P. J. O.Rourke on the Free Market

P.J. Has an excellent piece on how the Republicans 'blew it'. Here's an interesting paragraph:

What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That's not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. "Jeeze, 230 pounds!" But you can't pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters--all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs--think so too.

I agree. The market fundamentally provides a bunch of signals. You can ignore them -- and this is true whether you're an automaker or a lawmaker -- at your peril.

The article offers a lot of insight with less-than-usual, but still good, humor. I recommend you give it a read.

Here's another sample of what you can expect:

If we do have morals, where were they while Bosnians were slaughtered? And where were we while Clinton dithered over the massacres in Kosovo and decided, at last, to send the Serbs a message: Mess with the United States and we'll wait six months, then bomb the country next to you.

The whole thing here.

President Obama

Congratulations. It truly was historic.

The funniest president

This is probably the best speech McCain has given. We now know the funnier candidate in this election:



Here's Obama's response. I am also reminded of Reagan's humor.

Joe the Plumber and America's License-Raj

Apparently, John McCain's favorite Joe the Plumber, doesn't have a plumbing license. My first reaction is : There's something called a plumbing license?? 

I invite senators, Obama and McCain to visit Sri Lanka where I will introduce them to Sunil the plumber (locally known as Sunil the Paiyppa-baas) operating legally without any need for licensing. The Soviet America really needs to modernize itself into a free-market system and get off from this license-raj stuff. 

If you are American, I'd recommend you consider voting for Bob the Builder. He runs with a Son of a Butcher.

More on Joe and plumbing at MR. I thank Whackster for the initial pointer.  

Mirror on Me on Obama

This probably some kind of cheating. It's useful when you have friends in the media. In any case, here is Dinidu writing on something I (supposedly) said about the U.S. elections:

Deane would vote for: Barr–Root (Libertarian)

He says he would vote for the Libertarian candidates because "I agree with Obama on some things and with McCain on others. But I don't agree enough with either one of them to actually vote for them. At least I agree with Barr on most things." But interestingly, Deane goes onto say "Now pretending we are Americans is cute, but the fact is, we are not. Sure Obama knows how to work the teleprompter and give a great speech, and Sarah Palin is one hot governor but surely, those are not good enough reasons to root for anyone."

He explained his stance by saying, "Unfortunately 'talk' is all what most twenty-something Sri Lankan Obama supporters have considered. They might give all sorts of sophisticated policy-wise reasons for it now, but the fact is most decided to support Obama just by listening to him and not by examining his policies. Obama for example proposes to 'save American jobs', now I can understand why some Americans might support that, but why on earth would Sri Lankans want to save American jobs? I'm sure the American union bosses would find it rather cute. Protectionism of one country directly opposes opportunity of others. That's the great Obama plan."

"Like Rudy Gulliani said, "change" is not a destination and "hope" not a strategy, and I think Americans are waking up to empty cheesy rhetoric, and that's why Obama is going down in the polls and loosing the election. There is one good reason though Obama should win – he's black. If he loses, all the media here and in other countries will put it down to racism and would argue the fact that not even in America can a person from a minority win an election. That's not good for minority groups anywhere."

The whole thing here

Ok ok that going down on the polls and loosing the election part was stretching it. But I stand by everything else. I could have written anti-McCain something as well. But what's the point in making fun of an old white guy, of whom everyone hates anyway? Obama-bashing is much more fun. And did you know he just flip-flopped on net neutrality? gasp!

On Barr, he's toast. He just lost Ron Paul's endorsement by playing bad boy. He (and frankly Paul) screwed up what could have been Libertarian Party's best year yet. 

More on Obama, McCain and the U.S. elections.

Early warning on the financial crisis

In as early as 2003, someone had the wisdom to see what was coming. Who said the following?

One of the major government privileges granted to GSEs is a line of credit with the United States Treasury. According to some estimates, the line of credit may be worth over $2 billion. This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out GSEs in times of economic difficulty helps the GSEs attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital. More importantly, the line of credit is a promise on behalf of the government to engage in a huge unconstitutional and immoral income transfer from working Americans to holders of GSE debt.

The connection between the GSEs and the government helps isolate the GSE management from market discipline. This isolation from market discipline is the root cause of the recent reports of mismanagement occurring at Fannie and Freddie. After all, if Fannie and Freddie were not underwritten by the federal government, investors would demand Fannie and Freddie provide assurance that they follow accepted management and accounting practices.

Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.

Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government's interference in the housing market, the government's policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out.

Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged overinvestment in housing.

Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.

Congress should act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors who were misled by foolish government interference in the market. I therefore hope this committee will soon stand up for American taxpayers and investors by acting on my Free Housing Market Enhancement Act.

The answer is Ron Paul in a speech he gave in September 2003. The pointer from the Mises Blog. Now most financial experts wouldn't have agreed with Paul then, and probably won't agree with him now. But the bottom line is the Austrian analysis is the only one which predicted what was coming.

In late 2005, Tyler Cowen, himself no Austrian, put a post on "If I was an Austrian post" on his influential Marginal Revolution blog. In it he made several predictions as to what would happen if he were to follow the Austrian business cycle theory. As Tyler later admitted, most of it has come true. He said however, loose monetary policy, like the Austrians thought was only one of several and less important triggers to the problem. Here Paul seems to suggest that apart from loose monetary policy, government guaranteed line of credit to Fannie and Freddie was at fault for creating the 'mal-investment' and the high risk-taking.

Whether you comepletly agree with the analysis or not, you have to hand it to Ron Paul, he called this one. That's why he's all over the media now.

A Palin Theocracy in a bikini

It strikes me as rather odd when the most right-wing of the Sri Lankan media is retardedly leftwing when it comes to reporting about U.S. politics. But this choice picture for an anti-Palin piece on the Sunday Times takes the cake. Here's a screenshot : (Also see it in the ST site)

I mean, Christ..

Oh wait, I shouldn't say that. That would make me an extremist fundamentalist christian who wants to shoot women in cases of rape, incest and have a fondness for pigs with lipstick. No, I dont think I have that quite right.. but you get the picture. Oh and by the way, the bikini pic is fake. 

Convention speeches

I just managed to catch John McCain's full speech on Youtube. I think he did a reasonable job, and his VP Pick and the convention bump means he's now leading in the polls for the first time. The thing is with Sarah Palin in it, the Republican ticket looks likable, and have this thing going on which Obama had when he first came in. We will have to wait and see how things play out.

My favorite convention speech though is by Ronald Reagan, not his own nomination speech, which is also good, but the speech Reagan gave in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964. I think it eloquently articulates the values and principles which would fundamentally change the way government worked in the U.S. ever since the Reagan presidency.

A small excerpt of the speech is below. But do see the full version (Video| text)



Here's a few quotes from the speech I really liked:

"You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course."

"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth."

" the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that just isn't so"

"You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery."

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny"

Barry Goldwater's son, Barry Goldwater Jnr, himself a former congressman was not at the GOP convention last week. Instead, he was at Ron Paul's convention. Interesting times.

Are Libertarians ready for the mainstream?

Some observations from the TIME magazine,

Libertarians are getting ready for the mainstream, and mainstream America may finally be ready for them.

The whole thing here.

[Link via Hit n Run]

Religious-Conflict ignorance, again!

Last time, it was Obama's ignorance which became abundantly clear when he commented that Sri Lanka has a religious conflict. Today, it's Newsweek's turn. In an article titled "War is the answer" The newsweek comments,

In addition to being an ethnic conflict, the Sri Lankan civil war is a religious one: most Sinhalese are Buddhist, while most Tamils are Hindu. [link]

Obviously Obama reads the Newsweek. Heh. But seriously, let's rest it. Sri Lankan conflict is many things, what it's not is a religious conflict. The fact that most Sinhalese are Buddhist and most Tamils are Hindu (and all Mulims are well, muslims) doesn't mean that the conflict is drawn along those lines. That's like saying that in a war with say, the Americans and Japanese was a conflict between short people and tall people.

Other than that, the article is well worth a read.

Why I Love Ron Paul

I stumbled upon one of my favorite Ron Paul interviews, the one he did with John Stossel. Really offers insight into the man's philosophy. What can I say - endorsed 100%.

Here's a good quote from a Tucker Carlson article which sums up most of Paul's positions really well,

Though Paul argues passionately for liberalizing marijuana laws and is beloved by potheads (Timothy Leary once held a fund-raiser for him), he has never smoked pot himself. He sounded shocked when I asked him. "I have never seen anyone smoke marijuana," he said. "I don't think I'd be open to using it." For some people, libertarianism is the philosophical justification for a zany personal life. Paul, by contrast, describes his hobbies as gardening (roses and organic tomatoes) and "riding my bicycle."

He has never had a cigarette. He doesn't swear. He limits his drinking to an occasional glass of wine and goes to church regularly. He has been married to the same woman for 50 years. Three of their five children are physicians.Ron Paul is deeply square, and every bit as deeply committed to your right not to be.

"I don't gamble, but I'm the gambler's best friend," he says, boasting of his support for online casinos. He is a Second Amendment absolutist who doesn't own a gun. "I've only fired one a couple of times in my life. I've never gotten around to killing anything." It's an impressively, charmingly principled world view,..[link]

Here's the first part of the Stossel interview on YoutTube:



and Here's Part 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.