Europe's Economy is in Trouble

The Euro, a monetary experiment of long planning, seems to be crumbling.  As we speak, the southern European countries, often referred to as 'PIIGS' (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are underwater in debt.  The Euro plan, long in the making, may already be at its end.  The carefully laid plans of Jean Monnet and Raymond Fosdick have fallen apart.  The Establishment decreed that the European Union would use a fiat, paper currency called 'The Euro', and this would create a smooth trade process, and it would be economically beneficial.  It has been a disaster.

I remember hearing about the Euro in the late '90's.  All of the rhetoric was how it would make things better for Europe, and how 'efficient' the trading of the Eurozone would be.  The European Central Bank would be in the background, at the levers, centrally controlling things, never allowing things to get too bad or too good.

How did it go horribly wrong?

The southern European countries have tended toward Socialist style economies.  There are stories about exceedingly early retirements, pensions for all, hazard pay for hairdressers - it's a long list.  These ideas are economically unfeasible.  You can't create something from nothing.  The 'money' used to fund these things is created from nothing, and it is borrowed via the floating of bonds.  The northern European countries, even with their tendency toward Big Government, have less poor economies and a different mindset when it comes to work and retirement.  The most noteworthy  of these countries is Germany, which actually manufactures products and provides services.

Germany and the European Central Bank have been continually asked to bail out the southern European countries.  Greece and Spain are so far in debt, basically at a level to be considered hopeless. The elephant in the room is that large banks in Europe have large amounts of exposure to the explosive levels of debt.  These banks have huge amounts of economic and political clout, and they will not go gently into that goodnight.

As usual, note the questions that are not asked.  Why use a fiat currency?  Would a gold backed currency be a better choice?  Why should the economies of Europe be 'linked' in the first place?  There were people who predicted that this economic monstrosity would be a failure.  They were called crackpots then, they're being called crackpots now by The Establishment.  A good sociological experiment might be finding out how seriously wrong The Powers That Be have to be before the people lose faith in the Planners.

Here, Nigel Farage explains the the farcical nature of massive, interlocking indebtedness.  When the EUR implodes, the people laughing in the background will not be 'available for comment'.




Recommended reading: "Fiat Money and Collective Corruption."

FB Thread of note 1

Here's a good Facebook thread I was in with two other people.  Sometimes the new social media is useful.  I think it would be a good idea to choose your Facebook threads wisely, and use them to increase your rhetorical skills.  Being able to write well and express your opinions and thoughts clearly is an invaluable skill.  I use Facebook to practice this, with my FB friends who I find to be intelligent and erudite.


Person A (original post) - "What I would like to know is if the Great Depression lasted from 1929 until 1942, how in the world does anyone expect the President to solve a Great Recession in 2-4 years? Is that logical to you?President Bush or President Reagan both presided over down economies longer than President Obama has and got 2nd terms. Both had tax increases supported by both parties.Be reasonable people or just admit that you just don't like President Barack Obama!"

Person B - Just from a historical perspective, Reagan's second term came after a significant uptick in the economy that was similar to the 2006 bloated housing market, only for it to burst in 1987 in conjunction with the S & L scandal. Bush inherited those economic problems, in addition to the national defense bills Reagan accrued, which is why he lost his second election. So it is true that, so far, Roosevelt is the only president that has been re-elected during a down economy.

Me - The gov't can't 'fix' the economy. Murray Rothbard's "The Great Depression" goes into the role of gov't interference in the 1920's and how it, and the Central Bank (FED) caused the Great Depression.

Person B - Yeah, Keynsian theory is predicated on the reality that WWII actually cured the Great Depression's lock on the world economic downturn. War literally created the demand for manufacturing, which required the millions of jobs necessary to meet that demand.
Concerning W., recall the economy was recovering from 9/11 by the time he ran for office a second time in '04, and as far as politics are concerned, that's all that matters. Had Obama been required to run last year, when the jobs numbers were significantly higher per month, it would have been a lot easier for his campaign compared to now.

Me - Very true, and when folks bring up the falsehood about WWII 'solving' the Great Depression, I ask them if morally, half a million deaths are an adequate price for economic stability. This is where the threads usually end.... good pt. about election cycles..

Person B - ‎60 million, if you talk about across the world.

Person A - Never is war an adequate solution. Never should thousands or millions pay to create good.
The economics of the spurred-on manufacturing caused by WWII is real. That did cause the Great Depression to end. The technical aspects of moving the world's largest economy in downward spin is not simple and cannot be flexed so quickly in a 2-4 year cycle. Patience all.

Person B - But, yeah Person A, to your point concerning Obama, neutral economic experts on Wall Street have always predicted the economy would recover somewhere around 2016 or so, meaning that whoever controls the White House in this next presidential cycle could claim victory over the issue, regardless as to whether they could do much or not. Politics...

Person A - Agreed. Precisely my point.

I have been saying since 2008 that the economic crisis is structural and will not and cannot be solved artificially.

Me - OK, if you consider taking millions of working age men out of the American workforce, getting American manufacturing on war footing, borrowing massively against the taxpayer, and killing people. If that's 'curing a depression', then I'm out. Then, the Keynesians & gov't worshipping types predicted disaster as servicemen came back, the gov't budget was slashed, and taxes were lowered. The economy took off. This is the history we don't learn - especially the 'gov't budget slashed' part.

Person A - That is what caused the economic downturn in the early 1950s. Republican President Eisenhower had to increase taxes to get revenues back inline. The slashing of taxes and rapid shrinking of the government caused unintended consequences that needed to be brought back inline with increased taxes by a Republican former military hero President. After that, the economy took off and created the American dream that folks wax nostaligically about all the time now.

Me - I think there's a disconnect with 'shrinking gov't' and 'shrinking gov't budget'. The military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about (that Obama has allowed to run wild) was getting ramped up and the budget wasn't there for it. Eisenhower had to raise taxes to support that, under the aegis of the Cold War. Yes, the economy took off when JFK lowered taxes. The most productive single year in the US economy, ever, was 1946. The most productive decade in our history was 1879 - 1889, when the gov't was minuscule and we were on a gold standard. Henry Ford paid his workers in the early 1900's $5 a day(1/4 oz gold - do the math) the highest in the world at the time. There was no minimum wage, there were no payroll taxes, no income tax, there were no unions. How is this possible? We made the best products, at the lowest cost - the people were literate and things were really getting going for the 'regular people'. Then it all ended - the FED, Income tax, WWI -- game over man.

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This is a surface level debate, just a voicing of opinions, jousting back and forth, but it serves a purpose for you, the writer to allow yourself to be challenged and take criticism and respond accordingly.  Choose your threads carefully, use your time on social media wisely, and practice your craft.  Time is the only resource you can never get back, so avoid the blabber about pop and media stars, and be productive.

Why American Schoolchildren are Stupid

28. Here is the most glaring question from this past June's US History and Government Regents.  This is for 'mastery' of the subject for 11th graders in New York State.  
    
    See if you can spot the answer.
    
    28  What was a basic cause of the Great Depression of the 1930s?
    
    1. (1)  Too many antitrust laws were passed.
       
    2. (2)  Tariffs on foreign manufactured goods were
       reduced.
       
    3. (3)  The distribution of income was unequal. 
29.           (4)  Immigration was not limited. 
    
    
    If you ever are curious as to why our young citizens of The Republic are historically and economically ignorant, you can now see why.  The 'answer' is: (3) The distribution of income was unequal.  Of all of the bad explanations for the causes of the Great Depression, this one has to be the most incorrect and economically ignorant.  The idea that the distribution of income should be, or could ever be 'equal' is one that has been dismissed even by the most rabid Marxists on the planet.  It is impossible for there to be such a thing, even in the Utopian Visions that reside in the hallowed halls of academia.  Not only has 'equal distribution of wealth' been seen as sort of  an infantile concept, wouldn't this inequality guarantee constant depressions all over the earth?  Income wasn't distributed equally in 1929, or 1944, or 1229, or 1776, or 1886, or 1986, or 2012.  According to the sage Overlords of the NY State Regents committee for Historical Assessment, it is this very inequality that had to have been one of the horrid reasons for Great Depressions.  By their reasoning, we should be in a constant economic depression.  
    
    It's easy to point out the limitations of today's youth.  Now you can see the pure propaganda that our high school students are fed, in order to indoctrinate them into a meme that will get them away from thinking about their own wealth and welfare, and push them into the collectivist mindset.  It is also too simple to leave today's high school students holding the bag.  It is the adults who create wretched and foolish exams like this - exams unfit for simian consumption.  Why don't we assess students with real material?  The top schools got rid of short answer exams 150 years ago, stating that they were worse than useless.  Oxford and Cambridge rid themselves of short answer tests, noting that they did nothing but 'train'.  It is undoubtedly coincidence that our current president opined a few years ago that he was a believer in the idea that things are economically better if we 'redistribute the wealth'.  This is a sinister coincidence.  I recommend that all parents monitor what their children are getting as 'education' these days, as this exam question is just the tip of the iceberg.  
30. "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
31. - - Woodrow Wilson - Address to the New York City High School Teachers Association (9 January 1909)

28. Recommended reading for the true causes of the Great Depression:  The Great Depression, by Murray Rothbard
    
    Recommended reading: NEA, Trojan Horse in American Education, by Sam Blumenfeld
    
    Video showing Peter Schiff trying to explain The Great Depression to Establishment pawns:
    
    

Who Was Niccolò Machiavelli?

Niccolo Machiavelli did something that electrified the planet and enraged the Power Elite. He gave away the secrets of getting and keeping State Power. The Prince is his magnum opus detailing how to 'look honest' while doing the wrong thing. If this keeps The Prince in power, then the ends justifies the means. Your Overlords read this in their Elite Private School - it's still on the reading list. It was taken off your school's reading list in 1922 (or thereabouts).


There are a few works of literature that should be on the reading list of every school in the country.  The Prince is one of them.  Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes, another treatise on how to deal with the masses, is another.  Many of these books are difficult to read, but the treasure trove of information they contain is first rate.  By dumbing down the American population, The Powers That Be don't have to worry about two things.  They don't have to ever worry about one of the Herd getting his or her hands on the book, and if they do, the Mass Man or Mass Woman has no chance of understanding it.  Look at the ads and the articles in magazines like the American Mercury or the Saturday Evening Post from the early 1900's to see what I'm talking about.  Compulsory schooling has taken the literate American libertarian system and turned it into a tool for creating ignorance. 


Today's political system, and the reactions to it by the people has proven Machiavelli correct on all counts.  Politicians of all stripes promise the moon, and the people on the side of that guy weep and snivel and bow and scrape before their Honorable Leader.  Then the guy on the other Team does the same thing and his team genuflects and tears up at every speech and stare and gape in wonder at such 'leadership' and 'growth'.  It is a sight to behold.


From the Rothbard article: "The prince, he writes, must be willing to become "a great liar and deceiver," taking advantage of all the credulous: for "men are so simple" that "the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived." Or, in the immortal words of P.T. Barnum centuries later, "There's a sucker born every minute." And again, in praising fraud and deceit, Machiavelli writes that "contemporary experience shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles." Or, in the words of another astute American social critic: "nice guys finish last."
As one might say - "simply Machiavellian".


Recommended reading "Who Was Niccolò Machiavelli?" by Murray Rothbard.  
Read Below by Jeff Riggenbach.