Author: White Whale

I proposed somewhere a while back that inflation be defined as “wealth transfer via money creation.” It is a an “unnatural”–which here means unnecessary–shift in who owns waht. As I see the matter, the actual increase in prices FOLLOWs the primary element of property transfer.

The other day I was rereading my Keynes piece,and feel I need to rework the first part. As I now see it, price increases need not attend “inflation” as I have defined it.

The most important element for prices in inflation is the use of credit by our banking system. Nobody is borrowing money right now, which is why–despite what I recall as trillions in wealth transfers to members of our banking cartel, both domestically and abroad–we are not seeign price increases. But the wealth transfer has been accomplished. Claims have been staked on businesses, banks, and governments that cannot easily be undone. All of this happens in the darkness, which is one reason why it is critical that we at a rock bottom minimum audit the Fed.

It is commendable that we are now getting some reporting, and even that little is scary enough. Much of the “quantitative easing”–which we might define, as I have, as “primary inflation”–seems to have gone abroad. How this was intended to support the domestic economy is of course a stupid question: it wasn’t. It was intended to keep the interest on our national debt at an artificially low rate, enabling further indebtedness.

What the long term plan is, I have no idea. Certainly, it includes the aggregation of huge sums of money by individuals and institutions. This is beyond doubt. More generally, though, there is no need for conspiracy theories: that there COULD be a long term plan outside the control of the American people is sufficiently objectionable to call for the elimination of the Fed. And not just the Fed, but all central banks the world over.

In the unlikely event we can make this happen, your children will thank you, regardless of where you live.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge.

Along with If, you will always find this somewhere in my environment.

Plainly, not all the people I would describe as “leftist” are bad people. This realization is the reason I felt the need to coin the term “sybaritic leftist”. These are people who are fundamentally nice, and who naively assume this means other people will be too. They are the Eloi of Wells. Things can work out well for them for long periods of time, provided there are hard men with guns not too far away. Such has been the condition of Western Europe over the last half century.

What I meant to say, though, is that such people think they have to choose between idealistic “liberalism” (not a word I grant them in general), and hard-nosed conservatism. Do they pursue the impossible dream, or do they take their place with fundamentally uncompassionate people who make things work? Do they keep their romantic dreams, or face life as selfish individualists?

The naked reality is that this is a false distinction, and the primary fallacy that enables leftism to survive with a history of constant failure.

Once one grasps that there is no linear relationship between intention and ooutcome, then studies history, it becomes abundantly clear that the romantics–the self described anti-individualists, at least in the political sphere–have in fact been making things WORSE for the very people whose welfare allegedly animates their sympathies. Were the Nancy Pelosi’s of the world to do NOTHING for the next ten years, the populations they are trying to help would thrive. They are holding them back.

Thus in my view conservatives hold both the practical and the moral ground. The only thing leftism can successfully generate are feelings of patronizing moral superiority, unanchored by accomplishment, but for all that feeling no need to prove themselves. In certain social spaces, to be a “liberal” is to be good, and vice versa. That you need do nothing but conform to win this feeling is a powerful incentive to take this mind-altering drug.

Peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Spinoza

I have been more or less arguing this for some time. You can have “peace” in totalitarian states, in the sense that no one is openly hurting or killing anyone else. For example, in Cuba the rate crime of sujugated citizen against other subjugated citizens is no doubt low, since there are eyes on every block watching everything.

Is this peace, though? Of course not. You can generate apparent tranquility, as defined as lack of movement, by locking someone in a cage which physically prevents them from moving, as many Communist regimes did, with their so-called “soft” torture.

“Peace” is properly an outflow of energy, of the seemingly contradictory combination of relaxed energy, of joy, of happiness, of generosity, of devotion.

Again, people want to make a continuum more or less between war and tedium. Either you have a grand cause or you are bored and boring. This is the whole point of leftism: justifying war. It grants energy to the terminally “ennui’ed”, if I might be permitted something new.

I will never forget Hitler’s account of what happened when war was declared (in 1914, I guess it was): jubilation. Everyone was elated, happy. There had been this grand malaise in the air, and here it was lifted. Like everyone else, he rushed to enlist.

My whole project with regard to Goodness has to do with pointing out that not only is its end of the continuum–the other end–not tedious, but that it is infinitely MORE INTERESTING, and more creative. Sex is fun: love is more interesting. Power scratches the itch: love heals. Violence engages: Goodness expands.

The identity you create through conflict is hard and jagged; that created by Goodness is soft and light. It can go anywhere, through anything, to the highest highs, and when needed, to the lowest lows. You are free.

As I said, we need to accept the best Republicans can do. This deal looks like they leveraged what pull they had frankly better than I expected. This is a good deal, that sets the stage for something serious down the road.

We need to be clear, though, as to what is being proposed. As I understand the matter, we are cutting not quite $1 trillion in DISCRETIONARY spending over the next decade. What needs to be undestood is that in establishing budgetary projections, certain things like Medicare and Social Security simply are not budgetted. They respond to demographics, not acts of Congress. It is therefore called “non-discretionary” spending, and of course has long been called the “third rail” of politics, since grumpy old people vote, and everybody else wants something for nothing.

We will further vote at some future point on whether or not we might perhaps actually consider sort of touching the third rail. Much easier: sending a Balancd Budget Amendment to the States. That commits no one to anything. Ergo I assume the $1 trillion is it.

Therefore, in exchange for what I assume is the increase to whatever it was Obama wanted–$14.x trillion–he gets to borrow something over a trilloin NOW, in exchange for cuts projected over a decade in which our overall increase in indebtedness will “only” be 6-9 trillion dollars, versus the 7-10 that had been projected. This, assuming no major economic disruptions (as for example a bond downgrade, or the implementation of Obamacare).

Now, I am not complaining. I think the Republican leadership got what they could. Politics is the art of the possible, not the impossible. The task of changing politics, logically then, is changing what is possible. That is the task for GOP organizers and thsoe running for office in 2012, and those who support them.

First off, I liked this statement of basic, obvious ideas by Marco Rubio: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/marco-rubio-takes-on-hypocrisy-of-debt-rhetoric-and-john-kerry/ As he points out, in large measure we are having trouble now because in their two years controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress they did not see fit to create a budget. This more or less has enabled them to spend on pet projects without, I suspect, risking the public outcry over the details.

We know Obama is spending a LOT, and that he has added hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats to the Federal payroll in conditions of recession. That this would inevitably lead to deficits or large tax increases has been lost on no one. That is why even in conditions of having record amounts of cash business owners have not been investing it to create jobs. It’s unclear if America is even going to be a good place to do business anymore. The record cash is there not particularly because of record profits, but because of record uncertainty and doubt. We’ve never had a Leninist in the White House before. There’s really no way to gauge how much damage he can do.

One thing is clear, if this deficit spending continues unabated: our credit rating WILL be downgraded. This is not in doubt. This means we will have to pay higher interest rates to attract investors, which means more money will get vacuumed out of the pockets of the roughly half of Americans who are economically productive enough to pay taxes–new expenses, that were not present before, will be incurred. As I mentioned earlier, when the bureaucrats are running debt projections over the next ten years, they are assuming more or less constant conditions, and a debt downgrade will NECESSARILY mean higher expenses, and thus higher increases in the debt, meaning that whatever “cuts” are negotiated now will likely be more than balanced by off-setting, unprojected increases.

The Pencil: There is an episode of the Simpson’s where the network is broadcasting the CEO of the State lottery sharing the proceeds of the lottery with some school superintendant. After a tad bit of drama, as memory serves, the super is presented with a pencil. He’s taken aback, and starts sputtering, at which point the video feed is cut.

Folks, this is what we are going to get: a pencil. After several weeks of melodrama we are going to get–over the sound of Democrats screaming like little girls, and serious analgesic use by Republicans–something that is pathetically short of anything serious, much less of what is needed.

It seems likely tax cuts can be kept off the table (and by the way, when we see record low approval ratings for Obama, we need to keep in mind that his supporters can also desert him for not being sufficient to the left, which is plainly happening, so low ratings do not translate to a shoo-in for conservatives in 2012), but that the “cuts” will be largely symbolic, and that no matter how minute they are, that Republicans will be portrayed as big meanie-heads, who take pleasure in the idea of grandmothers eating dogfood, and dogs being relegated to scrounging outside the mansions of fat men in business suits with grease on their chins, going “ha ha ha, we are big and rich and we are making grandmothers eat dog food. We are so smart.” Cartoonish thinking for two dimensional minds: what other sort could there be?

What I want to propose though, is that nothing serious will be possible as long as we have flippant narcissists in Congress who benefit from being the grantors of manna to their unwashed inferiors. In the main, I intend thereby to connote Democrats, although of course I am no fan of RINO’s either.

We need to be content with what Boehner and McConnell can negotiate. We have a boy-child in the White House, with visions of sugarplum fairies dancing in his head, who has not the slightest notions of cause and effect, how the real world actually operates, or how much suffering will attend the medium term continuation of his policies. Given this, anything that does not raise taxes, or which cuts ANY spending, is going to have to do.

We are not in a crisis. We need to be clear about this. Clear eyed people are looking to a COMING crisis. If what you are doing is hurting you–if you are taking small doses of poison daily–then the first thing to do is stop doing it. This is clear enough. For now, we cannot stop doing it, but we are nowhere near a lethal dose. Europe is in much more serious trouble than we are, since they have been doing Obama-esque things much longer, and lack the opposition that, among other things, guns and religion guarantee.

Our task is education and message control. We need it to be shouted from the rooftops that you can’t borrow 40 cents on the dollar forever. This is self evident to anyone who has ever existed outside the sheltered nurseries of our universities, and the cynical calculations of professional politicians who benefit and provide benefit to a chosen few, at a cloaked harm to the many.

We need a conservative in the White House: Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman–even Tim Pawlenty would do for now–and a 60 seat majority in the Senate.

When our credit gets downgraded, there is simply no plausible person to blame but Obama, and the costs of that downgrade will be easy enough to show.

Net: be patient. I do feel our Congressional leaders are doing the best they can within the contraints of the lunatic atmosphere currently prevailing among the Democrats.

This was supposed to be a comment at the Wall Street Journal. It did not allow it through even after I deleted the Weezer lyrics. Who knows why?

In any event, since I typed it and can’t post it, here is a post related to this interview.

I’ve been reading economics a lot, and it has taught me to not just look at what did happen, but also for what did NOT happen, and why. Crime is equally an absence of lawfulness, as lawlessness is an absence of order.

Some years ago I was driving to Indianapolis in the winter when it occurred to me that while we can easily imagine degrees of evil, we cannot so easily imagine degrees of goodness. Evil, in the popular imagination, is more or less doing anything other than play fair, and becomes worse quantitatively: the more crimes you commit, the worse you are.

It is this fundamental lack that has made the serial killer a hero in many movies, like Hannibal and the Saw series. He (or she) is non-bourgeois, where normality is being stuck behaving in the a corner somewhere, treading an endlessly dull hamster wheel. Think Steve Buscemi at the end of Conair. Or, as Weezer put it:

I can’t work a job
Like any other slob,
Punchin’ in and punchin’ out and suckin’ up to Bob
Marryin’ a bitch,
Havin’ seven kids,
Givin’ up and growin’ old,
And hopin’ there’s a god.

In any event, this set off a long series of reflections on the nature of Goodness. How do you become “Gooder” and what is the advantage of this, relative to seeking power and sensations?

My short answer is that the stronger pleasure you feel in being alive, and in sharing in the joy of others, the “gooder” you are. Happiness can be exponential. It is a matter of luck, but living right enables you to buy a lot of lottery tickets, up to all of them. The end result of sharing Buddha’s tenet that all of our lives fall far short of what is possible–that life is suffering, in the popular translation–is to further it. I see no end to this path.

For those with an interest, I have published much of my thought here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com

I see few comments or emails. The most obvious explanation is that I have few readers who care enough about what I write to respond. This seems most likely. However, many things are possible on the internet, so I did want to mention that if you have ever emailed the address listed and received anything less than a prompt and suitably courteous reply, an alternative email is [email protected] . Someone is already spamming it, so the cat’s out of the bag anyway.

No matter what eventually passes–and obviously something will soon–it will not go close to far enough. The cuts we need to be discussing should be on the order of a trillion a year. Anything short of that simply isn’t serious, and whatever passes will be well short of that.

The can will get kicked down the road. This is inevitable. If we get a conservative President, and control of Congress, we might see something interesting, but no matter who wins in 2012, the American people will still be getting much of their news from organizations whose sole raison d’etre-outside of using the profits from Capitalism to implicitly and explicitly denigrate free markets–is to propagate disinformation. That we are even having a debate over whether or not we can borrow half the money we spend for the next several decades is farcical.

I just don’t see us EVER having the political will to do what is right. I hope I am wrong, but the stickiness of Medicare and Social Security was built in. Stupid selfish people become old stupid selfish people, and old stupid selfish people still vote. And they have more money.

At some point, we must, must, must grasp the predatory natures of the Federal Reserve and the fractional reserve system. What I have proposed in my series on our financial system really includes two parts. Doing away with the Federal Reserve is not original to me. It has been proposed many times by many people, with Ron Paul being the most articulate modern advocate of this.

What is original to me is using the Federal Reserve positively to eradicate our debt. The link to this proposal is at the end of this post. As I note in the series, this was done by the Germans after World War One. They ran the printing presses long enough to eliminate industrial and government debt, then stopped. Schacht revalued the mark, and poof, the inflation was gone. But it did them a LOT of good in the meantime. What it also did was hurt ordinary Germans, who did not understand what was being done to them. As Keynes said, not one person in a thousand understands the origins of inflation, or who benefits from it. The government and industrialists benefited hugely, though. My goal is to get the pluses and lose the minuses, or most of them. (

I am a conservative historian, so self evidently I grasp the difference between intention and outcome, but that does not mean daring is never warranted. One project I have set myself when I get time is to figure out how to test this proposal in miniature. I’ve been hoping the Europeans would try something like this, since they lead us in their collective finanical woes. Something like this will be needed for them, and ought in my view to result in returns to national currencies, where I have State currencies.)

What I am proposing is doing openly what the Germans did covertly, and in such a way as to harness the benefits and largely avoid the detriments. I am proposing we do in one week what the Germans did over 3 years. It is a large idea. It is an audacious idea. But it is an idea which has been tested in only a slightly different form, and which WORKED.

I am the only one I know of proposing anything remotely like this. Self evidently, this will only get traction in conditions of great difficulty, but it benefits EVERYONE except those who most benefit from the current situation. They obviously have a lot of money, but they are very small in number. These are the actual greedy parasites Marx condemned. They were never the “Capitalists” per se, who do in fact contribute much to society, and who increase our well being.

The link to my proposal–and thought process leading up to it–is here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page14.html

I was a bit fatigued last night, so I cut that post short.

Question: why is it that Communists hate the bourgeoisie so much? Culturally, of course, they are presumed to be banal and uninteresting, to pretentious unemployed “thought esthetes” (my term for intellectuals).

Politically, though, the problem is that the bourgeoisie stand between them and their revolution. The way it is supposed to work is a very neat, tidy distinction between “us” and “them”, where for the sake of intellectual congruence, if not honesty, thought esthetes conflate their own interests with those of workers they neither understand nor respect.

The middle class, the “bourgeoisis”, sits in the middle. These damnable human beings make it much harder convincing “workers” that their best option lies with following silly people who read a lot of books into a violent and uncertain future, rather than with trying to join the class of the comfortable.

The naked fact which makes leftists squirm is that Capitalism works. By “work” I mean that the workers become middle class in conditions of growing wealth, which inevitably follows free markets, property rights, and political liberty. Our “workers”–pipe fitters, factory workers, welders–drive Ford F-150’s, have boats, and own homes. They are not being “exploited”. They are being enriched by the system.

The leaks in our system are twofold. First, socialists make everything worse by retarding business investment, which costs jobs, through punitive tax rates and abusive regulations. Second, the Federal Reserve sucks the value out of our money, and gives it to the already rich.

That the first should at times join the second, or vice versa, seems likely.