Gold, Stocks and The Dollar, Oh My!

The past month has been rather confusing on the investment front. I had been in gold stocks and they plummeted like the dickens into Hades. Presumably gold went down because the dollar went up and oil went down. Now mostly in cash, I watch gold shoot up as the S&P 500, the Nasdaq and the Dow take their own ride into perdition. What new torments await investors in the first rung of hell? Does the Dow decline further and gold continue upward? Has the dollar ended its six-week ascent? Are foreign central banks and the Fed playing games with the dollar? Why would the dollar ascend and gold and oil decline weeks before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the subsidy of AIG and Freddie Mac? Do we have a free market, or a pretense of one, with the Wicked Wizard of the East making sport of it? With the Dow down better than 700 points this week, is it good idea for the Wizard to remain behind the curtain, pulling strings?

Candace de Russy's "Radical Mind"

My good friend Candace de Russy's article "Radical Mind" appears in the current issue of National Review. (A longer version of the article is available at Family Security Matters.) Dr. de Russy argues, convincingly, that although 63 percent of Americans believe that Barack Obama shares traditional American views, there are serious lacunae in his resume, questions about his upbringing and gaps in what we know about his associations with radicals ranging from the far left to Islamo-Terrorism. For instance, de Russy observes that at Occidental College in Los Angeles he strived "not to be 'mistaken for a sellout," and then continued to fixate on identity politics and radicalism while at Columbia.

Upon moving to Chicago after graduation:

"Obama elected to become a left-wing community organizer in Chicago. He was hired for the job, NRO’s David Freddoso stresses, by persons who had trained under academic-turned-radical-socialist and self-described agitator Saul Alinsky."

At Harvard Law, "He became adept at not giving away his true positions, 'giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.'" The question that needs to be asked concerns the degree to which Senator Obama has cloaked his actual views over time. One indicator, notes de Russy, is that Obama has longstanding friendships with Rashid Khalidi, "a backer of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department" and William Ayers and:

"While Obama and Ayers served on the Woods Fund board, the trust made substantial grants to the Arab American Action Network, founded by Khalidi. The organization reports that it conducted an oral history project on “an-Nakba,” or the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding."

As well:

"...just as Obama did not in the past hesitate to support the work of Khalidi, so did he not hesitate in his campaign to hire Mazen Asbahi as his Muslim-Outreach Adviser. Asbahi recently resigned in the wake of publicity linking him to legacy groups of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood."

Other of Mr. Obama's radical advisors have included Charles Ogletree, Robert Malley, and Cornel West.

Quite a crew to have running the country.

America's Impoverishment Through Corporate Welfare

The United States became the wealthiest country during a period of laissez-faire, from about 1825 to 1900. The nation has retained elements of that system, but has allowed them to erode and disappear over the past century. As they have eroded, the American economy has become less friendly to workers and more friendly to four groups: the super-wealthy, corporate executives, service providers to large corporations and ultra-smart entrepreneurs. Big business executives', hedge fund operators', investment bankers and related professionals' pay has skyrocketed as average employees have seen hourly wages decline.

This process of wealth transfer from poor to rich is the result of Federal Reserve Bank inflationary policy since 1932, its subsidization of the stock market through low interest rates, and the resulting resiliency of stock prices to small increments in profit margins, for instance through overseas plant transfers. Because of low interest rates, inefficient large firms have been able to masquerade as efficient. Executives whose practices would destroy wealth in a competitive economy appear to increase wealth in an inflationary, Fed-supported one. Investment bankers who produce no wealth can be paid exhorbitant fees out of Federal Reserve Bank countefeit.

America increasingly has become a nation on government life support where those who produce subsidize the ultra-rich via government. Government does not produce wealth, as James Crum recently pointed out. The expansion of governmental systems, regulation, Federal Reserve Bank interference in markets, and high income tax rates on the middle class have squashed the ability of small and intermediate sized firms to compete. Inheritance taxes demotivate inter-generational transfer of firms that might compete with America's mismanaged large ones.

The result has been declining average real wages due to ongoing, systemic inflation. Non-wealth producing fields like law, consulting and investment banking have attracted away America's top talent from productive labor in engineering and manufacturing. This is justified through hollow arguments such as "traders improve efficiency". But such arguments would hold true only in cases where there is laissez-faire. Subsidization of traders through Fed interest rate policy can explain all of Wall Street's gains over the past 70 years.

Thus, big business has had several deleterious effects on the American economy, and it has done so through the Progressive/New Deal system that is the product of both Democrats and Republicans. This system has won the support of the average American, who has been willing to believe that government can produce wealth and that big business is more productive than competition. In a certain sense, the American public has voted for the nation's future economic decline and so future generations will pay for this and the past four generations' bad judgment.

The news this week reports attempts by firms that have paid high executive salaries for the past 30 years to obtain subsidies. These are on top of subsidies to Bear Stearns and Freddie Mac. In addition, in the past six weeks the Fed has intervened in the dollar market, causing the dollar to rise. This may be related to the current stock market correction (the Dow was down over 500 points on Monday, up 100+ points yesterday and as of this writing is down 350 points today). The dollar intervention may help consumers for a few months but it will also disturb the natural correction of markets.

The subsidization of large firms that do not produce value DOES NOT save jobs or preserve wealth. Rather, it creates a new welfare system. New York City DOES NOT NEED 8,000 additional welfare recipients under the employment of AIG Insurance who do not pay for themselves and drain wealth from other citizens. New York would be better off allowing inefficient firms like AIG to die and eliminating the regulation that stifles new job creation. You do not produce wealth by subsidizing inefficiency. It is only by allowing firms that produce wealth to survive that the American economy will prosper.

James Crum's Abraham Lincoln, No William J. H. Boetcker, Quote of the Day

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."

--William J.H. Boetcker

According to Wikipedia (thanks to comment by R on this blog) the above quote is often mistakenly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, although it is still good.