada declares adherence to UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for negotiations between the parties to determine the status of the territories. Since its self-defensive war in 1967, Israel has abided by 242 and 338 as the internationally accepted formula for peace-making.
However, the controversial UN resolution Canada just supported (co-sponsored by North Korea!) violates this formula, thereby contradicting our own policy against prejudging the outcome of negotiations. Oddly, Mr. Allen, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel, has failed to acknowledge this glaring inconsistency.
Third, Mr. Allen ignores the context in which this resolution was presented at the UN. It was part of a suite of 17 resolutions targeting the world's only Jewish state, compared to just seven resolutions dealing with the rest of the world. Our government has repeatedly recognized that this anti-Israel obsession at the UN is harmful to the cause of peace, which renders its partial participation with its "yes" vote on this one highly controversial resolution all the more galling.
Ironically, while peace and normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbours – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan – being just the latest examples – are moving in one positive direction, typical anti-Israel forces in the West, including at the UN, insist on moving in a negative direction.
Mr. Allen is also mistaken that a significant portion of Canadian Jews shares his views. Rather, the position of B'nai Brith and the other major Jewish Canadian organizations represents an overwhelming consensus in our community, as shown by the hard data.
In 2018, the last year in which Canada opposed this resolution, a survey of Canada's Jewish population by Environics, the University of Toronto and York University found that 45 percent of Canadian Jews felt that Canada's support for Israel was "about right"; 36 percent felt it was not supportive enough; and just six percent felt it was too supportive (13 percent did not know or did not answer).
On this particular issue, Mr. Allen has positioned himself among that six percent. At B'nai Brith Canada, we are proud to represent the more than eight in 10, and we will continue to do so, advocating for our government to adhere, consistently, to its espoused principles.
Michael Mostyn
Michael Mostyn is CEO of B'nai Brith Canada.
Author Canadian Jewish RecordPosted on December 3, 2020 December 1, 2020 Categories CommentaryTags anti-israel, Bahrain, East Jerusalem, Green Line, Jewish Quarter, Jon Allen, occupied palestinian territory, Paul MArtin, Sudan, Temple Mount, UAE, UN, UN General Assembly, Western Wall
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Former Roosevelt Island Operating Corp Director Jonathan Kalkin Sums Up Experience As RIOC Board Member - Cites Accomplishments and Future Challenges
Image of Former RIOC Director Jonathan Kalkin
Former Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Board Director Jonathan Kalkin reviews his tenure on the Board and reports:
Democracy is fragile. As the son of an immigrant who was born in the Dominican Republic and lived under a dictator part of her life, I am reminded of this all the time. The things we take for granted, like voting for our leaders and being able to openly disagree with them and sometimes influence their decisions, is a gift that we miss only when we start to lose it.
Over the past couple of years, I have tried to take the lead on many of the issues that have plagued Roosevelt Island for most of the time we have been here. I took them on because they were difficult. My strong fellow board members followed me into uncharted territory and with little promise of success. Together, we moved forward to reform the way our government and Island worked, with the hope of making this a better place to live.
Affordable housing and privatization is probably the most complex issue that we face on the Island. Due to a constant shift in leadership and administrations, and the loaded nature of the issue, it starts and stops and is never completed. During my tenure as the chair of the Real Estate Advisory Committee, I tried to get the dialogue going between the agencies involved, any questions resolved, and, most importantly, moving forward to completion. I started by setting up a meeting at City Hall with every agency involved, to share documents and resolve any issues going forward. Since the board had never passed a resolution in favor of DHCR's affordable housing plans, I put that on the agenda and we passed it as a commitment to moving forward in favor of long-term affordability for all Mitchell-Lama buildings. The end result is that the board has passed a lease extension that ensures long-term affordability for Rivercross and, most recently, moved forward in committee with the DHCR affordability plan for Island House. It pleases me that these milestones have been achieved, and I have confidence that our board will make sure that the last portion of this work is completed. I'm proud of our commitment to affordability, and that our resolution and work led to real results.
Main Street retail has been a problem for years, and it was one of the first things I tried to work on as a resident and then as a board member. The Retail Master Lease is proof that an idea can come from a resident and be approved by the Residents Association, move to the board, and become a solution that is mutually beneficial for the government and private business. It secures the present revenue stream for RIOC and shares profits above that, benefits the community with a competitive and vibrant retail environment, and takes government (and the long and onerous RFP process that goes with it) out of the business of retail management for the Island.
There will also be significant investment in the spaces to make them look great for tenants and for the community. However, to be especially successful, I recommend that you go to your favorite off-Island stores and restaurants, and tell them that Roosevelt Island is finally ready to rent stores. The more of you who reach out to entrepreneurs and businesses that you love and bring them to the Island, the better the choices we will have in the future. This plan will not only bring jobs and money into our economy, but Hudson-Related has significant retail experience, and the success of Main Street Retail helps promote the completion of the final buildings of Southtown. That will bring significant revenue for RIOC, which can help secure our promise of long-term affordability for the buildings in Northtown and help pay for our infrastructure and operational needs going forward.
Transportation on this Island has always had a dependability problem, and now it appears to be turning a corner. During my term as chair of the Operations Committee, we installed the Nextbus bus-tracking system, and a consistent schedule. Islanders have developed mobile apps to track the Red Bus Nextbus system, and many of these mobile apps will soon be posted with download instructions and websites at each bus stop. I had RIOC staff and myself meet at Google Headquarters to work on maps and screens at each bus stop so you can see when the next Red Bus is arriving even if you don't own a mobile device.
I've secured funding for electric-car charging stations for Motorgate, so we can get around greener on the Island. Verdant Power is working with the Island to power this with Tidal Energy. This, coupled with our new transportation manager, should make our transportation system more reliable around the Island. It will take time to get it right, but the foundation is in place to make it work.
Parking enforcement and availability will begin to improve with our smart-parking sensor system, which will hopefully be deployed throughout the Island. This, coupled with lower short-term parking prices at Motorgate, will make sure that people use short-term parking for its intended purpose – to drop off and pick up without double-parking. Public Safety officers are being trained with iPhones so that they can handle violations indicated by the sensors while focusing on keeping the Island safe. Improved parking systems will also make sure our new and improved retail corridor has the ample parking spaces that merchants need to thrive. Less double-parking and additional enforcement of parking rules will make sure that the Red Bus can keep on schedule. Also, a mobile app and street signage will indicate if there is parking available ahead, and allow payment so you don't have to circle the Island.
Many of these suggestions and issues have been brought up on RIOC's new RI311 issue-tracking system that is being tested. It is powered by the citizen-311 system SeeClickFix.com. It will soon be on the RIOC website, and it will help the community indicate the issues on the Island and vote up, comment, and take photos of these issues. When issues are resolved, everyone who indicated an interest will get an email notification that it has been closed.
I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life on Roosevelt Island by working on a team that will negotiate a community-benefit agreement with the new university planned for the southern end of Roosevelt Island. I believe this is a unique moment to work on a number of infrastructure improvements, like green affordable energy for everyone on Roosevelt Island, and an extension of the free Island-wide wi-fi Internet plan like the one that I worked on with Verizon and is being completed for Southpoint Park. Ferry service may prove feasible with university help, and a dock study is currently being completed. Ideas like a science school, scholarships for local students, and an advanced library will be negotiated to make sure that this university and Roosevelt Island mutually benefit from our relationship.
Community input and an independent elected board led to these improvements and ensure that they will continue. Ideas like Tram straps and a more stable ride, better stores, and other suggestions that led to a better Island came from the grassroots level. It is that commitment to the community that is threatened each time an unelected board member takes a seat. It unravels the fabric of our community, and despite the best intentions, it is a blow to our democracy and independence. Roosevelt Island is the embodiment of the American Dream, and no part of that dream should be compromised. Don't let it happen.
The reason for Mr. Kalkin no longer being on the RIOC Board is discussed fully at previous post.
Labels: Affordable housing , electric car , electric car charging , kalkin , Main Street , Mitchell Lama , Next Bus , Parking , privatization , Retail , Rivercross , See Click Fix , wireless parking
Guest said...
"I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life on Roosevelt Island by working on a team that will negotiate a community-benefit agreement with the new university planned for the southern end of Roosevelt Island."
He is very stingy with details here. Who is hiring him to do so? In whose name is he going to negotiate? Is this a RIRA thing?
sparky said...
Mr. Kalkin is being somewhat optimistic and premature if he's saying a new university is planned for Roosevelt Island. The city just issued an RFP today and the island is one of three sites being considered, along with Governors Island and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Proposals aren't due until October 28.
So, what is he talking about then? I mean, I always hated him for his over the top rhetoric but I'd like to know what he's talking about.
Good Kitty said...
I resent Mr. Kalkin casting aspersions on or even obliquely implying that we are living under a dictatorship. Starting from the Revolutionary War on up, thousands of Americans have given their lives to achieve and maintain freedom - which we have in the form of voting for elected officials, such as Mayor, Governor, Senators etc. Today there are still thousands of brave Americans fighting in the Mid East to vanquish the terrorists that would remove our freedom in favor of dictatorship.
Mr. Kalkin was never an elected official because the RIOC Board is not elected, it is appointed. It is not and never will be the equivalent of either the City Council, the State Senate and our other elected bodies. No one can compel RIOC Board appointments - whether or not candidates are Island residents, or are elected or not. All a RIOC Board member election does is recommend a resident for appointment. It does not guarantee appointment. It is up to the Governor to accept or reject elected candidates for appointment, and if none of the elected candidates are suitable, the Governor selects any person -- Islander or not -- for Board appointment.
The RIOC Board, a group of appointees that oversee the work of RIOC, will disappear in 2068 when the Island reverts back to full control by the City of New York. As a temporary mechanism, the RIOC Board is not, and indeed cannot be a representative body in the sense that the State Senate is a representative body.
RI is of course part of the the City of New York, and as such we already have the same representation as every other New Yorker in the form of our elected Executive, Legislative, Judicial Branch officials at the Federal, State and Municipal levels. To say that this wonderful system is not freedom insults the memory of those who fought to achieve and maintain it, as well as the thousands serving today so that Mr. Kalkin and every one of us can continue to live in a fully representative democracy.
SML said...
What! A rational person living on Roosevelt Island? Someone who understands that Roosevelt Island is in New York City! Hallelulah! I thought I was the only one.
[email protected] said...
he is so fuLL of it . he talks about affordable housing, wel,l then why did he let eastwood go .many people have lost thier apartments in eastwood . good hard working people .yes there were alot of good hard working people living in eastwood . until ron vass and the eastwood building committee sold them out , so RON can get a good deal for himself and others who were in the saME BOAT AS HIM . BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WORKING CLASS PEOPLE WHO WERE FORCED INTO SEC8 .AND THEN HAD TO MOVE OUT BECAUSE OF RON VASS . SO MR, KALKIN YOU TALK B,S, YOU MUST BE FRIENDS WITH RON VASS.
Bravo! I agree totally.
Bravo to Mr.Kalkin, a true dedicated public servant. He wasn't a board member when Eastwood converted which is a shame because his dedication to affordable housing would have helped. He did so much for us and I'm glad he will keep on trying to help.
JPH said...
Man the haters are out in force. You can quibble at tedious length with his characterization of RI governance, but it would be nice if someone could point out that Kalkin was diligent, conscientious, and worked hard to improve life on RI. That's not so tough to realize is it? You may not like his style or whatever, but he's been a forceful advocate for positive change.
I know it's tough when everyone is so committed to maintaining the negative energy pervading this place, but I think the Board is going to sorely miss someone with Kalkin's energy and ideas.
RooseveltIslander said...
I absolutely agree with JPH
Also, Mr. Kalkin was not on the Board when the Eastwood privatization was approved so it is unfair and just untrue to blame him for that happening in the way it did.
The Community Benefit Agreement to be negotiated when and if any University is awarded the NYC Applied Sciences RFP and takes over the Goldwater Hospital site was an idea initiated by RIRA's Southern Development Committee but if implemented will be an independent organization comprised of many different Roosevelt Island organizations and stakeholders including RIRA and any others that wish to join.
The purpose of it is to present a united front to represent the Roosevelt Island community to make sure as much as possible that the interest of Roosevelt Island stakeholders are represented in any future development of the Goldwater site.
Similar Community Benefit Agreements have been implemented for similar neighborhood developments.
ron vass should be put in jail. for what he did to eastwood
There is no hate going on here about Mr. Kalkin. I personally don't like him because he always talks like a know-it-all politician. All his tentative ideas and plans are presented in a way as if they are done deals (and already implemented at times). Take his latest statement, for example. In what way is the new university site which may be on Roosevelt Island a new chapter in his political career? Without him giving any details on what exactly he's talking about his words just don't make much sense.
I also agree with Good Kitty's opinion because the way he talks about democracy etc. etc. is just nuts.
Thanks for this clarification. Now, if Mr. Kalkin only had said that as well he would've made a lot more sense. But he didn't, of course.
Independent organization? I can see how this will go down and f everything up Stanford or whoever wants to come here wants to do here. If the Child School and its director are already stirring up trouble who knows what bigger institutions are going to do to us (according to our folks at the RIRA).
Mark5950 said...
Mr. Kalkin did an amazing anount of great things that will impact Roosevelt Island for years to come. It is pretty darn obvious that the same commenter on here who Is "old guy" which is his handle but he signs in as guest (so people don't has written several comments one after another but the disqus system lists all his comments coming from the same sign in") this person writes a comment then two minutes later writes back as a guest again trying to convince people he is two people and then writes again minutes later. Now why would someone do that. It is pathetic but it is mainly because mr kalkin proved many people wrong by not only getting the master lease in place which will transform retail on the island but getting a great deal for the state which as he highlights will actually help pay for affordable housing in northtown. Its difficult for many to deal with the fact that they were dead wrong about a rfp being viable.
Now lets move onto our friend good kitty. He write several comments for the same post as well, but that is not his greatest problem. Stupid is his Issue. His great approach is to give the childs school the master lease or better yet pressure the master leaseholder to give affordable housing as a part of the master lease deal. Forget that this will destroy any chance of rioc getting the revenue it needs not to go broke and will ruin any chance for rioc to have enough money to preserve affordable housing on the island. I'm guessing your near inability to hold a job good kitty is more about your inability to do basic math and think of ideas where some phantom government subsidy (taxpayer) pays for everything and anybody trying to have a business and (profit oh my) on this island is somehow evil and that the nonprofit that runs northtown(rioc)should be replaced with another (childs school) because the first nonprofit entity work so well). Because schools are greaaat at running businesses. Mr. Kalkin you are the best and I can't wait to walk down main street in a year and see it clean with new shops. I bet both these commenters will be eating in them too like the hypocrites they are.
This is funny. I posted most of the "Guest" comments here and I have no idea who this "old guy" is you are talking about. Do you really have a hard time understanding that not everybody appreciates the way Mr. Kalkin comes across? Sure, he did a lot of good things but that was not what I complained about.
No Guest said...
I know now how where you got "old guy" from. It's quite a potpourri of comments that you get when you look through "old guy"'s comments. From RI to Microsoft to Netflix... I guess that's what happens if you pick something generic like "Guest" with an e-mail address like "[email protected]".
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Wanda Cash
Belo Center
Center for New Media
College of Communication
Laura Byerley
Roderick Hart
Published on December 5, 2012 at 11:58 pm Last update on December 6, 2012 at 9:24 am
Three months after announcing intentions to place a Daily Texan news box in front of the Belo Center for New Media, the College of Communication is now saying it hopes to install specially designed and built boxes by January.
College of Communication spokesperson Laura Byerley said the college accepted three bids and will pick a contractor to construct the box next week. Normally Texas Student Media, the entity that owns The Daily Texan, provides boxes to locations free of charge.
"We're hoping they'll be installed by the first day of school in the spring semester," Byerley said. "The news boxes are being designed. There isn't anything new to report at this time."
In September, Wanda Cash, the assistant director of the School of Journalism, asked college officials for a Daily Texan news box in front of UT's newest building. Assistant dean Janice Daman told Cash it was the College of Communication's policy to not have any news boxes, signage or paper in front of or in the Belo Center for New Media, the building that hosts the journalism school, for environmental concerns. The building is striving for the "silver certification" from U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
An article about this policy appeared in The Daily Texan, and following public outcry from media and former Daily Texan editors, the College of Communication reversed its decision. At the time, College of Communication dean Roderick Hart said it was never the intention of the college to ban the boxes.
Later in October, Hart said he was hoping to get the boxes installed by late November.
"They'll certainly be operational by the start of spring semester," Hart said in an October email.
Mark Morrison, former Daily Texan editor and Texas Student Media board member, said the slow response to placing a box in front of the new building has frustrated him.
"The University certainly does not seem to be able to move very quickly on issues such as this," Morrison said.
He said the College of Communication should have set up temporary Daily Texan distribution areas in the Belo Center for New Media.
"There should be a high priority to get the Texan to communication college students, including journalism students, and if it's going to take this long to get a permanent spot, why don't they set up some temporary distribution points?"
Morrison said while the more permanent box is built, the newspapers could go in the building, on a table, in a rack or in a temporary box.
Jalah Goette, the director of the Texas Student Media board, said no one from the College of Communication has contacted her about the news boxes at the Belo Center.
After Friday, The Daily Texan will stop printing until Jan. 14, the first class day of the spring semester.
Printed on Friday, December 6, 2012 as: Belo Center to acquire custom-made newsboxes
Sam Gosling
Published on October 28, 2012 at 11:10 pm Last update on October 29, 2012 at 10:12 am
By Joan Vinson
Some UT professors are integrating technology and online tools like social media with traditional teaching methods to encourage participation and performance in class.
Psychology professors Sam Gosling and James Pennebaker have aimed to encourage student involvement in class by offering online discussions. This fall, the professors require students in their Introduction to Psychology courses to bring their laptops to class to take quizzes, complete assignments and participate in small discussion groups. Some professors in the School of Journalism have also embraced the technology route and require students to use social media in class.
According to an October survey by education services company Pearson and the Babson Research Survey Group, nearly 34 percent of 4,000 professors surveyed use social media in their teaching. The study found blogs and wikis were professors' most preferred social media tools. Eighty-eight percent of faculty also use online video in their classrooms.
Gosling said he has seen an improvement in performance from students in his introduction class, a large-format class with more than 1,000 students in the course. He did not require students to purchase a traditional textbook, instead using online demonstrations, TEDTalks, journal articles and other online texts.
"Generally students like not having to buy a textbook," Gosling said. "Especially when it comes to saving money."
Wanda Cash, School of Journalism associate director, said encouraging student participation in big lecture classes is a difficult task.
"It is always difficult to encourage student participation because some students are shy about speaking up," Cash said. "When students tweet comments I can look up on the Twitter stream and answer some of their questions without singling them out."
She also requires students to tweet comments about lectures during class and created Facebook pages for her classes where updates and relevant articles are posted. The School of Journalism now requires students to create a digital portfolio, which Cash said functions as an online resume.
Journalism senior lecturer Robert Quigley said he uses a variety of tools in his social media class, including Facebook and Twitter.
"This way of learning is unusual for students, so getting them to participate is not that easy," Quigley said. "I hope to get more participation in the class as students become more comfortable."
Printed on Monday, October 29, 2012 as: Professors use Web tools to engage large classes
Photo Credit: Marc Morales | Daily Texan Staff
Glenn Frankel
Janice Daman
Published on September 6, 2012 at 12:32 am
As the Belo Center for New Media works to gear students up for the new digital age of journalism, some faculty and students are concerned it is leaving the print age behind.
Citing environmental concerns, College of Communication administrators have stopped The Daily Texan from placing a news box in front of the $54.8 million Belo Center for New Media. Janice Daman, assistant dean of the College of Communication, told the School of Journalism last week that no news boxes are allowed in the Belo plaza or on the sidewalk. Since opening in August, the University's newest building has housed the School of Journalism and the departments of advertising and public relations.
Mark Morrison, adjunct lecturer in the School of Journalism and a Texas Student Media board member, said he was disappointed and wants a Texan news box in front of the center.
"I think it is outrageous," Morrison said. "We should make it as easy as possible for our students and faculty to get access to the Texan. The Belo Center is, after all, the home of the journalism school."
The issue arose when Glenn Frankel, director of the school of journalism, asked journalism professor Wanda Cash to look into why there were no Texan boxes in front of the Belo Center for New Media. Daman informed Cash of the college's policy regarding news boxes in an e-mail.
Daman said the building is environmentally friendly, and the presence of news boxes raises concerns that litter, clutter and debris could gather around the building.
The Belo Center for New Media is striving to achieve the "silver certification" from U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Signage, banners, plaques and other forms of paper have also been banned from being posted outside the building.
"It's not a news box issue, per se," Daman said in an e-mail to The Daily Texan. "That is important to understand."
In her e-mail to Cash, Daman said the project team rejected a number of requests for material to be posted in front of the building in order to maintain "the look of the plaza."
"You'll notice that even the trash cans' color was specifically chosen by the architect," Daman said in her e-mail to Cash.
Daman also said there are Texan boxes nearby, one across Whitis Street at the Kinsolving Residence Hall and another across Dean Keaton Street.
Morrison said faculty and students at the Belo Center for New Media should not have to cross the street to pick up a copy of the Texan.
Frankel, director of the school of journalism, said he thinks it is a mistake not to put news boxes in front of the Belo Center for New Media.
"This is the School of Journalism and the College of Communication, and newspapers remain one of the fundamental platforms and vehicles of journalism," Frankel said. "I would like our students to be exposed to journalism and all of its manifestations here — and that includes newspapers."
A former editor-in-chief of the Texan from 1969 to 1970, Morrison said he did not face similar issues during his time as editor, but problems with placing news boxes outside of buildings have become more common recently. Last semester, the College of Communication did not let The Daily Texan place news boxes in front of the CMA building in the Walter Cronkite Plaza.
"I mean, to think that the Walter Cronkite Plaza does not have a Daily Texan newsstand, Walter would be rolling over in his grave," Morrison said.
Cronkite, an icon in the industry of broadcast journalism, got his start at the Texan.
Susannah Jacob, editor-in-chief of the Texan, said she was disappointed there are no newsstands in front of the Belo Center.
"We make every effort with every issue to stop any confusion between The Daily Texan and trash," Jacob said.
The Daily Texan, UT's official student newspaper, has roughly 75 news boxes on campus and 100 off campus. The Texan also has about 175 off-campus distribution locations where business owners receive bundles of the Texan and then offer free copies to their customers.
The UT System's policy on solicitation allow the individual universities to decide where news racks or news boxes can be located. While UT-Austin does not have a specific policy or rule, a spokesperson for Facilities Services said UT does not allow the location of boxes and stands to interfere with foot and vehicle traffic or building access.
Printed on Thursday, September 6th, 2012 as: No Texan news boxes available outside Belo
advertising revenue
Gary Borders
Jennifer Hammat
Texas Student Media Board of Trustees
Texas Student Television
Vice President of Student Affairs
Published on February 27, 2012 at 2:02 am
By Megan Strickland
As the Texas Student Media Board of Trustees meets this morning to discuss specific issues regarding the circumstances surrounding the recent resignation of director Gary Borders, the organization also faces ongoing repercussions of financial and staffing problems that have accumulated over the past few years.
A budget deficit, falling advertising revenue and recurrent vacancies in critical leadership roles are affecting TSM's ability to operate. While budget deficits and falling advertising revenue are problems that plague college media nationwide, some problems may have arisen from TSM's unique structure.
"No other collegiate media entity that I am aware of has a governing board and University reporting [requirement]," said Jennifer Hammat, assistant vice president of student affairs and a former interim director of TSM.
A board of operating trustees governs TSM, which is not independent of UT. Its entities include The Daily Texan, TSTV, KVRX 91.7 FM, The Cactus Yearbook and The Texas Travesty, a humor publication. The director of TSM reports to both the vice president of student affairs and the TSM board of trustees. The Declaration of Trust for the organization states an endowment of $5 million would allow TSM to become an independent entity, but unless such an endowment is made, TSM employees are considered employees of the University.
The involvement of the Office of Student Affairs in employment matters has become a source of conflict at TSM in recent days. Borders told the Texan that Juan Gonzalez, the outgoing vice president of student affairs, forced his Feb. 8 resignation after Borders raised the ideas of selling TSM's television and radio licenses. Gonzalez said he followed policy involving university personnel performance with regard to Borders' resignation.
Wanda Cash, associate director of the School of Journalism and former TSM board member, said personnel performance issues were previously handled much differently, including when she was on the board.
"If there were performance issues, the vice president of student affairs contacted me, and then in consultation with the president of the board we worked out what had arisen," Cash said. "This time that did not happen and that's what is very troubling. The vice president of student affairs acted alone in terminating the director."
Board member Tim Lott, vice president of audience strategy for the Cox Media Group, said the board was unaware there was a problem with Borders' performance.
"I literally had no idea there was any sort of problem that could potentially end in a termination," Lott said.
Borders was the third director TSM had seen in as many years. Kathy McCarty departed TSM in 2009 after serving 15 years. Hammat served as the interim director for nearly two years and participated in one failed search for a replacement until Borders was hired in summer 2011 after a second search. The board will discuss the possibility of appointing a an interim TSM director this morning.
Meanwhile, the search has not yet begun for a replacement for Jennifer Rubin, former multimedia adviser who departed in October 2011 after six months on the job.
Board member Mark Morrison, a lecturer in the journalism school, said it's imperative a replacement is found quickly.
"We need to establish leadership," Morrison said.
While facing absent leadership, TSM has a March 19 budget deadline looming. The organization is already facing the effects of a budget deficit.
The 2011-2012 annual budget has a projected $175,252 deficit that draws from the organization's reserve fund that fell to $723,665.55 in November. Advertising revenue for TSM has declined from $2,326,411 four years ago, to $1,509,839 last year.
Texas Student Television is the only TSM entity budgeted for a profit this year.
The Daily Texan, which accounts for 89 percent of TSM advertising revenue, has seen changes in the three years since it last posted profit.
Since 2009, The Daily Texan has sold its press, outsourced printing and distribution, which resulted in staff layoffs and is making plans to reduce summer print production to once weekly. A second round of layoffs among TSM professional staff followed a reorganization in 2011.
Borders' claim that he was dismissed because of budget-cutting proposals has led Cash to question the vice president's role.
"The issue here is: is it right for the Office of Student Affairs to continue oversight as the president's designee of Texas Student Media?" asked Cash.
Cash said she believes revising the Declaration of Trust to make the dean of the College of Communication the University's designee to oversee TSM, instead of the office of student affairs, would be a better arrangement than the current one.
"In the College of Communication we have an understanding of journalism," Cash said. "We have the right sensibility of journalism — of first amendment rights, of freedom of the press and our common disdain for prior restraint and censorship. I'm not sure the office of student affairs shares that sensibility."
Regardless of who is the university's designee for oversight of TSM, board president and third-year law student Lindsey Powers said the University needs to remember common courtesy when communicating with the board of trustees.
"I think a lot of people have forgotten how important it is to consult a board," Powers said.
Kevin Hegarty, vice president and chief financial officer for the University, was recently appointed by President William Powers Jr. to investigate the circumstances of Borders' termination.
Although Hegarty said the board should be granted the courtesy of consultation before terminating employees, he said because the University is the employer of TSM's employees, Borders was subject to termination by the University. He said the University had more say in TSM's operations than a yearly performance review.
"The role of the University is to counsel, to coach and to do what it can to support the board of trustees," Hegarty said.
Hegarty said he hopes University and TSM relations improve after today's meeting.
"The intent is to be very consultative and to come to solutions that are collaborative and cooperative," Hegarty said. "Hopefully we can move forward."
media platforms
By Ahsika Sanders
The School of Journalism approved the biggest change to its curriculum in almost 20 years to better prepare future journalists for the evolving media platforms.
The revised curriculum received unanimous approval by the 22 faculty members present at Wednesday's faculty council meeting. If approved by the Office of the Dean of the College of Communication and the Office of the Provost, the new curriculum will be implemented 2012 at the same time the school moves into the Belo Center for New Media. The building will include a multimedia newsroom, an agency-grade creative room and a 75-seat briefing room.
The new curriculum is broken into five levels, beginning with foundation courses concerning current media technology and ending with professional practice courses that will help students build their portfolios, said Wanda Cash, a clinical journalism professor who led the curriculum reform committee.
"This curriculum change is a historic step forward for the School of Journalism," Cash said. "We'll be teaching the traditional, core values of journalism while we explore new ways to tell stories."
School of Journalism Director Glenn Frankel said the current curriculum is grounded on specialized degree plans in sequences. Currently, journalism students select one of four tracks — print, broadcast, photo or multimedia.
Frankel said the narrow focus of the sequences is no longer the most sufficient method to prepare students because journalism has greatly evolved since the last curriculum change in 1993.
"The digital revolution has shaken journalism to its roots and changed its nature, the way we do it, the platforms we do it on and our relationship to the people we used to call the audience," Frankel said. "The curriculum of a good journalism school needs to reflect those changes."
Frankel said the new curriculum is streamlining the number of courses from roughly 75 to 50. He said the reduction will give students a more straightforward program to help them better focus their studies.
Ashlei King, a reporter for ABC News Abilene and 2010 UT broadcast journalism alumna, said she could have benefited from courses in different journalism platforms, such as photography, because she is required to do more than report.
"I have to write for TV, and I have to write for the web so the intro reporting courses I took have definitely helped," she said. "If something comes up, I may use my cell phone to snap a picture but knowing how to operate certain camera kits is going to be necessary."
Bob Schenkkan
KLRU
Robert F. Schenkkan
Stewart Vanderwilt
Published on February 13, 2011 at 12:00 am
By Lauren Giudice
Friends of Robert F. Schenkkan, founder of Austin public radio station, KUT, and TV station, KLRU, remember him as kind and determined. He died on Wednesday at 93 from dementia complications.
Clinical professor of journalism Wanda Cash said Schenkkan, who worked as a radio-television-film professor at UT for more than two decades, was an advocate of independent journalism and set the standards for public broadcasting today.
He advocated for the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which led to congressional funding for broadcasting, said Cash, who was a friend of Schenkkan's.
"The College of Communication owes so much to Bob Schenkkan," she said. "He was a wonderful professor; he was a force to be reckoned with back then."
KUT station director Stewart Vanderwilt said Schenkkan contributed to public broadcasting.
"There was a time shortly after the modern context of public broadcasting had been created that the Nixon administration set out to close it down," Vanderwilt said. "Bob was able to lead public broadcasting though that period, and [it] came out the other side a much stronger service."
Vanderwilt said he doesn't know where KUT or public broadcasting would be without
Schenkkan.
"He got the license, helped find the first transmitter and he literally led the effort to put it on the air," he said. "He helped it become as self-sustaining as possible."
Schenkkan had a dream that KUT would offer a professional service with an educational purpose, Vanderwilt said.
"He wanted KUT to be a place to learn," he said. "I'd say he put us on the path that KUT is continuing to grow from."
Vanderwilt said he is disappointed he did not know Schenkkan longer.
"He was exceedingly gracious, and I think what could be overlooked in that is that he had a very strong resolve in anything that he was committed to and believed in," Vanderwilt said.
The College of Communication is scheduled to hold memorial services for Schenkkan on March 6 at 2 p.m. | {
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← From a priest about the collection for CHD
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A good view of the Greenville controversy
Posted on 19 November 2008 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
This is from The Catholic Thing and is written by Robert Royal.
My emphases and comments.
De-forming Consciences
By Robert Royal
"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of full communion with Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."
Who wrote these words? You might guess Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Benedict XVI, on several occasions, not only about voting for pro-abortion politicians, but about those politicians themselves, if they claim to be Catholics. In fact, the words were written by Fr. J. H. Scott Newman, pastor of St. Mary's Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and inserted into the parish bulletin last Sunday. Fr. Newman was merely expressing the widespread, longstanding, and clear moral understanding of the Church. No good deed, as we know, goes unpunished. Fr. Newman did so good a deed that he's been rebuked, [a familiar pattern] not only by the usual media suspects, but by the Charleston diocesan administrator.
I have known Scott Newman since his freshman year at Princeton and would personally vouch for his every word. The managing editor of the magazine I ran back then identified him as a promising new student within days of his arrival on campus. He wrote some unusually mature and perceptive articles. I was not wholly surprised when he later decided to become a Catholic, and I was honored to be his sponsor. Scott subsequently worked in the Caribbean under Bishop Sean O'Malley, before going to Rome, where he became president of his seminary class – also not much of surprise.
He's not only smart, holy, gifted in working with people, but humble. When the controversy arose, he received 5000 emails, "Most of the people who wrote seem to regard me as either a mighty champion of reform or an evil tool of the devil, and I am naturally hesitant to accept either title. In truth, I am but a useless servant of the Lord Jesus trying, despite my frailty, to be a faithful witness to Him Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life." He also pointed out that he had not named any particular candidates in the original statement or, as was misreported by the Associated Press, "denied" anyone Communion. [Right. The MSM played a role in this, and not a positive one.]
A shrewd man, Fr. Newman put things in writing. After the bulletin appeared, The Greenville News asked him: "Are you saying that you'll administer a no-communion policy unless Obama voters partake in penance?" He wrote in reply:
"I cannot and will not refuse Holy Communion to anyone because of his or her political opinions or choices, even as I continue to teach what the Church teaches about the necessity of being in full, visible communion with the Church before receiving the sacraments. Only those who believe what the Catholic Church teaches and who seek to live according to that teaching should even be interested in receiving the sacraments of the Church, and on the question of the intrinsic and grave evil of abortion, there is and can be no doubt about what the Church teaches." [Therefore… If you voted for a candidate because he supports abortion though you know what the Church teaches, you should rexamine receiving Communion.]
That "cannot" reflects Fr. Newman's proper recognition of the Church's teaching and his overall reply should have put an end to the matter.
The Catholic Thing has noticed how the national media have taken it upon themselves to reinterpret or ignore hard facts this election season – and now beyond. The AP story was an outrage, by simple journalistic standards, and the fact that the "priest denies Obama voters Communion" story was picked up by ABC and other outlets shows how uncritical our media have become. (Recall, in recent weeks, two young bloggers – Eitan Gorlin and Daniel Mirvish — created a fictional adviser to the McCain campaign, [Incredible but true, but most journalists have their heads filled with cotton, hay and rags. Couple that with the desire to see your name in the byline and you have disaster.] Martin Eisenstadt, and fabricated a story, widely picked up by sympathetic media, that Sarah Palin did not know Africa was a continent.) But the Newman story was not more of an outrage than several dozen others about religion and politics over past months.
What was truly unusual about Fr. Newman's case was that his own diocese, trying to clarify the situation, has actually furthered confused American Catholic laity, precisely on the crucial matter of conscience. The administrator of the Charleston Diocese, Msgr Martin T. Loughlin, wrongly construed the case from faulty news reports ["from faulty news reports"] and publicly repudiated Fr. Newman. He quoted from The Catechism of the Catholic Church that we have the right to act freely in conscience. True enough. But he then went on to say: "Christ gives us freedom to explore our own conscience and to make our own decisions while adhering to the law of God and the teachings of the faith. Therefore, if a person has formed his or her conscience well, ["well" is the important word here] he or she should not be denied Communion, nor be told to go to confession before receiving Communion."
Technically true, but saying this in an America where everyone already has an inflated sense of his right to his or her own opinion – without a very strong warning that a well-formed conscience means serious prayer and study that will take the average American Catholic a good distance from our popular ethos – translates in public as the Biden-Pelosi school of theology, a Catholic Church accepting of the notion of the sovereign self and, in consequence, moral relativism. Like it or not, that's how our fellow citizens understand such statements. In other words, they've now had their consciences further de-formed. [And it is the fault of clergy whose duty it was to form them properly.]
Fr. Newman's parishioners came to Mass in large numbers this weekend and applauded so long when he began his homily that they only quieted down when he turned and knelt to the Blessed Sacrament. If you want to know what properly formed consciences are like and what they do, that's the real story – which you won't hear about from the AP or ABC. [But you will hear it here.]
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His latest book is The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West.
Thank you Dr. Royal!
This entry was posted in SESSIUNCULA. Bookmark the permalink.
91 Responses to A good view of the Greenville controversy
I must point out though that a vote for McCain or Obama are both materialcooperation with evil, and that voting for a pro-choice candidate, in spite of him being pro-choice, is always material cooperation with evil regardless of the alternatives.
Voting for him because he is pro choice is formal cooperation and never allowed. But material cooperation with "intrinsic evil" can be justified if it is remote, the evil does not depend on you and you alone as a condition, What he should have said is that this material cooperation cannot be justified when a better, pro life candidate is available. He rightly pointed out that that might not be the case, he never asserted McCain was such. But materialcooperation with evil can be justified. We do it most of the time shopping, voting, paying taxes
Fr. Newman's parishioners came to Mass in large numbers this weekend and applauded so long when he began his homily that they only quieted down when he turned and knelt to the Blessed Sacrament.
Beautiful. "Non nobis, Domine, sed nomine tua da gloria".
Joe Magarac says:
Fr. Newman and Mr. Royal both forgot the "proportionate reasons" part of Ratzinger's formula. It is licit to vote for a pro-choice candidate over a pro-life candidate if "proportionate reasons" for doing so exist.
One may question whether either major-party candidate in the recent presidential election was in fact pro-life. One may question whether there could be any "proportionate reason" to vote for a pro-choice candidate given the 40+ million lives claimed by abortion. [I think it is rather hard to "question" that.]
But one may not simply lop off the "proportionate reasons" part of the formula and claim that every vote for a pro-choice candidate over a pro-life candidate is a sinful vote. That's what Fr. Newman did, and Msgr. Loughlin was correct to note the error. (Though I think the way that Msgr. Loughlin noted the error was itself unfortunate).
I would postulate that voting for John McCain AND Sarah Palin is no more cooperating in evil than paying your taxes to the United States government. Are you a tax dodger too?
Joe of St. Thérèse says:
In this election you had a choice of 20% evil vs. 100% Evil. McCain supported ESCR, and Obama supported the antithesis of Life. In these situations you're obligated to vote for the LESSER of 2 evils or vote for a 3rd party candidate.
Proportionate reasons involve number, kind, and being able to justify it on J-Day. I don't believe that there is anything that comes close to the number and kind of abortion. A proportionate reason would not be that of the economy, "hope" and "change"
To put our own needs ahead of those that can not speak, or have no voice is the sin of pride. Or to quote a friend of mine "what is the point of free health care, when you're dead?" We've had 50 000 000 people that could have contributed to this economy and we might not be in this mess that we have going on…
Irish says:
"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil…"
Emphasis on plausible.
plau?si?ble? ?[plaw-zuh-buhl]
1. having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable:
Unfortunately, identifying a mainstream GOP Presidential candidate as pro-life is the opposite of plausible. It is the modern day Republican version of a chicken in every pot. Both parties use the issue to raise incredible sums of money and the leadership of both parties has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Furthermore, the "schadenfreude" sentiment expressed within the war-loving mindset that giggles at the idea of "bomb, bomb, bombing Iran" or "bombing those towel-heads back to the stone age" contains the same dehumanizing language used by the pro-abortion lobby whose words turn babies into nothing more than fetal tissue. Supporting either party, in my opinion, entails cooperating with evil.
PMcGrath says:
Incredible but true, but most journalists have their heads filled with cotton, hay and rags. Couple that with the desire to see your name in the byline and you have disaster.
If you want to see the results of those hay-headed journalists, take a look at the video posted on the How Obama Got Elected Web site.
TO: The Congregation of Bishops
c/o The Apostolic Palace
FROM: Me
RE: Father Jay Scott Newman
Would you guys please measure him for a miter? Now? We've got a bunch of open dioceses in this country that need a major butt-kicking, and Father N. is the butt-kickingest pastor in America right now. And I mean any Christian pastor, not just Roman Catholic.
Personnel is policy, as they say, and if you want the pastor in America who can best run the B16 playbook, Father N. is your go-to padre.
Jordanes says:
Joe Magarac said: But one may not simply lop off the "proportionate reasons" part of the formula and claim that every vote for a pro-choice(sic) candidate over a pro-life candidate is a sinful vote. That's what Fr. Newman did, and Msgr. Loughlin was correct to note the error.
Of course if there really were proportionate reasons to vote for a pro-abortion candidate, there could hardly be a "plausible pro-life alternative," could there? And while Father Newman didn't mention "proportionate reasons," he also didn't claim that every vote for a pro-abortion candidate over a pro-life candidate is automatically or necessarily a sinful vote. Furthermore, if the alternative in this election really were plausible, that would mean there had to be proportionate reasons to justify a vote for the alternative, since no perfect candidates ever run for political office in this universe.
Irish said: Supporting either party, in my opinion, entails cooperating with evil.
Nobody is disputing that, or could dispute that. The question, however, is when such cooperation is justifiable. Anyone who was paying attention this year and understood what the Democratic policies are would have known that a vote for Obama could not be justified.
KJ MacArthur says:
If you would actually read what Fr. Newman said, you might notice that at no time does he advise anyone to vote for the Republican candidate. There are many alternatives to voting for the Democratic candidate. They include voting for any other candidate on your state's ballot, casting a write-in vote, or refraining from voting in that particular race. Fr. Newman did not tell anyone which of these to do. We need to stop talking about this in partisan terms, since Fr. Newman did not cast his argument in partisan terms.
For the record, I do NOT belong to any political party.
bobd says:
Boy, Father this idea of conscience is really confusing the heck out of us. I think we need a primer on the idea of conscience. I particularly don't like the whole idea and argument that we must have a "well-formed conscience." This suggests that one is totally free and independent of any other person or reality.
"I will write my law on their hearts" (Jer 31:33). To me this suggests that what is needed is a sort of spiritual optical aid. And, at times, one hears "a still small voice." This suggests that is what is needed is a sort of spiritual hearing aid.
Who would disagree with the statement that in general a child of the age of reason has a better idea of what is right and wrong than an adult who has been watching or listening to the daily garbage that passes for news on a daily basis.
So instead of implying that conscience must be "well formed" which should be way beyond the ability of a 7yr old I suggest that what is needed is an idea of conscience that means a clear looking-glass into the laws of God already written on our hearts and a finely tuned hearing aid that is able to distinguish between the interior whispers of God and those coming from the world or the evil one.
nw says:
So anyone have the full text of the bulletin?
Comment by Andy
I assume, since I was the one that mentioned taxes, that it was my comment that you misread.
Voting for any candidate that supports evil is always, regardless of the alternatives, at least material cooperation with evil, formal when one intends to support the evil themselves. Voting for a pro-abortion candidate then is always at least material cooperation with evil, regardless of whether there is a pro-life alternative or not.
Further, material cooperation with evil is NOT always a sin. It is NOT a sin when we pay taxes, though much tax money goes to evil things, or when we shop at many stores that support bad things. Which is why I said it would be more accurate to say "to vote for a pro-abortion candidate, without agreeing with his policies in that regard, is material cooperation with evil. When a pro-life alternative exists that is plausible and better than the pro-abortion candidate, than that material cooperation cannot be justified. To vote for a pro-abortion candidate intending to support that policyis formal cooperation and always wrong"
I add too that Catholics are not consequentialists. Whether proportionate reasons exist to justify material cooperation is not based merely on the good of the alternative candidate. It is a judgment that must be rendered based largely not on a either/or scenario, but a yes or no scenario. It can be that both candidates support some evil, one is better than the other, and yet both can be justifiably voted for. It can be the case when there are not any candidates that one can morally vote for and they must abstain from voting, though in the US we always have at least write-ins. It is very plausible that supporting a mild pro-abortion candidate like McCain cannot be justified itself(I think it was, but not because Obama is worse).
This also fails to account for ignorance of the people in voting. I know people who though Obama was pro-life, or who were mistaken on other facts so that they thought there were good reasons. One could have morally voted for Obama if they thought, even though wrongly, there were proportionate reasons. There might be sin involved in their negligence that left them misinformed, but that is another matter
dcs says:
Andy writes:
I would postulate that voting for John McCain AND Sarah Palin is no more cooperating in evil than paying your taxes to the United States government.
I do not think the analogy is a good one since one is required to pay taxes and one can be imprisoned if one does not. That alone would constitute proportionate reasons for the remote material cooperation involved in paying taxes. On the other hand, no one is required by law to vote for a particular presidential candidate or any candidate at all for that matter.
chironomo says:
I have to agree with those above who note that this is not a partisan argument, but rather an argument about Catholic beliefs. Taking Obama and John McCain out of the equation, the point is not WHETHER you support Obama OR McCain, but simply whether you support a pro-abortion agenda.
The appeal to a "well formed conscience" is, I think, something of a cop-out…. is it really possible to support a pro-abortion agenda and have a conscience that is "well-formed" according to Catholic teachings? I think too many are mistaking "being OK with" their decision to support a pro-abortion agenda with that decision being "well-formed" according to Catholic teachings.
This is very simply relativism in its purest form…"If I believe my conscience is well-formed, it is well-formed". Clearly there needs to be serious catechesis on this issue from the pulpit…
We are in the middle of a culture war not just within this country but within our Church in this country.
KJ MacArthur:
I didn't mean to suggest that.
I was pointing out that the two dominant parties have established, perhaps even willingly and knowingly established, an unholy alliance that maintains the issue of abortion as a fundraiser for both sides.
What I do wish and pray for is that our Catholic leadership would support and encourage prolife voters to vote for a 3rd party candidate who is unequivocally prolife, and ignore the "he/she can't win" argument that seems to push people into choosing between the lesser of two evil. I think the silence on that subject is deafening.
Paul M says:
FWIW, just heard that Pres-elect Obama has tapped pro-abort "Catholic" Tom Daschle to be Secretary of Health & Human Servcies. Hmmm, looks like "Catholics for Obama" have had some influence. Would love to hear Mr. Daschle comment on FOCA; it would open the door wider for the bishops to speak-out.
tertullian says:
With the lame duck session of Congress coming to an end, it's about time Nancy Pelosi has her meeting with Archbishop Niederauer.
Here's what Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) said about voting, in a letter that he had time to draft carefully:
A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.
And here is what Father Newman wrote about voting, in a parish bulletin column that he had to write in a hurry:
Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law.
I think it is fair to say that Father Newman oversimplified the Ratzinger rule by: a) failing to note that voting while intending to support abortion is the sin that requires one to abstain from the Eucharist; and b) failing to note that "proportionate reasons" can justify voting for a pro-choice candidate even if a pro-life candidate is also on the ballot.
I didn't vote for Obama. I like bishops with spines. I prefer simple rules without hedging or nuance. But I also think that Fr. Newman – understandably given his time constraints – made a mistake.
DoB says:
Funny how MSM could so easily identify Barack Obama as the anti-life candidate when his name was not even mentioned by Fr Newman. Pity they did not give this aspect of his pedigree the coverage it deserved during the election campaign. Shame, shame, shame on them. They have been totally compromised and are no longer the independent voice they should be.
Subvet says:
Don't. Hold. Your. Breath.
remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.
And when there are not proportionate reasons, it cannot be permitted, and therefore objectively would be a sin that requires one to abstain from the Eucharist: That's even if it is voting for a pro-abortion candidate in spite of rather than because of his pro-abortion stance.
Father Newman's words were an oversimplification, though, and I think he has said as much.
They have been totally compromised and are no longer the independent voice they should be.
They've never been "independent" – why do you think they've historically been called the "Fourth Estate"? And Oscar Wilde, writing over 100 years ago, complained about the undue influence of the media in The Soul of Man:
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody—was it Burke?—called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately in America Journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. But it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. In England, Journalism, not, except in a few well-known instances, having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary. The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. In centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates the mischief is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing journalists who write for what are called Society papers. The harm is done by the serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who solemnly, as they are doing at present, will drag before the eyes of the public some incident in the private life of a great statesman, of a man who is a leader of political thought as he is a creator of political force, and invite the public to discuss the incident, to exercise authority in the matter, to give their views, and not merely to give their views, but to carry them into action, to dictate to the man upon all other points, to dictate to his party, to dictate to his country; in fact, to make themselves ridiculous, offensive, and harmful. The private lives of men and women should not be told to the public. The public have nothing to do with them at all. In France they manage these things better. There they do not allow the details of the trials that take place in the divorce courts to be published for the amusement or criticism of the public. All that the public are allowed to know is that the divorce has taken place and was granted on petition of one or other or both of the married parties concerned. In France, in fact, they limit the journalist, and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world, and the most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk of compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But there are other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation, who really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to do so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible. It is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/slman10h.htm
*So anyone have the full text of the bulletin?*
http://www.firstthings.com/blog/2008/11/16/what-happened-in-south-carolina/
Kevin P. Edgecomb says:
Fr Newman wrote: "In truth, I am but a useless servant of the Lord Jesus…."
Fr Newman is certainly a humble servant of the Lord Jesus, but he is not "useless"!
Mr Magarac, you're slightly off. The two categories are "formal cooperation" and "material cooperation" with evil. Abortion is postively defined as an intrinsic evil, that is, there's no way to make it a good. Abortion is always an evil. "Formal cooperation" with such, according to then-Cardinal Ratzinger's rule, involves the direct intention to support evil, which is a corruption of the will. "Material cooperation" whether proximate or remote, would involve "proportionate reasons." The question, then, is: "Is there any proportionate reason that outweighs an intrinsic evil?" A well-formed conscience would say, "Absolutely not!" But this is precisely the point at which the malformed conscience works at justification for its preferences, and the "waffle zone" in which some bishops blather, leaving the clarity of Ratzinger's rules, as well as common sense, in the dust. Fr Newman's statement cuts through the episcopally-preferred fog, and lays it out quite simply.
EDG says:
Paul M.: Don't think it was an accident that Obama, who is both evil and deceitful, chose a pro-abortion "Catholic" to be head of the agency that will probably be used to harrass us, or at any rate to file the suits that bring down the IRS and the full weight of the Feds on Catholic health care and charitable institutions and destroy them.
The bishops have not called these "pro-choice Catholic" politicians to account, and what the bishops don't realize is that their failure to do so has essentially resulted in their ceding their teaching office to a bunch of self-interested laymen. We have to look at this almost as one of the late medieval struggles between secular and Church power. The state has always been desirous of taking over the religious power and making it yet another branch of government, and the bishops' failure to teach and discipline in this issue was not only a disastrous failure of the victims of abortion, but a complete capitulation to the state. I think many people are not appreciating the depth of the bishops' failure and its implications for the future.
The question, then, is: "Is there any proportionate reason that outweighs an intrinsic evil?" A well-formed conscience would say, "Absolutely not!"
Not quite. There could be another intrinsic evil that one is seeking to avoid. For example, if Presidential candidate A supports funding for embryonic stem-cell research, while candidate B supports that plus abortion, they both support something intrinsically evil but voting for A might be justified in order to avoid the evil promoted by B. Are there proportionate reasons that might justify voting for a pro-choice candidate over a pro-life one? In practice, I tend to doubt it, but in theory I think it is not impossible.
By the way, immediate or proximate material cooperation can never be justified except perhaps if one is acting under duress.
The question, then, is: "Is there any proportionate reason that outweighs an intrinsic evil [like abortion]?" A well-formed conscience would say, "Absolutely not!"
If Cardinal Ratzinger felt that no proportionate reason could ever justify a vote for a pro-abortion candidate, I think he would have said so. He and his brother bishops would have just told us that we could never vote for a pro-abortion candidate.
But the bishops have not said that. Here, for example, is Archbishop Chaput, whose pro-life bona fides cannot be questioned:
So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can't, and I won't. But I do know some serious Catholics — people whom I admire — who may.
Things would be a lot easier if the rule were as simple as you suggest. I wish it were. But Ratzinger, Chaput, and other strong shepherds have never stated that voting for a pro-abortion candidate is always sinful. I don't think that's "fog."
Funny. Of all the descriptors that come to my mind when I think of Fr. Newman, "humble" isn't one of them. Isn't this the same Fr. Newman who wrote this after the publication of the Motu Proprio:
"In any event, last Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI threw a spanner in the works with his long-awaited, much-rumored, and oft-debated Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, which more or less (kinda, sorta) gives any priest of the Latin Rite the choice of which Mass to offer: the Mass codified by Pope Pius V after the Council of Trent or the Mass codified by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, this document will have on the life of the Church as it is lived in parishes, religious houses, seminaries, etc…"
"In February 1962, Pope John XXIII promulgated an Apostolic Constitution called Veterum Sapientia, mandating very specific requirements for the teaching and preservation of Latin in the Church, but because of the radical changes taking place in the world at the time, this authoritative document was Dead On Arrival and had zero effect in the life of the Church. Today, if this document is read at all, it is usually read with mirth. Well might we all mourn the passing away of Latin from wide use in the Church, but pass away it has…."
"Will Summorum Pontificum be DOA in the same way as Veterum Sapientia? I honestly don't know, and to tell the truth, I don't much care one way or the other…"
This is from Ascension Health, and should clarify Church teaching on cooperation here
Principles of Formal and Material Cooperation
Moralists have long recognized that under many circumstances, it would be impossible for an individual to do good in the world, without being involved to some extent in evil. Along with the principles of double effect and toleration, the principles of cooperation were developed in the Catholic moral tradition as a way of helping individuals discern how to properly avoid, limit, or distance themselves from evil (especially intrinsic evil) in order to avoid a worse evil or to achieve an important good. In more recent years, the principles of cooperation have been applied to organizations or "corporate persons" (the implication being that organizations, like individual persons, are moral agents). Like the principle of double effect and some other moral principles, the principles of cooperation are actually a constellation of moral criteria:
1. Formal Cooperation. Formal cooperation occurs when a person or organization freely participates in the action(s) of a principal agent, or shares in the agent's intention, either for its own sake or as a means to some other goal. Implicit formal cooperation occurs when, even though the cooperator denies intending the object of the principal agent, the cooperating person or organization participates in the action directly and in such a way that the it could not be done without this participation. Formal cooperation in intrinsically evil actions, either explicitly or implicitly, is morally illicit.
2. Immediate Material Cooperation. Immediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are essential to the commission of an act, such that the act could not occur without this participation. Immediate material cooperation in intrinsically evil actions is morally illicit. There has been in the tradition a debate about the permissibility of immediate cooperation in immoral acts under "duress." When individuals are forced under duress (e.g., at gunpoint) to cooperate in the intrinsically evil action of another, they act with diminished freedom. Following Church teaching, the matter of their action remains objectively evil, but they do not intend this object with true freedom. In such cases, the matter remains objectively evil as such, but the subjective culpability of the cooperator is diminished. Very recently, the Vatican has rejected the arguments of those who would apply this concept of duress to Catholic organizations as a way to justify their immediate material involvement in certain objectionable actions.
3. Mediate Material Cooperation. Mediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are not essential to the commission of an action, such that the action could occur even without this cooperation. Mediate material cooperation in an immoral act might be justifiable under three basic conditions:
1. If there is a proportionately serious reason for the cooperation (i.e., for the sake of protecting an important good or for avoiding a worse harm); the graver the evil the more serious a reason required for the cooperation;
2. The importance of the reason for cooperation must be proportionate to the causal proximity of the cooperator's action to the action of the principal agent (the distinction between proximate and remote);
3. The danger of scandal (i.e., leading others into doing evil, leading others into error, or spreading confusion) must be avoided.
Christopher Sarsfield says:
Fr. Newman blew this.I do think Fr. Newman is trying to have it both ways. For example when the bulletin came out everyone thought he was talking about the vote between Obama and McCain. In the entry above the author points out that Fr. Newman never named candidates, and Fr. Newman says this too. However, in his reply to the newspaper, he says in reply to question two:
"In this election, there was no way an informed voter could not be aware that Senator McCain is pro-life and Senator Obama is pro-abortion, and those who chose to vote for Senator Obama, whether because of or in spite or his position on abortion, nonetheless voted for a pro-abortion candidate who has pledged his vigorous support for the Freedom of Choice Act which will abolish current legal restrictions on abortion in every state of the Union, including parental notification requirements and the existing "conscience clauses" which allow Catholic doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and hospitals to refuse to be involved in any way with abortions. For this reason, no matter what the intention of the voter, support for Senator Obama was necessarily material cooperation with his clearly stated goal to extend the private and unrestricted use of lethal violence against unborn children throughout this nation and to export the same abroad as part of our official foreign policy."
It seems clear Fr. Newman was speaking about the presidential election, and only changed his tone, when he was called on it. As for the Greenville News article as posted on First Things, I really did not see how it was unfair. Twice in the article it says that Fr. Newman will not refuse communion based on their political vote. The headline seems accurate. That those that voted for Obama should go to confession before communion.
Finally, I do think Fr. Newman might have a history of this type of thing. I remember how he preached that anyone who went to the SSPX had to go to confession before communion. He said it was a sin to ever go to an SSPX priest for the Sacraments. When the statements of Ecclesia Dei Commission were brought to his attention, he said they had no weight, and that the person who wrote them knew nothing about canon law, and that if the faithful followed the teaching of Ecclesia Dei on the matter they would be sinning. Fr. Newman seems to have problem with the idea that he can not bind beyond what the Church binds. It just so happens that this time he caught by the MSM, who ignored his rants on the SSPX. By the way, I do not want the SSPX to become a rabbit hole, but I do think it is important to know that Fr. Newman is not beyond dismissing anyone who disagrees with him, even when that person is Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, or statements from Ecclesia Dei on the sinfulness of attending an SSPX Mass.
EDG,
Interesting point that you raise re: harassing the Church. With the aggressive coverage against Fr. Newman and bold, in-your-face tactics employed by the same-sex marriage crowd, we could very well be in for a time of overt attacks against the Church. I would fully expect the sexual abuse crisis to be used to destroy the bishops credibility. Also, if you look at how Msgr. Loughlin's statement was used by the media against Fr. Newman, I would expect to see the same thing on a larger scale; equivocating bishops words being used to counter those who state Church doctrine plainly.
From Diogenes at Catholic Culture
Let's review: On November 12, Msgr. Laughlin personally thanks Father Newman for his statement, and compares him (Newman) favourably with the US bishops. On November 14 the same Msgr. Laughlin officially repudiates Father Newman's statement.
Wouldn't you love to see Msgr. Laughlin's phone log for November 12-14?
Phredup says:
Dr. Royal indicates that Father Newman was president of his seminary class in Rome. Funny, I was in that class and have no recollection of Father Newman being elected to anything.
There was really a seminarian in Rome named "Phredup"?
And yet, Mr. Sarsfield, never did Father Newman come right out and say that a vote for Barack Obama necessarily and in every conceivable case would place a Catholic "outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law," nor did he ever say that he would deny Communion to people simply because they voted for Obama (assuming he would ever be able to find out they did, and assuming there were any such people in his parish). But it has been falsely reported that he said those things, and you make the same false claim yourself.
You correctly note, of course, that when Father Newman was talking about the presidential election, he was talking about the presidential election. What else could he be talking about?
The headline seems accurate. That those that voted for Obama should go to confession before communion.
But he never said that. (Even though probably in most cases that is what Obama voters should do.)
Fr. Newman has a history of disrespect for Pope Benedict as well as Cardinal Castrillon and Ecclesia Dei. He was very dismissive of Sacramentum caritatis when it was published. He seems to think he knows better than the Pope how to run the Church. [So, it seems that your contribution to this is to toss an ad hominem attack onto the floor and leave there steaming, while ignoring the real topic.]
Mr Magarac, there are people, Catholics included, who voted for that particular candidate precisely because of his support for abortion. That is certainly formal cooperation/support for an intrinsic evil, according to all considerations.
Archbishop Chaput no doubt describes a number of his episcopal peers as people that he 'respects.' He does not say that he considers their decision correct, as you seem to have gathered from the statement.
What possible justification is there for the murder of complete innocents? Trying to kill a messiah, again, perhaps? There is none that I can think of, though perhaps someone could come up with something, as dcs noted. A number of suggested (and uncertain and/or unlikely to be implemented) policies designed to address social ills do not counterbalance the intrinsic evil of abortion. Obama's promise to Planned Parenthood to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act is enough to make him anathema for any person whose head isn't swathed in demagogic fog. Yet now even some Catholics have the gall of trying to justify their voting for him through a selective abuse of their own moral tradition, one of the most developed and clearly articulated in history. It's absolutely astonishing.
In the end, the only thing this priest Fr Newman is telling people to do is to go to confession if they voted for a man who has promised (among other things) to remove all restrictions whatsoever on abortions. That's not far-fetched at all.
Sal, a man who turns to the Tabernacle at an ovation certainly sounds humble to me, whatever his past statements may be. People can change quite suddenly, after all.
Jordanes,
This is what Father wrote in the bulletin:
"….We must also take note of the fact that this election was effectively decided by the votes of self-described (but not practicing) Catholics, the majority of whom cast their ballots for President-elect Obama.
"In response to this, I am obliged by my duty as your shepherd to make two observations:
"1. Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."
So Fr. Newman says, he was not referring to any candidates in this, because he did not mention names, even though the context seems clear. But in the answers to the questions of the Greenville News:
"Question 2. You say that voting for a pro-abortion politician, when there's a plausible pro-life alternative, amounts to "material cooperation with intrinsic evil." In speaking with the diocese spokesman today, he mentioned that this is church policy insofar as people vote deliberately and intentionally while knowing what's at stake. Does this reflect your view (that a deliberate act, as opposed to an unknowing or ill-informed one, is what amounts to "material cooperation")?
"Reply 2. An uninformed vote is an irresponsible vote, and so I hope that no citizen would ever cast an uninformed vote. In this election, there was no way an informed voter could not be aware that Senator McCain is pro-life and Senator Obama is pro-abortion, and those who chose to vote for Senator Obama, whether because of or in spite or his position on abortion, nonetheless voted for a pro-abortion candidate who has pledged his vigorous support for the Freedom of Choice Act which will abolish current legal restrictions on abortion in every state of the Union, including parental notification requirements and the existing "conscience clauses" which allow Catholic doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and hospitals to refuse to be involved in any way with abortions. For this reason, no matter what the intention of the voter, support for Senator Obama was necessarily material cooperation with his clearly stated goal to extend the private and unrestricted use of lethal violence against unborn children throughout this nation and to export the same abroad as part of our official foreign policy."
Anyone who reads those two statements above will see it is clear that Fr. Newman was speaking of anyone who votes for Obama "whether because of or in spite of his position on abortion." I never said that Fr. Newman would deny people communion. I said he would not, and so did the article in the Greenville News. I have not seen the AP story.
Finally, it is insane to go after the voters on this. People can not vote for Obama/Biden, but Biden can go to Church and receive the Blessed Sacrament?! The Bishops need to start taking on the pro-abortion politicians, and lead by example. Full disclosure: I did not vote for Obama or McCain, but I did think Obama was the lesser evil of the two.
Mr. Sarsfield said: Anyone who reads those two statements above will see it is clear that Fr. Newman was speaking of anyone who votes for Obama "whether because of or in spite of his position on abortion."
Or rather, anyone who read those two statements carelessly and who doesn't mind imputing words to Father Newman that he didn't actually say. But when a speaker insists that there is something significant about what he said and didn't say, it is only proper to take him at his word rather than disregarding what his words are.
I'm not surprised that you think an Obama vote is morally a preferable choice to a McCain vote.
That is indeed what Fr. Newman told his parishioners. And you're right: it isn't far-fetched at all. Abortion is an unspeakable evil, and perhaps the bishops should move to develop a clear rule: Catholics can't vote for pro-abortion politicians under any circumstances, and if they do so they do it under pain of sin.
But right or wrong, the bishops have not laid down that law. And priests like Fr. Newman are supposed to follow the bishops, not the other way round. To his immense credit (he appears to be a wonderful priest), Fr. Newman has said as much.
The issue of what to do about pro-abortion politicians is a fairly new one, and like most issues the Church is taking her time in figuring out how to handle it. That process is frustrating for those who care passionately about the issue or who dislike nuance and "fog." But it's how things go. Think how long it took for the Church to understand whether Mary was immaculately conceived.
So far, the rules (from heavyweights like Ratzinger and Chaput among others) appear to be that: a) a Catholic who votes for a pro-abortion politican intending to support abortion does so under pain of sin; and b) a Catholic who votes for a pro-abortion politician for other reasons must carefully determine that they are very weighty reasons indeed. Neither of those rules says, as you do, that Catholics who vote "for a man who has promised (among other things) to remove all restrictions whatsoever on abortions" must always confess that as a sin. Maybe our shepherds will move in your direction over time. But they're not there yet, and Catholics are not wrong to follow their rules.
Read the comments in the thread. Even the people defending Fr. Newman, have the same interpretation of his words as I do. Words mean things. The answer to question two from the reporter was specifically explaining point one in his bulletin. He over stepped his bounds, and instead of encouraging people to protest the diocese for attempting to deal with a problem he created, he should apology for the scandal he has brought to the Church, and the damage he has done to the "pro-life" movement.
Mr Magarac, I think the rule is already there. It's just the clear and unambiguous application of the rule which is yet to be implemented. Yes, the bishops should say, "Don't vote for abortion supporters; it's supporting a sin, however tenuously connected you are to it." To allow the laity to actually do the weighing of matters is not ideal, and obviously a problem.
Of course, since it's the case that church-going people (Catholics and otherwise) voted overwhelmingly for McCain rather than Obama, there are two points left: 1.) to instill proper understanding in the remaining minority of the church-going who actually vote for or are abortion supporters (like Biden, Pelosi, Sebelius, et alia), and 2.) to instill proper understanding in those non-church-going religious people (particularly Catholics but also others claiming a religious identity) who overwhelmingly voted for Obama. I think a measure of success is likely in the former, but in the later, nearly no chance at all. Those people have already cast themselves afloat on a different ocean, and pride themselves in having no sail, no rudder, no lifeboat, except on their own terms.
Mr. Sarsfield said: Read the comments in the thread. Even the people defending Fr. Newman, have the same interpretation of his words as I do.
We don't seem to be reading the same thread. I can't find anyone in this thread who is defending Father Newman who is misinterpreting his words in quite the same way you are, though a few come close. Not that it would make any difference if they were.
Words mean things.
Yes, that was my point. That's why I can't agree with your interpretation. Words are significant, as is the absence of words.
He over stepped his bounds
In some people's opinion. Looks to me like he was just doing what the Lord has commanded all priests to do, even if he didn't do it quite as well as he should have.
and instead of encouraging people to protest the diocese for attempting to deal with a problem he created
Another thing that he hasn't done (and his conduct here has not at all been the "dismissing anyone who disagrees with him" that you complained about earlier) . . . Msgr. Laughlin certainly made matters worse, though.
he should apology for the scandal he has brought to the Church, and the damage he has done to the "pro-life" movement.
It's far more urgent that we get an apology from those who understandably misunderstood what he said, but refuse to enlighten themselves now that he has clarified and corrected his words and apologised. They've created much more scandal and done much more damage than anything Father Newman may have done. But we shouldn't hold our breath waited for that.
Read Fr. Longenecker's article in Inside Catholic. He works at the parish and is friends with the priest:
"He concluded that, if they voted for Obama, they ought to go to confession before coming to Communion."
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4936&Itemid=48
That is my point, and that is where Fr. Newman stepped out of line. If a person voted for Obama despite his views on abortion, but for other proportional reasons, they may have made a mistake in prudence, but if they did their best there is no sin involved. Fr. Newman seemed to be trying to bind his parishioners to his prudential conclusion, and it took a clarification of a clarification before he came out and seemed to say that he wasn't (he never came directly out and said that a person that voted for Obama without supporting his views on abortion, would not be guilty of sin). I could understand the mistake in the bulletin, but the answers to the Greenville News were thought out and precise.
As to his dismissing opinions, read The New Liturgical Movement blog where he insisted that he alone understood the sinfulness of attending Mass at the SSPX, and how anyone that rejected his understanding and went instead with the understanding of the Ecclesia Dei commission would be committing a mortal sin.
Michael J says:
Why are you so eager to dismiss the sins of those who voted for Obama? We're talking hypothetical individuals here. Keep a couple of things in mind:
1. There is and can be no proportional reason to have voted for Obama. This does not mean that a vote for any other candidate was required. Leading up to the election, the bishops of the US were pretty clear and universal about this.
2. If someone made a "mistake in prudence", their ignorance, if not deliberate,was at least culpable.
3. If a Priest cannot unequivocally state that a hypothetical person in a hypothetical situation commits a sin, how on earth can you expect the Priest to later state that someone would "would not be guilty of sin"?
There is and can be no proportional reason to have voted for Obama.
I might agree with the "is" part, but definitely not the "can be" part. If there were a GOP candidate who advocated pre-emptive nuclear strikes, then I think that would constitute proportionate reasons to vote for a pro-choice candidate, even if the GOP candidate claimed to be pro-life. But again, even claiming that there is not a proportionate reason to vote for Obama over McCain is a prudential judgment. It is not a judgment of the Church, and if one honestly makes that judgment, even if he is mistaken, there is no sin. And it does not follow that one who made such a judgment is ignorant, much less culpably ignorant. As far as #3 is concerned, while Fr. Newman's situation could be called a hypothetical, the people to whom he applied it were not hypothetical.
Michael J,
I voted third party, but if I would have been forced to pick one of the two, I would have picked Obama. So I believe there are proportional reasons to vote for Obama. So I disagree with your first point. My reasoning:
Abortion percentages in US have been falling steadily since 1974. Looking at the numbers there seems to be no significant difference in drops with a pro-life president, Reagan and the 2 Bushes or pro-abortion Clinton. McCain has never been committed to the pro-life cause. So if a person believed that there would be no significant increase in abortions under Obama, but a significant increase in the chance of going to war with Iran under McCain, they could vote for Obama, believing he would limit more evil.
If someone makes a mistake in prudence due their own negligence, they are culpable for some sin, but it would take a lot to be mortal.
A priest can say what is a sin. If a person voted for Obama because of his support of abortion, they formally cooperate with grave evil and commit a mortal sin. If someone voted for McCain because of his rejection of the principles a just war, they would formally cooperate with grave evil and commit a mortal sin. If however they voted for either candidate without supporting their views that are incompatible with the Church, and praying about it and investigating the question as best they are able, they do not sin.
By the way, watch out Jordanes is after people that say Fr. Newman said you could never vote for Obama without committing a sin.
Thank you, Joshua, for reminding us about the distinctions between formal, immediate material, and mediate material cooperation.
In this situation, Obama has resolutely promised to sign the "Freedom of Choice Act" (read "Freedom to Kill Act") and to appoint Supreme Court Justices who favor Roe v Wade. These acts are intrinsically evil.
I pray Obama has a change of heart, but if he does what he clearly stated that he intends to do, those who voted for him, unless they were totally unaware of his positions, knowingly cooperate in these intrinsically evils acts.
"Immediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are essential to the commission of an act, such that the act COULD NOT OCCUR without this participation. Immediate material cooperation in intrinsically evil actions is morally illicit."
"Mediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are not essential to the commission of an action, such that the action could occur even without this cooperation."
Given these definitions, it might be argued that a vote for Obama constitutes immediate cooperation with evil. Getting elected was essential to his being able to commit the intrinsically evil acts of signing FOCA into law and appointing pro-abortion Justices. Obama would not have been able to do perform these intrinsically evil actions were it not for the Catholic votes that put him in office.
If not immediate material cooperation, than as for mediate cooperation with evil, the cooperation appears to be proximate, not remote.
As for proportionality, in the U.S. alone, there are about 3,700 innocent babies legally murdered by abortion everyday; which is about 111,000 per month; and 1,350,500 per year. What issue in this election was proportional to that??
Unless you are blind, some things are self-evident.
mpm says:
Dear Christopher Sarsfield,
Thanks for the reference to Fr. Longeknecker's supportive article. And here's one of the comments (from a parishioner):
"I am among the many who have come back to the One True Church with the guidance of Fathers Newman and Longenecker. They represent everything that my poorly catechized cradle-Catholic upbringing was missing. I thought I had rejected the Church in favor of a self-serving belief system, but in fact I never knew the full beauty of the Church until I started attending Mass at St. Mary's and making an effort to learn more about orthodox Catholicism. I'll forever be grateful to these brave men for welcoming me back but also for their work in making St. Mary's a place where the truth is spoken regularly and where the focus of the homily is real Christian education and not a feel-good opportunity to bolster the congregation's self-esteem. They don't seem interested in winning a popularity contest but in caring for the souls of their parish as they would their own. For some reason God has rewarded me immensely for coming back to this parish.
November 20th, 2008 | 5:06pm"
As Fr. Longenecker himself puts it: "However, this was not a pontifical statement written for the instruction of all Catholics in America; it was a bulletin column in a parish where there has been steady and consistent catechesis on the whole range of Catholic issues, including abortion."
Are you, by any chance, available to do some consulting for the Bishops Conference? They could use your help interpreting (private) letters from the Prefect of the CDF!
And kudos to Joshua for his instructive contribution to the question of proportional
reasons.
Mediate material cooperation = remote material cooperation
Immediate material cooperation = proximate material cooperation
No one person's vote can be said to be essential to Obama's success, so it is clearly not proximate or immediate material cooperation to vote for Obama. It is either formal cooperation or remote material cooperation.
How would the number of abortions be different under McCain? You have NO evidence that the numbers are going to be different under either candidate.
With regard to your understanding of formal/material remote/proximal stick with then Cardinal Ratzinger:
"A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."
Voting for Obama without sharing his stand in abortion is "remote material cooperation."
dcs,
According to the Ascension Health terms referred to ni Joshua's 11/19/08, 3:37pm post above, the distinction is first made between immediate and mediate cooperation. Then, when discussing mediate cooperation, it states:
"The importance of the reason for cooperation must be proportionate to the causal proximity of the cooperator's action to the action of the principal agent (the distinction between proximate and remote)"
Using those terms, it would NOT be the case that:
Perhaps the terms are used differently elsewhere and, based on those terms, you would be correct, I don't know.
I was referring to the terms as defined in Joshua's post above.
RBrown says:
Comment by Christopher Sarsfield
Didn't we already deal with this? Reagan signed an Executive Order prohibiting fed money from going to int'l organizations involved in abortions. Bill Clinton revoked that Order. Bush 43 restored it. And it is assumed that Obama will, like Clinton, revoke it.
Second, the Democratic party is officially pro abortion. That means it will do anything to keep it legal.
RBrown,
Bush 43 restored it, then gave international family planning agencies historic increases in funding (but only for contraception) and bragged about. Of course this freed up money from their budgets, that could then be funneled into abortion. Then there is the increase in chemical abortions due to the pill. He also gave historic increases in money to Planned Barrenhood in the US ($2.2 billion). Not to worry though, they used none of that money for abortion, wink, wink. I would hate to have seen what he would have done if he were pro-abortion!
As for your statement, "No one person's vote can be said to be essential to Obama's success, so it is clearly not proximate or immediate material cooperation to vote for Obama."
Strictly speaking, I agree, that since no one individual's vote elected Obama, the votes did not rise to immediate material cooperation. That was why I qualified my comments above by saying, "It might be argued," and, "If not immediate material cooperation . . . "
Given the Ascension Health terms, the difference between proximate and remote cooperation is relative, not categorical.
Obama needed to accumulate enough individual votes to win. He spent millions of dollars and two solid years working to get those votes. He would not have won without the Catholic vote. These votes caused his election. This is a weighty causal responsibility that can readily be dismissed as non-essential. Getting enough individual votes was essential to his success.
Mr. Sarsfield said: That is my point, and that is where Fr. Newman stepped out of line.
In your opinion, that is.
If a person voted for Obama despite his views on abortion, but for other
proportional reasons,
And there were none.
they may have made a mistake in prudence, but if they did their best there is no sin involved.
Wrong. Mistakes in prudence can be sin too. And while Father Newman's initial observation is seriously incomplete in that it spoke only of mortal sin that would bar a Catholic from Communion, it should also be mentioned that even venial sin is sin.
(he never came directly out and said that a person that voted for Obama without supporting his views on abortion, would not be guilty of sin)
It's a good thing he didn't, since that's not true. A person could have voted for Obama without supporting Obama's monstrously bloodthirsty policy positions and still be guilty of sin — for example, if he were doing so out of excessive, obstinate partisanship.
Considered how unreliable your reading of Father Newman's comments has been, I must doubt that Father Newman ever insisted that he is the only person in the universe who understood the sinfulness of attending illegal Masses. Your characterisation is tendentious and therefore of greatly limited value.
Cooperation in the evil of abortion, that is. Obama had many other positions in support of intrinsic evil, and voting for him while agreeing with him on, say, his support for legal contraception, is formal cooperation in that evil. One must suspect that most Obama voters, even the nominal Catholics, agreed with, or didn't disagree with, his other evil positions, even if a few of them were "personally opposed but" to his rabid support for abortion.
You and I have come to different prudential decisions. Your opinion on the lack of proportional reasons for voting for Obama and $5 will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And to be honest, my opinion and $5 will get you one too.:) The difference between you and I is that you seem to think your opinion is infallible, and therefore binding on Catholics. You and Fr. Newman are going to tell the world what prudential decisions they are going to come to, and heaven forbid if we decide to use our own intellect. Voting for McCain was also remote cooperation with evil. Is that what you did? Why? Because of proportional reasons based on your own prudential thinking.
Were there Catholics that sinned mortally by voting for Obama? Absolutely, because they formally cooperated with grave evil. But I know plenty of Catholics that committed a mortal sin by voting for McCain, because they support his evil programs. But you'll never hear that from Fr. Newman, because John McCain was the "pro-life" candidate. What a joke. At best John McCain was the candidate that said he was for only some of the babies being murdered, and as for the rest, well he really can not afford the political capital to do something for them.
Yes, I know that, and the govt promotion of contraception (esp. abortifacients) is what separates (or should separate) Catholics from Conservative Republicans. It is also, IMHO, a violation of the First Amendment because it interferes with the free exercise of religion. The problem is that Repubs tend to see abortion only as a political issue, which they think gives them the rights to hedge on whatever they say.
There is also the matter of abortion in military hospitals.
Having said all that, I think that abortion as a political issue is over, and the Church lost, just as contraception and the Protestantization of the liturgy were also major losses. To paraphrase JRatzinger, the detente with secular society has proven a failure.
That analogy doesn't work because those Catholics voted for McCain in the hope that his abortion policy (weak though it was) would eventually limit abortion by overturning Roe.
On the other hand, Catholics voted for Obama in spite of his abortion policy, i.e. abortion was not factor in their decision.
Then-Cardinal Ratzinger said: "When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."
Folks, the issue at hand is the determination of "proportionate reasons." Some of us believe that proportionate reasons are objective, and not up to the judgment of the individual voter's conscience in this scenario. Others believe that an individual is actually personally qualified to evaluate and determine those proportionate reasons according to his own conscience. I (and apparently others commenting here, too) find that latter position to be the moral equivalent of a steaming pile behind a male bovine quadruped. That latter position is also very Protestant.
It is patently absurd to say that the members of this majority of non-church-going Catholics that voted for Obama have well-formed consciences according to the criteria of the Catholic moral tradition that they're using to justify their vote. This is bald-faced selectivity of the moral tradition, cafeteria morality for cafeteria Catholics (for that minority of church-going Catholics who voted for Obama), and a-la-carte morality for taco-truck Catholics, since they're not even "in the house," as it were (for that majority of non-church-going Catholics who voted for Obama).
Mr. Sarsfield, I have great difficulty taking somebody seriously who says silly things like, "The difference between you and I is that you seem to think your opinion is infallible, and therefore binding on Catholics. You and Fr. Newman are going to tell the world what prudential decisions they are going to come to, and heaven forbid if we decide to use our own intellect." What can one say in answer when the interlocutor tosses around immoderate and tendentious assertions like that? If you're not going to take this seriously, why are you commenting at all?
Were there Catholics that sinned mortally by voting for Obama? Absolutely, because they formally cooperated with grave evil.
Remote material cooperation in the absence of proportionate reasons (not "proportional" — proportionalism is irreconcilable with Catholic moral doctrine) is also objectively a mortal sin. You believe there were, or may have been, proportionate (or proportional?) reasons to vote for Obama rather than McCain, but that question isn't an indeterminate matter of opinion — there either were or were not proportionate reasons to vote for Obama. One may have mistakenly believed there were, but not a single reason advanced by the Obama supporters passes muster. Perhaps you found the proportionate reason that everybody else missed?
But I know plenty of Catholics that committed a mortal sin by voting for McCain, because they support his evil programs.
I, on the other hand, don't know of any Catholics who voted for McCain, just Catholics who voted against Obama — since McCain's positions were marginally less objectionable than Obama's, and there weren't any other viable alternatives in working to prevent Obama's election, which was a moral obligation this year. I do know of a few Catholics who voted for Obama, though.
But you'll never hear that from Fr. Newman
I won't presume to say what I will not ever hear from Father Newman.
I say Amen to what Kevin Edgecomb writes above:
I say Amen to what Jordanes writes above:
"One may have mistakenly believed there were, but not a single reason advanced by the Obama supporters passes muster. Perhaps you found the proportionate reason that everybody else missed?"
What is missing in all the verbiage from those who latch onto "proportionate reasons",
almost as an escaspe clause, or "weasel words", is any evidence that they have done any proper analysis or disclosure of same. They, i.e., "proportionate reasons" are alleged, but never named.
Kevin P. Edgecomb writes:
Some of us believe that proportionate reasons are objective, and not up to the judgment of the individual voter's conscience in this scenario.
So what if someone responds that objectively there were proportionate reasons? If proportionate reasons are truly objective then they are not up to you or to me or even to Fr. Newman but are subject to the judgment of the Church. And if the Church has not made a judgment on them, then there is doubt and the faithful are free to act. "In dubiis libertas" and all that.
Jordanes writes:
One may have mistakenly believed there were [proportionate reasons], but not a single reason advanced by the Obama supporters passes muster.
I would tend to agree that the reasons advanced by Obama supporters do not pass muster but that is my own private opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the Church. Furthermore, while the reasons advanced by Obama supporters do not pass muster, it does not follow that there are no such reasons since there could be reasons (such as Mr. Sarsfield's, above) which have gone unmentioned by Obama supporters.
ssoldie says:
Fr. Newman was right, cooperating in mortal sin is evil and makes one an accomplice in that mortal sin, be very careful even when voting ,one will be accountable to our Lord Jesus Christ,at the last four things. Death, Judgement,Heaven, Hell.
"If proportionate reasons are truly objective then they are not up to you or to me or even to Fr. Newman but are subject to the judgment of the Church. And if the Church has not made a judgment on them, then there is doubt and the faithful are free to act. "In dubiis libertas" and all that."
Ah yes, doubt. Now we can act. I explored my conscience and discovered that it was
a deer moving around behind the bushes. That's why the farmer's dead.
The liberty you are referring to means "lacking a clear and definitive judgement from the Magisterium" one may act based on one's assessment of the morality of an act, given a conscientious judgement based on Catholic moral reasoning, using the principles
spoken of by many in this thread. The freedom is not a license to do whatever feels good!
In order to be subject to moral scrutiny in the Catholic tradition, "proportionate
reasons" need to be objective. If any such were objective, then it would be able to
be stipulated by someone, i.e., expressed. Your concept of the "judgement of the Church"
is deficient: the Magisterium never expresses a judgement about ineffable proportionate
reasons. Usually, the Magisterium, if it seeks to "judge" (an act of the reason) looks at alternatives.
If the "reasons" are not expressed, how can anybody, much less "the Church" make any
judgement whatsoever about whether they are justifiably proportionate?
For those who may be befuddled, let me give an example. For decades, Catholic physicians
have known that when a woman suffers an ectopic pregnancy, i.e., the embryo attaches
itself to a fallopian tube, it is morally acceptable to cut out that portion of the
fallopian tube containing the fetus, and set it aside to die, if the life of the woman
is truly in danger (which is almost always, as far as I know). This is an example of the principle of double effect, and as long as the death of the fetus is not the good desired, but permitted, there is a "proportionate" reason, since the good is the life of the woman and the evil is the death of the fetus.
In addition to such a statement of "proportionate reasons" it would be interesting to
find one example of a Catholic trying to avoid giving SCANDAL to others because of their
conscientious judgement regarding the existence of an enunciable proportionate reason!
In order to simultaneously believe that abortions will *not* increase but under an Obama presidency and that the likelihood of war with Iran would increase under a McCain presidency a person would have to selectively pick and choose which campain promises and opinion statement both candidates held sincerely.
That's not reason deriving from a well formed conscience. Its a combination of empty sentimentality and blind partisanship.
As far as your hypothetical person who "voted for either candidate without supporting their views that are incompatible with the Church, and praying about it and investigating the question as best they are able, they do not sin.", it would not take much "investigation" to find out. Hundreds of Bishops spoke out against a vote for Obama. Not one identified any proportionate resones and many said that there are none. Are you honestly suggesting that "investigating the question as best they are able" includes everything *except* what the Bishops state about the matter?
dcs said: I would tend to agree that the reasons advanced by Obama supporters do not pass muster but that is my own private opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the Church.
There's a difference between a person, or the Church, having an "opinion" about whether or not the reasons pass muster, and the reasons actually passing muster.
Furthermore, while the reasons advanced by Obama supporters do not pass muster, it does not follow that there are no such reasons since there could be reasons (such as Mr. Sarsfield's, above) which have gone unmentioned by Obama supporters.
But the reasons Mrs. Sarsfield advanced are indistinguishable from reasons that I encountered from Obama supporters: McCain isn't really "pro-life" anyway (never mind what that his actual voting record and policy positions show him to be vastly closer to "pro-life" than Obama), and the speculation that McCain might possibly be more likely to start an unjust war than Obama. Counterfactual assertions, and speculations about what a candidate might do, are not at all solid proportionate reasons that justify remote material cooperation in Obama's stated program of furthering abortion, abolishing Catholic health care, and trampling on the religious freedom of those who are opposed to contraception and abortion. One may have sincerely believed those were good reasons, but it would have been a sincere error.
Round and round we go … pass muster according to whom? Has the Church said that the reasons proffered by Mr. Sarsfield, or even those put forth by, say, Doug Kmiec, do not pass muster? Or is it just the opinion of an individual layman, priest, bishop? Is is the decision of the Pope himself or the College of Bishops?
This question isn't settled by an authority issuing an opinion, dcs, it's settled by ascertaining the facts and applying the principles of Catholic moral teaching. We don't want or need "opinion," we want and need right judgment. Heaven help us if we have to wait for the Church to speak out on each and every conceivable issue before we are able to discern right from wrong or truth from error.
If proportionate reasons are a matter of subjective opinion, then it's a waste of time to talk about what is formal versus material versus remote material cooperation in evil. Let every man do what seems right in his own eyes — the Church's opinion shouldn't necessarily be any more compelling than anybody else's.
This question isn't settled by an authority issuing an opinion, dcs, it's settled by ascertaining the facts and applying the principles of Catholic moral teaching.
Then how is it that people who ascertain the facts and apply the principles of Catholic moral teaching come to different conclusions?
There are facts, but those facts can only tell us what may happen in the future. No one has any evidence to support that abortions will be fewer under McCain then Obama. The best we can do is guess. Show me your historical evidence that abortions increase under "pro-abortion" presidents. Show me your proof that McCain will do anything for the unborn. If I really believed McCain would have saved babies' lives I would have voted for him (heck if I thought he would have tried, I would have voted for him). I would have had to shower after leaving the voting booth, but I would have. McCain has a history of not caring about the unborn. He has a history of killing pro-life legislation behind the scenes, so that it never comes to vote. He has a history of saying he does not think Roe should be overturned. In September of this year McCain's wife said her husband believed that Roe should not be overturned. Does anyone here think their spouse would get your view of Roe wrong?! McCain rejects the principles of a Catholic just war (and I do know Catholics that voted for him for that reason and by doing so committed an objective mortal sin). I do know that McCain is much more hawkish about Iran than Obama. Now opinion: What will they do? Pat Buchanan does not think that Obama will push FOCA, because he is too pragmatic. He will reverse the Mexico City policy, but I have pointed out that that is merely symbolic. Pat Buchanan also believes that McCain wants to invade Iran. My opinions are not radical. They are my best guess at what is going to happen. Your best guess may be different about what is going to happen, but unless you are claiming prophet status, your opinion is probably no better, and most likely worse than mine. Anyone who went in to the voting booth and voted for either major party candidate with any degree of sureness that he was doing the right thing either has a poorly formed conscience, or is naive and understands nothing about American politics. And again I voted third party, and I will not judge anyone who tried to figure out this election. It was a crap shoot.
So, is this what these people are saying, that the remote possibility of a war to be started by McCain with Iran was the big oogedy-boogedy that put them on the side of Obama and the abortionists? If that's it, then there's no proportionality at all here. A war can be either just or unjust, according to Catholic moral tradition (both pre- and post-1968, I feel the need to specify). War is, therefore, not an intrinsic evil. Abortion, however, is an intrinsic evil. Comparing the two is comparing apples and blue.
This, however, a comparison of various moral positions among candidates, is not the way the moral tradition is intended to work. You don't compare the two (or twenty) candidates and consider who is the worst. The "proportionate reason" argument that will absolve one candidate or another of his own faults are positions or actions that lie within his own moral boundaries. That is, if Candidate A is pro-abortion (pro-intrinsic evil), what among the other positions held by Candidate A are so magnificently good that they outweigh, as proportionate reasons, his support for this intrinsic evil? That's how this works. Then the same examination is made for Candidates, B, C and so on.
So, in Obama's case, what are the proportionate reasons that would outweigh his support for not only the state of abortion as it is today, but his support for the Freedom of Choice Act?
Will I hear crickets chirping in response to this? I think so….
Mr. Edgecomb,
I guess I am the cricket.:) You do not understand proportionate reasons. You can vote for someone to limit the evil. With McCain and Obama it was a tough call, so I voted third party. But my guess is there will be less evil from an Obama administration than a McCain administration. The odds of McCain going to war with Iran, are much better than either candidate having an effect one way or the other on abortion. I do not think we saw a dramatic decrease in abortions from Clinton to Bush. We saw a decrease but it was a decrease that started in 1974 and has continued. Now if you count chemical abortions in third world countries due to contraception, well that probably went through the roof under "pro-life" Bush with his "pro-abortion" policies.
By the way, you might want to read what the Church has written on Catholic Social Teachings, and read what great Catholic theologians have written on the Social teachings. I was a conservative Republican Americanist until I started taking my Faith seriously, and reluctantly started looking at what the Church has to say about politics and economics. But I warn you, it is not a pleasant experience when you find out how bad and rigged the system is. The whole thing from soup to nuts ensures that the Culture of Death marches on.
Cricket is right, if only in moral understanding.
No, Mr Sarsfield, it is you who misunderstands completely the discussion of the moral tradition and how the categories function. As noted above, you do not balance a spreadsheet of positions, picking and choosing which you think more likely or not, and which is more icky or not according to whim or your reading of some liberal's reading of the Church's positions on social justice. (Try reading the documents for a change!) The determination of "proportionate reasons" must be accomplished within the moral actions of an individual. That's simply how it works. Just as you cannot repent of someone else's sins, another person's proportionate reasons are of no application to your own cooperation in intrinsic evil.
To posit that McCain (who never said he would absolutely do so!) would be likelier to initiate an unjust war with Iran (what are you, a prophet?) is worse than what Obama has promised to do is simply absurd, ridiculous, and dismissible out of hand. It displays only a bizarre partisanship, not clear thought. McCain never promised to start a war with Iran. If he did start such a war, it is not guaranteed that it would be an unjust war. War, I remind you, is not an intrinsic evil, shocking as this may be to your liberal so-called rationality. Obama, however, has promised, actually promised (note that: PROMISED), to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act.
Historical data on the rate of abortions is irrelevant here becasue we're facing a complete and utter derestriction (and concommittant promotion!) of abortion in the Freedom of Choice Act. Obama has promised to sign into law the evil Freedom of Choice Act, which will absolutely, positively, without a doubt lead to more abortions in this country and in others (forgotten that part of it, have you?). It will also lead to the closure of Catholic hospitals which provide 20% of all medical services in the US, especially to the uninsured and otherwise helpless ill who secular institutions won't help without payment. It will lead to the denial of the ability for pharmacists, care providers, and educators to opt out of providing/teaching abortion and contraception through currently existing conscience clauses; those people will have to change their professions. Those are all things that will happen, because Obama has promised to make FOCA law. I'll let that sink in.
Now, having realized that, what greater good does Obama promise to counterbalance all that, which would make him permissible to vote for, according to Pope Ratzinger? It'd have to be something pretty amazing. Funny how no one can think of anything….
Christopher Sarsfield says, "There are facts, but those facts can only tell us what may happen in the future. No one has any evidence to support that abortions will be fewer under McCain then Obama."
That of course is an silly statement. No one has evidence of a future event.
What we do have is what these people have said and done. Here a some of Obama's public record, specifically, why Barak Obama stated that he would not vote for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, as recorded in the State of Illinois, 92nd General Assembly, Regular Session Senate Transcript, March 30, 2001.
"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old – child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And it we're placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as – as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we're probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality. . . As a consequence, I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do, on this issue. And as a consequence, I'll be voting Present."
In brief, Obama argued that if we call this infant survivor of abortion a "child," that would imply that should not have aborted it in the first place. Given a choice between on the one hand, acknowledging the humanity of this child and voting to save its life or, on the other hand, maintaining the dishonest legal fiction that supports abortion, he argued and voted for the latter.
That is a radical stand for the culture of death. He voted similarly for three years. It is safe to predict that he will do so again, especially since he told he would sign FOCA as the first official act of his presidency.
Most everyone in the country, except you, understood the strong difference between Obama and McCain on abortion and the importance of this election with regard to the Supreme Court and Roe v Wade. Obama talked about it.
Planned Parenthood certainly believes Obama will further the cause of abortion more than McCain. Pro-abortion advocates spend a lot of money, time, and effort to support Obama's election.
Why do you think that was?
No Edgecomb,
You have to base your decision on what you think the candidates will do when elected. Campaign promises are a dime a dozen. There is NO evidence that the abortion rates will be affected by either candidate. Let me repeat… THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that the abortion rates will be different. Obama NEVER mentioned FOCA after he got the nomination. MOST intelligent people think he is not going to sign it. Obama ran for President as a moderate. He knows the country is center-right. He is pragmatic, and he will want to get reelected. Candidates make promises ALL the TIME they will never keep. I am NOT a partisan hack unlike many on this list, and I suspect you. I voted for Chuck Baldwin BECAUSE of his pro-life stance. YOU need to relax and read my posts, I am obviously against the Democrats as much as I am against the Republicans. I understand that you are upset because your sky is falling rhetoric did not get your man elected, but that is life in democracy. My conscience was clear when I left the voting booth. If yours was, you really do not care about the unborn. NO ONE who cares about the unborn could possibly have voted for McCain and enjoyed it. Finally, I voted for the greater good, I voted for Baldwin. You voted for the lesser evil, because you wanted to limit evil. What greater good did McCain possess that made his position on just war, ESCR, exceptions for rape and incest, and increase funding for contraception. NONE. You concluded his positions were less evil than Obama ie he would limit the evil to the greatest extent. You and I have a difference about who would limit the most evil.
Wake up. Planned Barrenhood is never going to support ANY Republican. If Giuliani had won the nomination, they would have fought against him just as much as they did McCain. Most Liberals are not one issue voters. The members of Planned Barrenhood are liberals, so they voted for the liberal. I am neither conservative or liberal. I am Catholic, and Catholic Social Teaching is neither liberal or conservative, no matter how many Americanists of the Conservative or Liberal bent think so.
I voted Republican because of Sarah Palin's birth of a disabled child and her stance as a Pro-Lifer and no record that I know of in supporting the Planned Parenthood – other than paying taxes. A saw McCain's take on abortion and it made me cringe. I knew there was no way he would get elected. I voted R anyway because Palin is living what it's like to have a child who many women would rather abort than take care of. I hope she runs for president because I intend to vote for her. It was all about hope for me. Now that that hope is gone, it's time to pray. Voting for a candidate who I have never heard of like Baldwin did not seem to make a lot of sense. I might as well vote for Mickey Mouse. God is in control now. We need to let go and pray and do the ground work with our children and teach them that they need to stop this evil of abortion. It is not only killing our population, but it is ripping out the souls of our would be mothers.
May God have mercy on America. It looks like we will need to be dropped to our knees before we will listen to God: Thall shalt not kill.
One more point. It is hard to say and I deeply regret it, but many Catholics, including priests, lied in order to get their person elected. Kemic lied when he tried to say Obama was pro-life, but Fr. Newman lied when he said McCain was pro-life. McCain is not pro-life by an Catholic understanding of the term. No one can lie in order to achieve even a good end.
dcs said: Then how is it that people who ascertain the facts and apply the principles of Catholic moral teaching come to different conclusions?
They don't — rather, some people mistakenly believe that they have ascertained the facts and applied the principle of Catholic moral teaching. If they really had, they wouldn't come to a different conclusion, a mistaken opinion.
Mr. Sarsfield said: It is hard to say and I deeply regret it, but many Catholics, including priests, lied in order to get their person elected. Kemic lied when he tried to say Obama was pro-life, but Fr. Newman lied when he said McCain was pro-life.
"Lied," not just "was wrong," or "was not strictly accurate."
Lied.
It should be a lot harder to accusing someone of lying, especially a priest.
"No Edgecomb"? What is this, gym class, Mr Sarsfield?
You have a very selective memory, one that is obviously playing by partisan rules, and immune to the rational discussion of Catholic moral tradition. The evasions are very inventive on your part, though predictable and tiresome.
Is Obama's nomination some magical switch for you? Is a candidate held accountable only after that point? Most people think that speeches given during a campaign is representative of the candidates positions. The candidates themselves actually believe that. It's funny and rather sad that you attempt to make excuses for the uncomfortable and unavoidable fact that Obama promised to sign into law FOCA as the first thing he did in office, showing how much of a priority he considered it. And if it is made law, all of the awful things I listed above will come to pass, including an increase in abortions the likes of which has never been seen, because all of those safeguards that have been in place previously, and all of the incentives to lower the abortion rate, will be removed by federal law. Your historical argument is not only moot, it's stupid in the face of that. But those results are apparently okay with you, judging from your predilection for obfuscatory misdirection in defense of Obama, the gymnastics of self-justification presented for your voting for him, and your less than mediocre understanding of the moral issues at hand, particularly the guidelines of Catholic moral philosophy. You refuse to learn. This makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
That's just sad. We're quite done here. I don't have time to waste on such ludicrous intransigence and insulting blather.
Let me understand the world according to Christopher Sarsfield.
McCain has a NARAL rating of 0%. Bishop after Bishop was foolish enough to believe that voting for Obama would have legal repercussions for abortion. Millions and millions of pro-life Christians campaigned and voted for McCain because of his record and stance on abortion.
We learn from Christopher Sarsfield, that they were all fooled by the Republicans. All suckers, everyone of them. Those idiots!!!
Obama has a well-deserved NARAL rating of 100% and promised to appoint pro-abortion judges and sign FOCA. Millions of Planned Parenthood, pro-abortion advocates campaigned and voted for Obama.
We learn from Christopher Sarsfield that pro-abortions advocates only supported Obama because of his other liberal positions. Obama's stance on abortion was irrelevant. No doubt, if he were adamantly opposed to abortion, they would have supported Obama just a vigorously.
We were all duped. Christopher Sarsfield alone held the truth. Here it is: how a candidate actually votes on legalized abortion is irrelevant to the cause of legalized abortion. Abortion is going to remain legal anyway. It doesn't matter how you vote.
On that basis, Pelosi and Biden are not doing anything wrong voting for abortion to get elected. If they need to vote for abortion to further the Catholic Social cause, so what? We live in nihilism-land with regard to votes and abortion. It doesn't matter how you vote, abortion is going to remain legal.
Let's not confuse this issue with the facts. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool Christopher Sarsfield.
Christopher Sarsfield, are you so dazzled by your silly rationalizations that you actually believe this stuff?
You're telling me to "wake up"??
Have you read my posts. Obviously not, so please pay close attention – I DID NOT VOTE FOR OBAMA! I voted for Chuck Baldwin. As for campaign promises, call me cynical, put I take them with a grain of salt. It is you that have no idea of moral theology. The same principle that allowed you to vote for pro-abortion McCain, is the same principle that allowed an Obama supporter to vote for him. You keep calling me partisan, after I have told you I have nothing but contempt for the Democratic and Republican Party and that I voted for a third party candidate. Could you define partisan and show me how anything I wrote makes me partisan? Even with FOCA, the rate of abortions will not change. You need to understand that under President Bush, anyone who wants an abortion can have one. FOCA is not going to magically make tens of thousands of women want to have abortions, who would not have before.
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf says:
Let's keep the tone civil, please.
My locking finger twitcheth.
I do not get my voting research from one partisan group, such as NARAL. The fact that McCain said and has consistently supported Roe, until he need the pro-life vote, has to be taken into consideration. The fact that he killed pro-life legislation so it could not come to a vote has to be taken into consideration.
According to the news, over half the bishops in the US voted for Obama. As for the pro-life Christians that were dumb enough to vote for McCain: First many of them would have voted for him because of his rejection of the just war theory and his hawkish policy on the Middle East. Many of these groups ie National Right to Life, even went so far as taking down all their negative articles on McCain, ie hiding the truth to fool pro-lifers into voting for McCain. They distorted his record, as well as the pro-life record of Bush, and thankfully there were some pro-lifers that called them on it.
With regard to Pelosi and Biden, obviously they are not Catholic in their thinking and voting and should be told so by their bishops. They should also be refused the Sacraments till they repent, and do penance for the harm caused.
As for abortion remaining legal, yes, when you put up two pro-abortion candidates and vote for one of them, chances are pretty high that abortion will remain legal. When you put a "pro-life" president like Bush, and he tells you he will not do anything to pass pro-life legislation that is not backed by a majority of the country, and country happens to be moderately pro-abortion, abortion is going to remain legal. If a "pro-life" candidate is going to do nothing to help make abortion illegal, why would I think his election would help?
You accuse me of making rationalizations, but I think I am only being rational. You on the other hand seem to be thinking completely with your emotions. I drank the Kool-Aide from the conservative Republican flask from the moment I could vote, until I voted for Bush in 2000. Never again will I waste my vote on someone pro-abortion, no matter how many partisans insist the person is pro-life.
Yes Father you are right.
I owe an apology to Mr. Edgecomb, he was correct about the way I began the last post he replied to. It was sophomoric, and I hope he will accept my apology. May our Lady keep Mr. Edgecomb, and all his loved ones forever in the blue shadow her mantle.
As for the pro-life Christians that were dumb enough to vote for McCain
Quite a lot of "pro-life Christians that were dumb enough to vote for McCain" (as if practically there were any real option besides staying home or voting third party, which amounts to the same thing) knew that, although having McCain as president wouldn't help (unless he were to appoint another Roberts or Alito, that is — overturning Roe will probably require a constitutional amendment or even, God forbid, violent revolution once Obama appoints one or two justices), having Obama as president will definitely hurt a great deal more than we're already hurting. The news of his administration appointments and probable executive orders is exactly what pro-lifers knew we'd get if Obama were elected. He is acting to fulfill his pro-death promises, something we wouldn't be getting if pathetic, hapless Sen. McCain had somehow managed to get himself elected.
The one somewhat positive bit of news this week is that the Democrats in Congress apparently won't try to pass FOCA for at least a year or two or longer, since they know the Christians are paying too close attention at this time. | {
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Residents wearing face masks wait to cross a traffic intersection near a large screen promoting the Chinese People's Liberation Army Airforce, in Beijing, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. The Chinese military held large-scale joint combat strike drills starting Sunday, sending war planes and navy vessels toward Taiwan, both the Chinese and Taiwanese defense ministries said. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
China holds large-scale joint strike drills aimed at Taiwan
by: HUIZHONG WU, Associated Press
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The Chinese military held large-scale joint combat strike drills starting Sunday, sending war planes and navy vessels toward Taiwan, both the Chinese and Taiwanese defense ministries said.
The exercises coincided with the visit of a group of German lawmakers who landed in Taiwan on Monday morning. Leading the delegation is the Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who leads the German Parliament's Defense Committee.
The German lawmakers will meet with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, as well as Taiwan's National Security Council head and the Mainland Affairs Council, which handles issues related to China.
China has stepped up its pressure on Taiwan's military in recent years by sending warplanes or navy vessels on an almost-daily basis toward the self-ruled island. China claims sovereignty over the island, which split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war.
Sunday's exercises have continued into Monday, Taiwan's defense ministry said, monitoring Chinese warplanes and navy vessels on its missile systems.
China's actions "have severely disrupted the peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and surrounding waters," the ministry said.
Over the course of 24 hours between 6 a.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday morning, China's People's Liberation Army flew 57 warplanes and four ships toward Taiwan, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said in a statement Monday morning. Twenty-eight of those planes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary that both sides had previously stood by.
China announced the drills around 11 p.m. Sunday, saying their "primary target was to practice land-strikes and sea assaults," according to a statement from Shi Yi, a spokesperson for the PLA's Eastern Theater Command.
At the end of December, China sent a record 71 planes and 7 ships toward Taiwan, the largest such scale exercise in 2022.
Taiwan will hold its annual two-day military drills starting Wednesday. The exercise ahead of Lunar New Year holidays is aimed at showcasing its defense capabilities.
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This last week was more exciting than usual at home. My mother in law was here for the week (and to celebrate the birthday she shares with AJ). Nana and I had adventures almost every day, including the adventure of another hernia surgery for Candyman, a trip to the Smithsonian, and the development of caterpillars to crysallys.
Love your pics!! The surgery part doesn't sound fun, but the rest does! | {
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