In a recent column, Paul Krugman says that Europe essentially is committing "economic suicide" with its various "austerity" programs, with the only thing that can save the Continent being inflation. While I can agree with him in part that "austerity" programs as outlined by the European Central Bank can be harmful to economic growth, the idea that inflation is the magic elixir that turns bad economies into engines of prosperity is pure snake oil.

..

There is an underlying issue that Krugman cannot see because of his anti-enterprise ideology. For many years, Europeans have looked down their noses at the USA because it has not had the same restrictions on businesses as Europe and the USA's welfare state is not as vast as that on the Continent.

Yet, such restrictions and heavy spending have made it more difficult for businesses to generate real wealth, which ultimately has translated into slow growth and high unemployment. Unfortunately, the current spate of "austerity" programs fails to recognize how new wealth can be created and what it really would take for Europe's economies to grow.

Krugman, however, would have none of that. His message to Europe is simple: keep the restrictions on business in place, increase government spending, and print money, lots of money. Such actions in the present might mask the underlying problems, but in the long run, it would be disastrous.

But to Keynesians such as Krugman, it doesn't matter. In the long run, all of us are dead.'

- William L. Anderson, Will inflation save Europe? April 18, 2012

'..inflation cannot be considered as a way of life and that it is imperative to return to sound monetary policies.'

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality of the New York Times, May 18, 2012

(Full Reserve Banking) - '..tackling deficits.' - '..work rule reforms and pension reforms, not higher taxes..'


' However, the required reserve ratio in the euro area is not 5.4% – it is only 1% (!). .. Still, a bank run that gets out of hand will soon reveal the vulnerability of a fractionally reserved system, even one that is backstopped by a central bank and has not yet expanded fiduciary media to the full extent legally possible.'

- Acting Man (Source, May 16, 2012)

'Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.

That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.

..

After a series of bank failures and ad hoc solutions, the moment of truth arrived in September 1992, when the government of Prime Minister Carl Bildt decided it was time to clear the decks.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the opposition center-left, Mr. Bildt’s conservative government announced that the Swedish state would guarantee all bank deposits and creditors of the nation’s 114 banks. Sweden formed a new agency to supervise institutions that needed recapitalization, and another that sold off the assets, mainly real estate, that the banks held as collateral.

Sweden told its banks to write down their losses promptly before coming to the state for recapitalization. Facing its own problem later in the decade, Japan made the mistake of dragging this process out, delaying a solution for years.'

- Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way, 2008

'..a financial system of the bankers, by the bankers, and for the bankers—consumers and shareholders be damned.' - Hamel, 2012

Spain Potpourri: Official Denials From Finance Minister; More Nationalizations Coming Up; Banks Use ECB Money to Refinance Large Enterprises in Dire Shape, New Credit To Households Down 80%, May 15, 2012

Real Estate Crash in China Underway: Foreign Funding Down 80%, Land Sales Down 57%, Starts Down 27%; Expect Chinese GDP to Plunge, May 16, 2012

Crowd funding (Cash-strapped entrepreneurs get creative in BBC News, 2010)

'The subprime debacle revealed that America had a financial system of the bankers, by the bankers, and for the bankers—consumers and shareholders be damned.

To a large extent this is still true.

No high-ranking banker is in jail, the biggest banks have grown even bigger, bonuses are once again setting records, and at this moment, more than 3,000 banking lobbyists are hard at work in Washington trying to water down the reforms that were enacted in the wake of the crisis.'

- Gary Hamel, What Matters Now (2012), page 17

'..inflation cannot be considered as a way of life and that it is imperative to return to sound monetary policies.'

'First, Let's Fire All the Managers'

Banking Reform


'Banks have learned nothing from the credit crisis. Two-thirds of the profit goes towards bonuses. So in a crisis they must be saved again.'

'Banken hebben niets geleerd van de kredietcrisis. Tweederde van de winst gaat op aan bonussen. Bij een crisis moeten ze dus weer gered worden.'

- Jacob Schoenmaker, '68% winsten zakenbanken naar bonus', 17 mei, 2012

'..inflation cannot be considered as a way of life and that it is imperative to return to sound monetary policies.'

'This is what happened in this country as well as in many other countries in the last years. The unions, supported by the government, forced the enterprises to agree to wage rates that went beyond the potential market rates, that is, the rates which the public was prepared to refund to the employers in purchasing their products. This would have inevitably resulted in rising unemployment figures. But the government policies tried to prevent the emergence of serious unemployment by credit expansion — inflation. The outcome was rising prices, renewed demands for higher wages and reiterated credit expansion; in short, protracted inflation.

Inflation Can't Go On Endlessly

But finally the authorities became frightened. They know that inflation cannot go on endlessly. If one does not stop in time the pernicious policy of increasing the quantity of money and fiduciary media, the nation's currency system collapses entirely. The monetary unit's purchasing power sinks to a point which for all practical purposes is not better than zero. This happened again and again, in this country with the Continental Currency in 1781, in France in 1796, in Germany in 1923. It is never too early for a nation to realize that inflation cannot be considered as a way of life and that it is imperative to return to sound monetary policies.'

- Ludwig von Mises, The Economics and Politics of My Job

'..ethics in particular..' - Banking Reform

'..economic mainstream..' - '..a “monster” or “legal aberration,”..'

'..victimized by the schemes of inflationists..'

'..the structural damage the last credit boom has wrought..'

Policy Deserving Of A Rant - By Doug Noland

'..cheap credit would ultimately lead to a lingering infirmity..'

(Full Reserve Banking) - '..tackling deficits.' - '..work rule reforms and pension reforms, not higher taxes..'

'May sound ideas win the day, and may human society flower again.'

'It is now clear that the ECB itself has caused a large part of the capital flight from countries like Spain and Italy, because the cheap credit that it offered drove away private capital. The purpose of the ECB’s measures was to re-establish confidence and bring about a recovery of the inter-bank market. In this, too, it has not really been successful, despite the huge amount of money that it put on the table.

Indeed, now the French are looking wobbly. As capital fled the country between July 2011 and January 2012, France’s TARGET debt increased by €95 billion. France, too, has become uncompetitive, owing to the cheap credit brought by the euro in its initial years. According to a recent study by Goldman Sachs, the country’s price level must drop by an estimated 20% vis-à-vis the euro average – that is, depreciate in real terms – if the economy is to regain competitiveness within the eurozone.

There are many who would solve the problem by routing more and more cheap credit through public channels – bailout funds, eurobonds, or the ECB – from the eurozone’s healthy core to the troubled South. But this would unfairly force savers and taxpayers in the core countries to provide capital to the South on terms to which they would never voluntarily agree.

Already German, Dutch, and Finish savings amounting to €15,000, €17,000, and €21,000, respectively, per working person have been converted from marketable investments into mere equalization claims against the ECB. No one knows what these claims will be worth in the event of a eurozone breakup.

Above all, however, the permanent public provision of cheap credit would ultimately lead to a lingering infirmity, if not to Europe’s economic collapse, because the eurozone would become a central management system with state control over investment. Such systems cannot work, because they eliminate the capital market as the economic system’s main steering mechanism. One cannot help but wonder how thoughtlessly Europe’s politicians have started down this slippery slope.'

- Hans-Werner Sinn, A Crisis in Full Flight, Apr. 25, 2012

'..sanity..'

'..pruning the eurozone..' - '..reviving the entrepreneurial spirit?..'

'..Draghi's money. It covers up problems..' - inflationism .. intervention, obfuscation, rationalization and degradation..'

'..public finances in advanced economies were in “dire straits” and that fiscal deficits were “unsustainable.” '

'The Ecole Nationale d’Administration has produced .. very few entrepreneurs.'

'..my credit-view of deflation has accurately called for most of these things, including the rise in the price of gold and a collapse in the value of houses. Like Humpty Dumpty, people can define the term inflation however they want, but those who miss the boat on credit are left wondering why the economy is not acting as generally expected by their definition.

Most Austrians completely missed the ramifications of collapsing credit and the collapsing value of credit on bank balance sheets. Similarly, virtually all Keynesians missed the boat on the housing bust. In general terms, Keynesians missed the inevitability of a collapse that must follow a reckless expansion of credit. Only those who focused on credit have been properly aligned with what is actually taking place.

..

Hiking taxes in the midst of a global recession is foolish at best. Europe and the US need work rule reforms and pension reforms, not higher taxes. I strongly support ending collective bargaining of public unions, scrapping Davis-Bacon and all prevailing wage laws and instituting national right-to-work laws. Many US cities are effectively bankrupt by making pension promises that cannot be met. Greece is bankrupt for that reason (and others) as well.'

- Mike "Mish" Shedlock, Interview on the "Daily Bell": Rise of Money Metals, Why Credit Matters, May 15, 2012

'..sanity..'

(To recover) '..the increase in saving permits the financing of new investment projects..'

'..[Krugman] fails to consider the actual fiscal policy of Britain during the Great Depression.'

'..ethics in particular .. absolute principle of ethics..'

Banking Reform


As recently as 2010, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, said...

Another avenue of reform is some form of functional separation. The Volcker Rule is one example. Another, more fundamental, example would be to divorce the payment system from risky lending activity - that is to prevent fractional reserve banking (for example, as proposed by Fisher, 1936, Friedman, 1960, Tobin, 1987 and more recently by Kay, 2009).

- Full Reserve Banking

'Organisation seeks to create educational ecosystem around Linux-based OLPC XO laptops'

- ..to launch 'One Education' program, 11 April, 2012

DARPA Robotics Challenge, Apr 10, 2012

(Open Source Learning) - Ubuntu & Android '..neatly .. mobile and desktop computing.'

Collaborative Classroom Computer Programming with JavaWIDE

Debian Administrator's Handbook released

Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare

P2PU | Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything

..Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)

'..the recently-announced Ubuntu for Android is so exciting: it marries a full Android smartphone with a full Ubuntu environment (the common Linux kernel helps). In doing so, it makes a conceptual breakthrough:

Why carry two devices, when you could carry only one? Your next high-end smartphone has far more horsepower than you’ll need on a phone, and more than enough for a laptop. So we’ve brought Android together with Ubuntu, the world’s favourite free operating system, to give you a full productivity desktop that fits in your pocket. Android for the phone experience, Ubuntu for the desktop, all on one device, running at the same time.

So forget the office PC. Just dock your corporate phone and enjoy Ubuntu. Anywhere. One address book. One set of bookmarks. One place for your text messages and email. No more typing on a tiny screen when all you want is a keyboard and a mouse. Seamless integration of your desktop and mobile worlds. Brilliant.

Ubuntu for Android's key insight is that top-end smartphones are now more powerful than the desktops of just a few years ago. This means that a full version of Ubuntu – not just a cut-down Webtop environment – can run on your smartphone. That, in its turn, means that you no longer need a desktop PC at all – you just require a screen, keyboard and mouse. What you get when you hook up your Android smartphone with those is a full, no compromise Ubuntu system – and that is the real innovation here. This is not just desktop-like capabilities, as with the Motorola Atrix, but the real thing.

Ubuntu for Android is the real death-knell for desktops, not because people are moving to tablets, say, (although that is certainly happening), but because it is now possible to subsume your desktop into your smartphone. The desktop as such no longer exists, but is simply another aspect of your mobile computing.

That seems to me to be a fairly profound advance over previous ideas, and I predict that both Apple and Microsoft will come out with something similar because it is so obviously the right way to do things, and neatly resolves any remaining conflicts between mobile and desktop computing.

..

As the Internet of Things takes off, that's potentially an even bigger market than the huge mobile sector, which is already being taken over by open source in the form of Android. In other words, however well things are going now for innovative free software, they are likely to get even better in the future, when the core advantages of open source – zero unit cost, customisability, scalability and reliability – become paramount.'

- Glyn Moody, A golden age of open source innovation?, 14 March 2012

(Open Source) - '..full of creative exploration..' - '..the unschooling movement..'

Open Innovation Community

GNU/Linux Advanced Administration - Free Technology Academy

P2PU | Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything

Learning - Spontaneous, Complexity, Electricity - The Unique Individual

..Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)

'The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighbourhood was expected to be filled with dark matter, a mysterious invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force it exerts. But a new study by a team of astronomers in Chile has found that these theories just do not fit the observational facts. This may mean that attempts to directly detect dark matter particles on Earth are unlikely to be successful.'

- OSE, Serious Blow to Dark Matter Theories? 18 April 2012

'The fact that powerful solar flares have been found seemingly to affect the mass of the Earth, albeit temporarily, suggests that as an electrical property of matter, the mass of an object may not be altogether constant but may be subject to variations that old-paradigm physics would not allow. This would be consistent with the anomalies that have been widely reported in the experimental values of Newton's gravitational constant "G". This implies also that our certainties regarding planetary and other masses should be re-evaluated.

- Bishop Nicholas Sykes, Article 18 : Implications of the electrical explanation of mass and gravity - Part 3 A New Paradigm of Scientific Thought - The Electric Universe.

'Astrophysicists and astronomers do not study experimental plasma dynamics in graduate school. They rarely take any courses in electrodynamic field theory, and thus they try to explain every new discovery via gravity, magnetism, and fluid dynamics which is all they understand. It is no wonder they cannot understand that 99% of all cosmic phenomena are due to plasma dynamics and not to gravity alone.'

- Donald E. Scott, Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering), The Electric Sky

Donald E. Scott author of The Electric Sky joins us for a fascinating program on the electric universe theory. Donald has been a lifelong amateur astronomer and he holds a doctorate (Ph.D. degree), Bachelor's & Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. We begin to talk about the recent activity on the sun and how sunspot and solar flares ties in with the electric universe thesis. We talk about lightning, ball lightning and plasma and we get into some of Donald's background in this field and try to outline in general terms what the theory of the electric universe is. We talk about his most recent book "The Electric Sky" and also about Swedish plasma physicist Hannes Alfvén and how his work have contributed to this field. Also tune into our subscriber interview with Donald to hear more of this discussion. (Source, 2007)

Donald E. Scott interview:

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4 [1]

part 5

part 6 [2]

Universe - The Cosmology Quest, A film by Randall Meyers (Google Video)

'Halton Arp, a Modern Day Galileo'

'..Curious minds..'

Don Scott's presentation at NASA, March 16, 2009

(Book) Cosmic Plasma by Hannes Alfvén

'In the old order, most would-be one-percenters, in order to get ahead in life, would have had to apply their smarts and ambition to become conquerors, rulers, and government administrators, and in those roles to exploit the masses. In the new order, under what Mises called the "consumer sovereignty" of the market, their capabilities were turned toward providing for the masses of sovereign consumers.

The masters became servants: wealthy servants, but servants nonetheless.

The liberal ideological revolution had engendered an Industrial Revolution. And what Mises called the "Age of Liberalism" lasted from 1815 to 1914: a golden century in which mankind first got an inkling of what it was really capable of.

Tragically, the Age of Liberalism was ended by an ideological counterrevolution: a wave of statist thinking that is responsible for all the woes of the 20th century, as well as our present economic and geopolitical crises.

Now, the 99%, under the thrall of unsound ideas, are once again oppressing themselves. Thanks to the calamitous state of public opinion, the ranks of the 1% are once again increasingly being filled, not by capitalist-entrepreneurs serving the 99%, but by the state and its cronies exploiting and impoverishing the 99%. And the redistributionist remedies that the self-styled 99% clamor for would only accelerate this trend.

If our civilization is to be rescued — if the tide of public opinion is ever to turn again — it will be thanks to the sound ideas formulated by theorists like Mises and the scholars who work in his tradition. But that can only happen if those ideas are effectively disseminated by a new generation of communicators.

..

May sound ideas win the day, and may human society flower again.'

- Daniel James Sanchez, The 99 and the 1, May 11, 2012

'..tell your boss you think the company has a love deficit.' - Hamel

'..The next time you're stuck in a staff meeting, wait until everyone's eyes have glazed over from PowerPoint fatigue and then announce that what your company really needs is a lot more luuuuuv.’

- Gary Hamel, What Matters Now (2012), page 37

'John Mackey, the cofounder of Whole Foods Markets, once remarked that his goal was to build a company based on love instead of fear..

..

When adressing a large group of managers, I often challenge them to stand up fore love (or beauty or justice or truth) in just that way. “When you get back to work, tell your boss you think the company has a love deficit.” This suggestion invariable provokes a spasm of nervous laughter, which has always struck me as strange.'

- Gary Hamel, What Matters Now, page 37

'First, Let's Fire All the Managers' - Gary Hamel

Affectivity, Action, Electricity - '..in order to preserve society itself..'

(The third industrial revolution) 'The digitisation of manufacturing..' - The Economist

(Open Source) - '..full of creative exploration..' - '..the unschooling movement..'

(EU) - European Investment Bank - '..supporting European R&D projects..'

The Beginning of The Creator Unit - The Replicator (3D printing)

Paradise needs maintenance - ENS

'Like all revolutions, this one will be disruptive. Digital technology has already rocked the media and retailing industries, just as cotton mills crushed hand looms and the Model T put farriers out of work. Many people will look at the factories of the future and shudder. They will not be full of grimy machines manned by men in oily overalls. Many will be squeaky clean—and almost deserted. Some carmakers already produce twice as many vehicles per employee as they did only a decade or so ago. Most jobs will not be on the factory floor but in the offices nearby, which will be full of designers, engineers, IT specialists, logistics experts, marketing staff and other professionals. The manufacturing jobs of the future will require more skills. Many dull, repetitive tasks will become obsolete: you no longer need riveters when a product has no rivets.

The revolution will affect not only how things are made, but where. Factories used to move to low-wage countries to curb labour costs. But labour costs are growing less and less important: a $499 first-generation iPad included only about $33 of manufacturing labour, of which the final assembly in China accounted for just $8. Offshore production is increasingly moving back to rich countries not because Chinese wages are rising, but because companies now want to be closer to their customers so that they can respond more quickly to changes in demand. And some products are so sophisticated that it helps to have the people who design them and the people who make them in the same place. The Boston Consulting Group reckons that in areas such as transport, computers, fabricated metals and machinery, 10-30% of the goods that America now imports from China could be made at home by 2020, boosting American output by $20 billion-55 billion a year.'

- The third industrial revolution, Apr 21st 2012

(EU) - European Investment Bank - '..supporting European R&D projects..'

(Space) - Planetary Resources (asteroid mining) - '..Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft.'

'The Ecole Nationale d’Administration has produced .. very few entrepreneurs.'

'..a product of human thought..'

'..A policy-driven bank, the EIB supports the EU’s priority objectives, especially European integration and the development of economically weak regions. Recently, the Bank has also been actively supporting European R&D projects as part of EU's objective of building the world's leading knowledge-based economy..'

- Wikipedia, European Investment Bank

Europe. Economics & Energy - IT - Transport

Cloud computing for business goes mainstream

(Open Source) - '..full of creative exploration..' - '..the unschooling movement..'

Four Hundred Years of Dynamic Efficiency

Full Reserve Banking (Banking Reform)

'The Ecole Nationale d’Administration has produced .. very few entrepreneurs.'

Germany, USA - '..the problems..'

'..public finances in advanced economies were in “dire straits” .. fiscal deficits were “unsustainable.” '

'Now, this worsening in the data is no surprise, as the ECB's LTRO's have this time failed to lead to an increase in the euro area's money supply. In fact, in February (the most recent data available at the moment), euro area TMS contracted by 7.2% annualized, as private sector deleveraging continued apace. Note that the UK's 'double-dip' recession was also preceded by a contraction in true money supply growth (minus 9.3% annualized in February). Several governments are beginning to tighten their belts as well and the banks are trying to achieve the more stringent core tier one capital ratios that have been prescribed by the EBA (European Banking Authority) and Basel III. Thus, although indirect monetization of government debt is indeed taking place – mainly via the banking systems of Italy and Spain – no growth in the overall true money supply was achieved.

This is actually a salutary development. Although the economic pain dished out by the collapse of the artificial credit boom is great, there is no other way to reorganize the misaligned and distorted capital structure the bubble has left behind. Malinvested capital needs to be liquidated and/or transferred to better uses where possible, and labor also needs to adapt to the new reality (or rather, the unmasking of reality that the end of the credit inflation has brought about).'

- Acting Man (Source, May 3, 2012)

'The words unschooling and open source often make people take a step back. But if there is any mode of learning that fully embraces the philosophy of the open source way, it is unschooling. Some even use the phrase open source learning to describe unschooling. Both unschooling and open source are revolutionary concepts based on freedom of choice. They encourage us to rethink and reassess what, when, where, how, and why we learn.

Unschooling is an approach to education that follows a child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn. It is not based on the direction of a teacher or a set curriculum. It is self-directed learning.

Unschoolers take a hands-on, community-based, real-world approach to education--everything and everywhere is a learning possibility. Unschoolers may use an open source textbook like those found at CK-12 Flexbooks, take classes online through a program like Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning, or continue on to in-person coursework at a local college.

Unschooling lets the child decide what, when, where, how, and why they should learn. It treats education in a holistic manner where knowledge is naturally interconnected, not compartmentalized into subjects or separate classes. Parents of unschoolers recognize that learning is not always sequential or linear. This means that unschoolers may learn algebra from watching educational videos from Khan Academy at an earlier age than in a traditional school..

..


It will be interesting to watch how the unschooling movement and open source unfold. Unschooling and open source challenge our definitions of resourcefulness, self-education, self-direction, and self-motivation. It goes against the concept of keeping knowledge in the hands of the few and the powerful. Seeing children bubble with a love of learning is infectious, but seeing them burst with open source is bliss--and hope for the future.'

- Carolyn Fox, Unschooling is the open source way, 5 Apr 2012

In the Electric Universe - Evolve [into] 'full-fledged open source contributors.'

(Open Source) Open Source Ecology - Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

'..to promote the Open Web and openness in general .. open source thrives on challenges..'

(In The Electric Universe) Open Source Infrastructure, beginning of the Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)

Affectivity, Action, Electricity - '..in order to preserve society itself..'

'First, Let's Fire All the Managers' - Gary Hamel

'That level of ignorance is compounded by the absence of informative international reporting readily accessible to the public. With the exception of perhaps five major newspapers, local press and American TV provides very limited news coverage about world affairs, except for ad hoc coverage of sensational or catastrophic events. What passes for news tends to be trivia or human-interest stories.

The cumulative effect of such widespread ignorance makes the public more susceptible to demagogically stimulated fear, especially when aroused by a terrorist attack. That, in turn, increases the probability of self-destructive foreign policy initiatives.'

- Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Waning of the American Dream, February 28, 2012

'The U.S. Constitution was subverted in the wars against Mexico, Spain and Germany. Yes, Congress declared war in the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War and World War I. But the legitimacy of the congressional declaration was undermined by Presidential lies:

Americans weren't attacked on American soil, as President Polk claimed. In fact, volunteer American soldiers were attacked on Mexican soil.

The Spanish didn't sink our ship in Havana, as President McKinley claimed.

The Germans sunk our ship, but President Wilson didn't mention the American guns on board which violated our declared neutrality. Wilson's Secretary of State resigned in protest.

Each of these presidential lies was an impeachable offense. There were no impeachment proceedings. We just looked the other way.

These three wars of choice redefined American exceptionalism into something very different from what the Founders intended. We were no longer exceptional because of our unique form of government. The federal government no longer existed to protect the sovereignty of the individual.

The government now existed to promote democracy abroad. Never mind that the American republic was never a democracy. (The Constitution established a republic. The Founders rejected democracy because it didn't protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority.)

..

The solutions to yesterday's problems create today's problems. We live with the choices made by those who went before us. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was the worst President in American history: His intervention in the First World War was the equivalent of a European power coming to the United States during the Civil War and saying South wins, North loses.'

- Is The United States An Accidental Empire? May 04, 2012

Introduction to Democracy, The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

'..ethics in particular .. absolute principle of ethics..'

Banking Reform

'Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in essence an extreme leftist (and a very unpleasant man), merely flawed the U.S. constitutional system through his misguided ideas. In France, where intellectuals are taken altogether too seriously, his ideas were far more powerful than those of John Locke, and hence once the Ancien Regime was overthrown in 1789 the moderates such as Mirabeau and Lafayette were helpless against the Rousseauesque force of the Jacobins. The result has been a political system in which, through two Empires, five Republics and a Directory, property rights have never been adequately safeguarded. Only under the two restored monarchies, of Louis XVIII/Charles X (1815-1830) and Louis-Philippe (1830-1848), were property rights largely secure. However the sensible admonition of Louis-Philippe’s minister, the benign Adolphe Thiers: “Enrichissez-vous” proved helpless against the forces of renewed revolution in 1848.

France’s civilization is among the great glories of mankind, its scientific advances are immense and its cuisine is superb, but economically even these great virtues have failed to make the place truly prosperous. The problem is the innate philosophical belief that free markets are an Anglo-Saxon abomination to be regarded with deep suspicion and circumvented wherever possible by government intervention. Government spending of 56% of GDP (compared to Spain’s 45%) leaves little room for the private sector to flourish, while budget deficits every year since 1974 have caused France’s public debt to soar to 89% of GDP in 2012, substantially larger in relation to GDP than Spain’s. The Ecole Nationale d’Administration has produced generations of superbly trained technocrats, far ahead of Britain’s late-blooming business schools, but very few entrepreneurs.

- Martin Hutchinson, The French Road to Perdition, April 23, 2012

'According to economic historian Angus Maddison, Latin America had six among the world’s 30 richest economies in 1900. Today the continent’s richest country, by purchasing power parity GDP per capita, is Argentina, at No. 55, according to the International Monetary Fund. Yet the continent is not short of natural resources, not overpopulated, and avoided the catastrophic carnage of World Wars I and II. The Mexican author Enrique Krauze’s “Redeemers – Ideas and Power in Latin America” suggests strongly that the continent’s sad decline was due to the power of bad ideas.'

- Martin Hutchinson, The Malign Power of Bad Ideas, April 16, 2012

'The common assumption among policymakers is that, in order to maintain its higher living standards against emerging markets competition, the United States must invest more in higher education. To achieve this, the government has instituted a massive student loan guarantee program, with over $1 trillion outstanding and an average of $25,000 in debt for every graduating student with debt. Yet millions of students continue to graduate with degrees that have no obvious real-world benefits. There’s a disconnect here, and it is beginning to appear that the current U.S. obsession with higher education is misguided.'

- Martin Hutchinson, The Higher Education Money Pit, April 09, 2012

Germany, USA - '..the problems..'

CFC Ban Successful - Companies Prepare for a Fossil-Free Future - Germany's Hidden Champions

(Nuclear power) - 'We’ve closed that chapter' - Electric is the way ('..an all-electric car..')

(Space) - Planetary Resources (asteroid mining) - '..Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft.'

'Some time in the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources, Inc. will launch a series of mass-produced 9" space telescopes, dubbed Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft. They're specifically designed to identify which of the roughly 8,900 near-Earth asteroids are both smaller than 50 meters and suitable targets for retrieval back to Earth orbit..'

- Dave Klingler, Planetary Resources set to begin hunt for asteroids to mine in 18-24 months, April 24, 2012

Story - Raven I

Ambiance V (Fictional Story) - Power of Mind VIII (’..the plan..’) twenty-two

Phase 1 has begun (BM)

'An article by Professor Lew Spellman has caught the attention of the sharp-eyed, and may indeed be important. Spellman, who in the past has been an economist at the Fed and served as an assistant to the Chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors, makes the point that gold is quietly becoming a core banking asset for collateral purposes, at a time when the alternative, sovereign obligations, is becoming dangerously unstable as a bedrock of value. This is an establishment economist suggesting that gold is being chosen by markets as an alternative to money issued by government diktat.

He even suggests that ownership of gold would allow banks to increase leverage of their balance sheets. The London Bullion Market has been lobbying for this for the last six months, and at government level the Chinese have long pressed for gold to have a monetary role on a supra-national basis. Powerful forces recognise the benefits, and if the Basel Committee which is considering the matter agrees to banks using gold as Tier 1 Capital, it would create substantial demand for physical bullion, for any such gold would have to be physically held on an allocated basis.'

- Alasdair Macleod, A plea for sanity, April 25, 2012

'This is what we concluded, but not merely from the empirical data, as supportive as they are of this particular case. It follows logically that whenever an inflationary policy is pursued, the richest citizens will profit from it, while the poorest will lose ground. Inflation is effectively a reverse redistribution scheme from the poor to the rich. This is so because the wealth of the rich is largely parked in assets the prices of which tend to rise disproportionally due to the inflationary policy. Moreover, they have easier access to credit and thus can get 'first dibs' on newly created money. By the time this money has percolated through the economy and reaches the wage earners and the poor, prices have already risen and they will be confronted with the fact that their purchasing power has declined.'

- Wealth Inequality – Spitznagel Gets It, Krugman Doesn’t, April 24, 2012

'The big mistake in the Keynesian recipes to get economic growth going is that they insist to view the economy as consisting of blobs of aggregates. From this perspective, all spending is 'good'- this is to say, spending is spending and output is output in the Keynesian view, regardless of what it actually consists of. The Keynesian aggregations make it easy to construct mathematical models of the economy, none of which are actually saying something useful. Robert Higgs once called this approach 'the intellectual equivalent of a baby toy'.

A number of Western economists (such as Paul Samuelson) were still wondering in the late 1980's when the Soviet Union would finally overtake the West economically. Shortly before the SU collapsed in a heap in 1990, it became known (due to Gorbachov's 'glasnost' policy) that of 277 'essential consumer goods' 234 were simply missing from the Soviet distribution system – and yet, GOSPLAN, the Soviet central economic planning agency, always reported that the 'economic plan was exceeded' – which presumably was the reason for Samuelson's ruminations ('see, they exceeded the plan. X tons of steel were produced and Y tons of copper. They're going to overtake us!')

Now, the reason why nothing seemed to work was of course that a socialist economy can not calculate, as it lacks market prices. However, we don't want to discuss this aspect here. We merely want to point out that 'GDP' as such tells us about as much about the economy as the fulfilling of the 'plan quotas' of the GOSPLAN agency. It is essentially a meaningless number.'

- Growth versus Austerity – A Phony Debate, April 30, 2012

'..somehow Krugman must have missed what happened over the past four years in the United States with regards to deficit spending and the growth of the public debt. Or maybe he means they just didn't spend enough?

So what about those tightwads in the euro area? Have they been spending less? The total euro area government debt in euro terms at the end of 2007/beginning of 2008 was at € 5.985 trillion, or 66.3% of GDP.

It was clocking in at € 8.215 trillion as at the end of 2011, or 87.2% of GDP.

And the euro area wide annual budget deficit? That was € 60 billion at the end of 2007, or 0.7% of GDP. At the end of 2010 this had risen to € 571 billion, or 6.2 of GDP.

Some austerity!

In 2011 the data finally seemed to turn for the better, with the deficit falling to 4.1% of GDP euro area-wide, or € 388 billion – an inevitable result of several nations simply going bankrupt in the meantime.

..

Now let us first of all note here that it takes time for the investment errors of a major boom to be corrected. However, it takes even more time than it otherwise would when the government goes on a deficit spending spree and the central bank inflates like there's no tomorrow – which is exactly what has happened thus far in the US and to a smaller extent in the euro area.

Krugman is asking the wrong question – he should actually ask how it comes that the policies he recommended have not worked. Not only is the US public debt about 55% higher today than at the beginning of 2008, but the true money supply has been increased by roughly 60% as well. How can anyone argue that the government has not hewed to Krugman's Keynesian advice? The argument seems totally absurd.

Next let us counter the idea that 'stopping the stimulus measures will be a mistake'. This is a rather bizarre stance to adopt. After all, the Keynesians insist that the interventions they recommend will eventually create a 'self-sustaining recovery'. So at what point have we reached this happy state affairs? All we ever hear from them is that we're 'not there yet'. In Japan this song and dance has been heard for 23 years running. So we ask, when is it going to be enough?

We can actually answer this question: never.

The reason is that by 'papering over' the downturn with bailouts, money printing and deficit spending, the government has created the foundations of the next major bust..'

- A Barrage of Keynesian Advice for Europe, May 1, 2012

On the Origins of Money

Carl Menger's Theory of the Origin of Money

'Here are the details surrounding my speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. First, I am surprised it actually occurred.'

- Robert Wenzel, New York Fed: Leave the Building! Afterword, April 30, 2012

'First, Let's Fire All the Managers' - Gary Hamel (2012)

'Management is the least efficient activity in your organization.'

- Gary Hamel, First, Let's Fire All the Managers (Morning Star)

Affectivity, Action, Electricity - '..in order to preserve society itself..'

The Science of Human Action - Praxeology (The Logic of Human Action) - Die wirtschaftliche Energie (1893) (“Economic Energy”) - The Third Industrial Revolution has begun (6)

(In The Electric Universe) Open Source Infrastructure, beginning of the Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)

Haptopraxeologie/Haptopraxeology III - '..capital theory .. production..' '..In an Electric Universe..' '..thymotactiele..'

(In The Electric Universe) Open Source Infrastructure, beginning of the Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)

.."A Template for Approval Request Form For The Use of Free and Open Source Software"..

'..to promote the Open Web and openness in general .. open source thrives on challenges..'

Let's Kill All Proprietary Drivers For Good

GNU

'..send more monitors to Syria quickly.

..

Britain's envoy Sir Mark Lyall Grant said the expanded observer mission "represents the last opportunity to secure a solution to the crisis in Syria."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier in the week called for a global arms embargo and further sanctions if the government continued to break the ceasefire.'

- BBC News, UN votes to boost Syria mission, 21 April 2012

'..Annan plan is the "last chance" for peace in Syria..'

Turkey - '..Syrian violation of its borders..'

'..Earlier this week, the Foundation for Family Business in Munich filed a criminal lawsuit against the Bundesbank, accusing the board of disguising the true scale of risk born by German citizens.

..

..The latest poll shows that 56pc of Germans want a return to the D-Mark.

..

Dr Sinn's IFO Institute has refused to back down. Its latest report said Target2 violates democracy. "Who are the losers from this process? The savers in those remaining European countries that still have sound economies," it said. They have been pledged their assets "without their knowledge or consent".

"This enormous international credit should have been subjected to the parliaments of Europe," it said.'

- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, German tempers boil over back-door euro rescues, 19 Apr 2012

(Banking Reform - English/Dutch) '..a truly stable financial and monetary system for the twenty-first century..'

'..ethics in particular .. absolute principle of ethics..' - '..deze fundamentele ethiek..'

'..Annan plan is the "last chance" for peace in Syria..'

Syria - '..beg(i)n the (specific) No-Fly Zone..' ('..be enforced by any country (except the United States))

'U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said Monday that President Bashar al-Assad did agree to the plan, and it largely held "for a couple of days." But the shelling of the city of Homs, for example, resumed Saturday and has persisted, she said.

..

Representatives from one opposition group, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, visited Russia Tuesday.

The group's leader, Hasan Abdul Azim, said the Annan plan is the "last chance" for peace in Syria, Russian media reported. He is quoted as saying that the "Syrian dialogue needs" help from international groups such as the United Nations and the Arab League.'

- Joe Sterling, Syria peace stymied by 'outside forces," Russia says, April 17, 2012

(Syria) - '..the ceasefire .. a first [important] step.'

(Syria) - '..urged immediate implementation of Annan's proposed peace plan.'

1. President Obama should look in a mirror and blame his inept Mideast policy. Of course President Bush could do the same. Mitt Romney promises to be worse than either of them.


2. The second reason gas prices are high is inept policy by central bankers around the globe, in particular the Fed. Liquidity did not go where central bankers are desperate for it to go (housing), instead it went into food, energy, and the stock market. The president and members of Congress blame speculators.


3. The third reason gas prices are so high is the US is in a constant state of war for 10 years. Iraq, Afghanistan,  and next up Iran. The amount of jet fuel wasted in these endeavors is staggering, so is the amount of gasoline and diesel transporting troops to 140 countries around the globe.

'..real people who use their minds to make exchanges in the real world..'

'..economics as a science which is always based on human beings..'

'..fiat inflation is a powerhouse of social, economic, cultural, and spiritual destruction.' - Jörg Guido Hülsmann

'..At its heart it is a crisis of the fractionally reserved banking system..'

'..a truly stable financial and monetary system..'

'..the so-called Electric Universe is really just an hypothesis, a new way of interpreting known data by using both new and well-established knowledge relating to electricity and plasma. It should be emphasised immediately that, in this new interpretation, gravity still has a role to play but it is a secondary one since the electric force is so much more powerful. A major point to be stressed from the outset is that, in this interpretation of astronomical phenomena, scientists are able to call on evidence from laboratory based experiments to help form and support suggested explanations for a wide variety of phenomena. It has been found that, as explained in more detail in the above-mentioned books, a plasma in a laboratory is a good model for providing possible explanations for many recently observed astronomical phenomena which, in several cases, have puzzled astronomers seeking explanations via more usual routes. This is not to say that gravity is ignored and regarded as irrelevant; rather, the possible effects of the electromagnetic force on astronomical phenomena are investigated while still recognising the importance of gravitational effects. In the electric universe, the gravitational systems of galaxies, stars, moons and planets are felt to have their origins in the proven ability of electricity to generate both structure and rotation in plasma. It is felt further that the force of gravity assumes importance only as the electromagnetic forces approach equilibrium. As has been noted already, great consternation has been caused in astronomical circles by the realisation that gravity, as presently understood, cannot explain much that is observed if the amount of mass available is as now felt to be present. Hence, instead of positing the existence of ‘dark matter’ or following the path of modifying Newton’s well-tried law of gravitation significantly, it is suggested here that the effects of the electromagnetic force be examined to see if, in conjunction with orthodox ideas on gravity, these puzzling observations can be explained. However, returning to the realisation that much of the matter permeating the Universe is in the form of plasma, it might be remembered that these clouds of plasma respond to the well-known laws of Maxwell..

..

..it should be noted that nowhere is it being suggested that Newton’s law of gravitation is in error; it is simply being suggested that, in deep space where everything swims in a sea of plasma, the Maxwell – Lorentz electromagnetic forces dominate over those of gravity.'

- Jeremy Dunning-Davies, Plasma Cosmology Demands Proper Consideration, April 3, 2012

'The Milky Way is connected to the rest of the Universe.

According to a recent press release, astronomers have found “…evidence for the cosmic thread that connects us to the vast expanse of the Universe.” By examining the positions of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters around our galaxy, astronomers found that they are not randomly distributed, but follow what is called “the Plane of Satellites”.

..

Electric Universe theory postulates that currents of electric charge flow through a galaxy along its polar axis and then out through the spiral arms. A circuit across the galactic disk divides into upward and downward currents that flow back into the poles. This circuit is driven by Birkeland currents that connect the galaxy with the rest of the Universe. Presumably, billion-light-year long magnetically confined electric filaments transmit power from one end of space to the other.

..

Conventional viewpoints acknowledge that galaxies form clusters, but it was not until recently that data analysis pointed to those clusters grouping together along vast filaments of “hot gas” that are more than a million degrees Celsius.

The filaments are actually Birkeland currents, perhaps thousands of light years thick and millions of light years long, out of which groups of galaxies are “pinched.” When we acknowledge that redshift is more a measure of youth than the distance of quasars, there is a possibility that the visible Universe is formed from braided filaments passing through the Virgo supercluster to the Fornax supercluster across millions of light years.'

- Stephen Smith, Galactic Umbilicus, April 2, 2012

'..A higher, more comprehensive foundation is needed.'

(Peace) Essential Guide to the Electric Universe by Bob Johnson & Jim Johnson

The Electric Universe - '..electrical explanations..'

'Our ancestors witnessed a cosmic electrical discharge up close.' - Wal Thornhill

Suspending Disbelief - Rens van der Sluijs

(Plasma Universe) - NASA Conference Publication 2469 - Double Layers in Astrophysics

'A new scientific study has confirmed that the healing of the ozone layer is also reducing people's exposure to harmful UV rays from the sun. It will still take years before the ozone layer recovers entirely, but the string of positive news continues.'

- Axel Bojanowski, Healing Ozone Layer Lowers UV Exposure, Report Finds, March 16, 2012

'If every person on Earth used as much energy as the average person in the United States, today's known oil reserves would be exhausted within nine years.

..

..economist Jeff Rubin. A former investment banker, Rubin expects to see a growing trend back to regional and location production. He predicts that our world "is about to get a whole lot smaller."

A world that is smaller in this sense doesn't have to be worse off.

.."Economic history teaches us that hardship sparks invention," says economist Rubin.

This is the alternative that would lead the consuming countries out of the fossil-fuel trap. The oil-producing countries, for their part, appear to be the winners at the moment. This spring, they were paid more for their mineral resources than ever before.

But easily earned petro-dollars have made countries like Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria corrupt and lethargic. The oil billions have not stimulated economic development. In fact, they have tended to achieve the opposite effect, because it didn't seem necessary to develop other industries.

..

any German companies, including Bayer, BASF and Bosch, are involved in the development of Masdar. Electronics giant Siemens is building its headquarters for Asia and the Middle East in the experimental city. These are all companies that ran their businesses on the basis of fossil fuels for decades, and did very well as a result.

Now that conditions are changing dramatically, they are trying to turn adversity into a virtue.

..

At the end of the year, BASF will begin mass production of cathode materials for batteries at its new plant in the US state of Ohio. But the question of when electromobility achieves its breakthrough and becomes profitable for BASF will not depend solely on the performance of his team, explains Fischer: "The price of gasoline is also a factor."

The higher the gas price, the more worthwhile the investment and the greater the prospects for selling battery technology. In this way, the rising price of oil accelerates structural change in the economy, a painful process for everyone who falls by the wayside. But it is also exceptionally advantageous for those companies that have figured out how to use scarce resources in particularly efficient ways.

More Out of Less

There are many such companies in Germany, such as makers of heat pumps, insulation material and condensing boiler heating systems. One reason they are so strong is that Germans are accustomed to a lack of natural resources. The growing importance of energy efficiency is evident in the fact that a leading trade fair devoted to environment technology, IndustrialGreenTec, will be held in the German city of Hanover for the first time in 2012.

..

..Bernd Bohr, the head of the vehicle technology division. Bohr and his colleagues are consumed with one question: How do you get more out of less? The answer will also shape Bosch's success as a business. "Resource efficiency is a key growth driver for our company," says Bohr..

..

New business opportunities are emerging from the challenges faced by an economy that has to make do with less and less oil. In Germany, the decoupling of prosperity from energy has been happening for some time. Last year, the economy grew by 3 percent while consumption of oil, natural gas and coal declined by almost 5 percent.

But in most countries of the world, especially the emerging countries, economic growth and energy consumption still go hand in hand. A global change of course is overdue, according to the German Advisory Council on Global Change. "The carbon-based world economic model," say the scientists on the council, constitutes "a normatively unsustainable situation" and is as morally reprehensible as slavery or child labor.'

- Der Spiegel, Companies Prepare for a Fossil-Free Future, April 02, 2012

'..they are now setting their sights on the "hidden champions," the low-profile global market leaders that are typical of German industry.'

- Takeover Could Signal New Strategy for China, February 09, 2012

'..real people who use their minds to make exchanges in the real world..'

(In the Electric Universe) DESERTEC - Asian Super Grid for Renewable Energies

(In The Electric Universe) Open Source Infrastructure, beginning of the Enterprise Nervous System (ENS)

Affectivity, Action, Electricity - '..in order to preserve society itself..'