Friday, October 17, 2008
Fed Increases Monetary Base by 16% in One Week
Howard S. Katz recently put this week's increase in the monetary base on his blog. The increase of over 16% in one week is historical. The United States increasingly looks like the Weimar Republic. Just one month ago I had a conversation with an economist who previously worked for the Fed. She insisted, correctly, that the money supply had not increased in several years (because foreign governments were monetizing our debt for us, creating an unstable monetary "game"). In just five weeks Ben Bernanke has proven her utterly wrong. The monetary base has gone from $888 billion on 9/11/08 to $1.74 trillion on October 16. In other words, Reserve Bank Credits increased better than 16% this week. This should double the money supply in the coming two years. This will cause inflation and a bull market in stocks, at least temporarily. However, there also may be dollar sales as foreign holders panic at this historic devaluation. A rocky road ahead. The chart and numbers follow.
Ketchup Company Demands Release of Obama Documents
A specialty Ketchup Company has written a press release demanding release of Barack Obama's documents. Irene Alter just sent me the following e-mail:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For media inquiries contact Bill Zachary (917) 733-3038
W Ketchup Calls on Obama to Release his Personal Records
Eagle Bridge, NY — October 16, 2008 — Less than three weeks before the election, lingering questions remain about front-runner Barack Obama's past, including whether he is even constitutionally qualified for office.
Senator Obama says he was born in Hawaii, but he refuses to release a copy of his birth certificate. Prominent Democratic lawyer Philip Berg has sued, claiming that Obama is not a natural born US citizen and therefore not eligible to be President. The campaign has released two digital images of a certificate, one on Obama’s website, and a separate image on Factcheck.org. The first is widely believed to be a forgery, and the second has not been made available for inspection. Commentators have noted that Factcheck.org is supported by the Annenberg Foundation, and Obama was chairman of the Chicago branch of the fund.
Obama spent part of his childhood growing up in Indonesia after his mother married an Indonesian. In his lawsuit, Berg demonstrates that only Indonesian citizens were able to attend school during the years in which Obama was enrolled, and Obama is listed as an Indonesian citizen in his school’s records. Obama would have had to reinstate his American citizenship when he returned to Hawaii; otherwise he would be an undocumented, illegal alien. Obama has not released his Certificate of Citizenship.
Obama is represented in the suit by Joe Sandler, lawyer for the Council of American-Islamic Relations, which has proven links to Islamic terrorists. Instead of releasing the requested documents to the court, Sandler on October 6 asked for delay of discovery until after the election.
Bill Zachary, Chairman of W Ketchup, reacted: “The American people have a right to know the identity of this international man of mystery poised to become our next president. We view conspiracy theories, rightwing and leftwing, with a good deal of skepticism, but it is disturbing that Obama is dragging out a court case that should be simple to resolve – assuming he has nothing to hide.”
Obama’s life grows murkier as it progresses. He has admitted to using cocaine and marijuana in high school, and went on to attend Occidental and Columbia University for his B.A., and then to Harvard Law School. Obama has not released his transcripts, papers or records from any of these academic institutions.
W Ketchup has learned that senior Republicans believe Obama may have indicated his religious status as Muslim at Columbia and Harvard, a possible reason he does not want those records public. Obama has acknowledged benefitting from affirmative action.
Other information that Obama has not released includes his medical records, his law firm clients, and his records as an Illinois State Senator. Last week, however, Judicial Watch announced it had obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act showing Obama had submitted earmarks for hundreds of thousands of dollars directed to supporters, including his wife’s cousin, while he was a state legislator.
W Ketchup CEO Dan Oliver commented: “Obama has requested $1 million per day in federal earmarks since he became a senator. We wonder, if he becomes president, how many earmarks he will direct toward other family members, such as his first cousin, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and his Kenyan half-brother, George Hussein Onyango Obama.”
Odinga lost the 2007 presidential election in Kenya. His supporters responded by slaughtering 1500 people, including 50 parishioners who were burned to death in a church. Senator Obama had campaigned for Odinga in Kenya, saying in one speech: “Kenyans are now yearning for change.” Obama has not revealed what actions his supporters will take if he loses the US election.
W Ketchup is not sold in Kenya or Indonesia.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For media inquiries contact Bill Zachary (917) 733-3038
W Ketchup Calls on Obama to Release his Personal Records
Eagle Bridge, NY — October 16, 2008 — Less than three weeks before the election, lingering questions remain about front-runner Barack Obama's past, including whether he is even constitutionally qualified for office.
Senator Obama says he was born in Hawaii, but he refuses to release a copy of his birth certificate. Prominent Democratic lawyer Philip Berg has sued, claiming that Obama is not a natural born US citizen and therefore not eligible to be President. The campaign has released two digital images of a certificate, one on Obama’s website, and a separate image on Factcheck.org. The first is widely believed to be a forgery, and the second has not been made available for inspection. Commentators have noted that Factcheck.org is supported by the Annenberg Foundation, and Obama was chairman of the Chicago branch of the fund.
Obama spent part of his childhood growing up in Indonesia after his mother married an Indonesian. In his lawsuit, Berg demonstrates that only Indonesian citizens were able to attend school during the years in which Obama was enrolled, and Obama is listed as an Indonesian citizen in his school’s records. Obama would have had to reinstate his American citizenship when he returned to Hawaii; otherwise he would be an undocumented, illegal alien. Obama has not released his Certificate of Citizenship.
Obama is represented in the suit by Joe Sandler, lawyer for the Council of American-Islamic Relations, which has proven links to Islamic terrorists. Instead of releasing the requested documents to the court, Sandler on October 6 asked for delay of discovery until after the election.
Bill Zachary, Chairman of W Ketchup, reacted: “The American people have a right to know the identity of this international man of mystery poised to become our next president. We view conspiracy theories, rightwing and leftwing, with a good deal of skepticism, but it is disturbing that Obama is dragging out a court case that should be simple to resolve – assuming he has nothing to hide.”
Obama’s life grows murkier as it progresses. He has admitted to using cocaine and marijuana in high school, and went on to attend Occidental and Columbia University for his B.A., and then to Harvard Law School. Obama has not released his transcripts, papers or records from any of these academic institutions.
W Ketchup has learned that senior Republicans believe Obama may have indicated his religious status as Muslim at Columbia and Harvard, a possible reason he does not want those records public. Obama has acknowledged benefitting from affirmative action.
Other information that Obama has not released includes his medical records, his law firm clients, and his records as an Illinois State Senator. Last week, however, Judicial Watch announced it had obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act showing Obama had submitted earmarks for hundreds of thousands of dollars directed to supporters, including his wife’s cousin, while he was a state legislator.
W Ketchup CEO Dan Oliver commented: “Obama has requested $1 million per day in federal earmarks since he became a senator. We wonder, if he becomes president, how many earmarks he will direct toward other family members, such as his first cousin, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and his Kenyan half-brother, George Hussein Onyango Obama.”
Odinga lost the 2007 presidential election in Kenya. His supporters responded by slaughtering 1500 people, including 50 parishioners who were burned to death in a church. Senator Obama had campaigned for Odinga in Kenya, saying in one speech: “Kenyans are now yearning for change.” Obama has not revealed what actions his supporters will take if he loses the US election.
W Ketchup is not sold in Kenya or Indonesia.
Stop the Obama Constitutional Crisis--15,000 Signers of Petition So Far
Jim Crum sent the following emergency message posted on rallycongress.com:
A lawsuit has been filed with the Pennsylvania Eastern District Court requiring Mr. Obama to produce documents to prove he is constitutionally qualified to run for President. So far Mr. Obama has refused to produce the documents and is trying to fight the court order to produce the documents. Any American should be able to prove citizenship in less than a day. Why can't Mr. Obama?
Here is a link to the actual court documents - http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/Pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/
A constitutional crisis will rip our country apart. If this is not cleared up now we will have a crisis. If you care at all about America you must call for Mr. Obama to produce the documents and prove that he is eligible to be President.
Please call on Mr. Obama to produce the documents to prove his constitutional qualifications.
Thank you
To sign go to:
http://www.rallycongress.com/constitutional-qualification/1244/stop-obama-constitutional-crisis/
A lawsuit has been filed with the Pennsylvania Eastern District Court requiring Mr. Obama to produce documents to prove he is constitutionally qualified to run for President. So far Mr. Obama has refused to produce the documents and is trying to fight the court order to produce the documents. Any American should be able to prove citizenship in less than a day. Why can't Mr. Obama?
Here is a link to the actual court documents - http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/Pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/
A constitutional crisis will rip our country apart. If this is not cleared up now we will have a crisis. If you care at all about America you must call for Mr. Obama to produce the documents and prove that he is eligible to be President.
Please call on Mr. Obama to produce the documents to prove his constitutional qualifications.
Thank you
To sign go to:
http://www.rallycongress.com/constitutional-qualification/1244/stop-obama-constitutional-crisis/
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Christopher Buckley's Transition: a 3 Degree Turn
Several people have blogged, e-mailed and posted about Christopher Buckley's transition from conservative to liberal. Apparently, William F. Buckley's son has decided to ditch the National Review (which his father founded) and conservatism because conservatism has brought nothing but deficits and economic malaise.
This transition is unsurprising and has been made many times in both directions. The reason is that the distinction between left and right, conservative and liberal, in today's political discourse is illusory.
America is a unique country not because of "conservatives" or "liberals", but because of libertarians, who are neither. The notion of "centrist" is also illusory, because it depends on the faux liberal-conservative dichotomy. George W. Bush is as "liberal" as Barack Obama, perhaps more so, and to say that he represents "conservatives" is to admit that there is no difference.
What made America different from Europe is the belief in freedom. Freedom is neither liberal nor conservative. The proponents of conservatism are often diametrically opposed to traditional American ideals. Moreover, their fascination with Edmund Burke is outside the mainstream. At best, Burke represents the Federalist tradition of Alexander Hamilton that was discarded in favor of Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicanism. Jacksonian Democracy is inconsistent with Burke's respect for tradition. Jackson believed in the spoils system, flexibility, elimination of the central bank and change due to laissez-faire. It is from these principles that America developed rapidly in the nineteenth century to become an economic powerhouse, and today we live off the embers of the Jacksonian revolution.
Burke's conservatism is consistent with the left-right split that is characteristic of Europe and which the Progressives brought here from Europe. America's detour into European political ideas began with a mass migration of American students into German graduate schools in the late nineteenth century. This was compounded in the 1930s by European scholars, hoisted by their own petard, fleeing to America. By 1900 Progressivism, a European model that originates in Bismarck's Germany, had come to dominate American political discussion.
The distinctions that Progressivism emphasizes, social democracy versus business interests, had always existed in America, but with a different tenor. First, business interests could equally be represented by more statist (Whig and Republican) views or by Jacksonian laissez-faire. As some firms became bigger in the late 19th century they began to align more closely with the statist Republican tradition. Moreover, the situation is confused by the presence of a laissez-faire intellectual tradition that the Republicans briefly adopted in the post Civil War period and carried forward as a minority view after the New Deal. However, through the Pendleton Act and their fixation on rationalization of government and furthering their professional interests, the late nineteenth century Republicans morphed easily into advocates of Progressivism and government intervention in the 1890s. Throughout the nineteenth century, moreover, in practice the Republicans tended to be the more statist of the two parties because they favored high tariffs and public works.
The Progressives were able to completely staunch the Jacksonian Democrats intellectually. Woodrow Wilson's adoption of Progressive ideas in 1908 and his election to the presidency in 1912 meant that both political parties had dropped the Jacksonian, laissez-faire tradition. However, the American people never really bought into Progressivism.
Thus, American politics became a debate between ideological fraternal twins and a giant, uneducated cousin. Fraternal twins, recall, are not identical but are close. The first twin is a "conservative" who is a pro-business Progressive along the lines of William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. The second is a "liberal" along the lines of Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, the two twins are very close, about 97%. Theodore Roosevelt had advocated most of the social democratic ideas that Franklin Roosevelt later adopted. George W. Bush has turned out to be as much an interventionist as the socialist Theodore Roosevelt. Both parties favor massive, ill-advised boondoggles. Bush's bailout and nationalization of the banking system is more expensive and more socialistic than Hillary Clinton's proposed nationalization of the health care system.
The uneducated cousin is the mass of Americans who have retained remnants of the Jacksonian Democracy.
The idea that America is a "centrist" country is incorrect. "Centrist" would imply that there is a mean between the pro-business Progressives of Theodore Roosevelt and the social democratic Progressives of Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, there is no such mean. There is no continuum, because the uneducated cousin is off the continuum. He is a hayseed who says unpredictable things, a Sarah Palin-like Babbitt who irritates liberals and conservatives alike, driving William F. Buckley's son to liberalism, which someone like Sarah Palin cannot possibly "understand" because she did not go to Harvard and learn the crackpot theories of John Maynard Keynes.
Progressivism is an extreme, feudalist value system that argues that government should enforce the concentration of business and that an elite should manage and control the economy and the media. The "conservative" Progressives argue that the elite should say that they are an elite openly, while the "liberal" Progressives argue that they favor the poor, but of course are also an elitist movement that favors business and professional interests and decimates the poor.
Thus, Christopher Buckley's transition from National Review "conservative" to "liberal" is a minor move, a three degree turn, for only three degrees separate the fraternal twins. The difference between right wing feudalists who emphasize the power of the rouge (military and secular power) and left wing feudalists who emphasize the power of the noir (religious, benevolent power) is small. Americans emphasize neither, and neither view is rightfully American.
This transition is unsurprising and has been made many times in both directions. The reason is that the distinction between left and right, conservative and liberal, in today's political discourse is illusory.
America is a unique country not because of "conservatives" or "liberals", but because of libertarians, who are neither. The notion of "centrist" is also illusory, because it depends on the faux liberal-conservative dichotomy. George W. Bush is as "liberal" as Barack Obama, perhaps more so, and to say that he represents "conservatives" is to admit that there is no difference.
What made America different from Europe is the belief in freedom. Freedom is neither liberal nor conservative. The proponents of conservatism are often diametrically opposed to traditional American ideals. Moreover, their fascination with Edmund Burke is outside the mainstream. At best, Burke represents the Federalist tradition of Alexander Hamilton that was discarded in favor of Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicanism. Jacksonian Democracy is inconsistent with Burke's respect for tradition. Jackson believed in the spoils system, flexibility, elimination of the central bank and change due to laissez-faire. It is from these principles that America developed rapidly in the nineteenth century to become an economic powerhouse, and today we live off the embers of the Jacksonian revolution.
Burke's conservatism is consistent with the left-right split that is characteristic of Europe and which the Progressives brought here from Europe. America's detour into European political ideas began with a mass migration of American students into German graduate schools in the late nineteenth century. This was compounded in the 1930s by European scholars, hoisted by their own petard, fleeing to America. By 1900 Progressivism, a European model that originates in Bismarck's Germany, had come to dominate American political discussion.
The distinctions that Progressivism emphasizes, social democracy versus business interests, had always existed in America, but with a different tenor. First, business interests could equally be represented by more statist (Whig and Republican) views or by Jacksonian laissez-faire. As some firms became bigger in the late 19th century they began to align more closely with the statist Republican tradition. Moreover, the situation is confused by the presence of a laissez-faire intellectual tradition that the Republicans briefly adopted in the post Civil War period and carried forward as a minority view after the New Deal. However, through the Pendleton Act and their fixation on rationalization of government and furthering their professional interests, the late nineteenth century Republicans morphed easily into advocates of Progressivism and government intervention in the 1890s. Throughout the nineteenth century, moreover, in practice the Republicans tended to be the more statist of the two parties because they favored high tariffs and public works.
The Progressives were able to completely staunch the Jacksonian Democrats intellectually. Woodrow Wilson's adoption of Progressive ideas in 1908 and his election to the presidency in 1912 meant that both political parties had dropped the Jacksonian, laissez-faire tradition. However, the American people never really bought into Progressivism.
Thus, American politics became a debate between ideological fraternal twins and a giant, uneducated cousin. Fraternal twins, recall, are not identical but are close. The first twin is a "conservative" who is a pro-business Progressive along the lines of William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. The second is a "liberal" along the lines of Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, the two twins are very close, about 97%. Theodore Roosevelt had advocated most of the social democratic ideas that Franklin Roosevelt later adopted. George W. Bush has turned out to be as much an interventionist as the socialist Theodore Roosevelt. Both parties favor massive, ill-advised boondoggles. Bush's bailout and nationalization of the banking system is more expensive and more socialistic than Hillary Clinton's proposed nationalization of the health care system.
The uneducated cousin is the mass of Americans who have retained remnants of the Jacksonian Democracy.
The idea that America is a "centrist" country is incorrect. "Centrist" would imply that there is a mean between the pro-business Progressives of Theodore Roosevelt and the social democratic Progressives of Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, there is no such mean. There is no continuum, because the uneducated cousin is off the continuum. He is a hayseed who says unpredictable things, a Sarah Palin-like Babbitt who irritates liberals and conservatives alike, driving William F. Buckley's son to liberalism, which someone like Sarah Palin cannot possibly "understand" because she did not go to Harvard and learn the crackpot theories of John Maynard Keynes.
Progressivism is an extreme, feudalist value system that argues that government should enforce the concentration of business and that an elite should manage and control the economy and the media. The "conservative" Progressives argue that the elite should say that they are an elite openly, while the "liberal" Progressives argue that they favor the poor, but of course are also an elitist movement that favors business and professional interests and decimates the poor.
Thus, Christopher Buckley's transition from National Review "conservative" to "liberal" is a minor move, a three degree turn, for only three degrees separate the fraternal twins. The difference between right wing feudalists who emphasize the power of the rouge (military and secular power) and left wing feudalists who emphasize the power of the noir (religious, benevolent power) is small. Americans emphasize neither, and neither view is rightfully American.
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