Relying on the last remnants of reason, so many sense the need for immediate action to repair our economy. They fail to realize that action void of principled purpose is chaos, regardless of the intensity or desire by which such action is fueled.

“Something is better than nothing, and bigger was better than smaller in terms of the stimulus needed,” said Chris Varvares, president of prominent forecaster Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis. “The economy needs a fiscal jolt.”

Something. They don’t know what, just something has to be done. So called “economic experts” are all adamantly voicing their opinions to perpetuate the power-grabbing monstrosity about to clobber the United States. There is one opinion in this piece piece that has merit at least at face value:

“[this] is 25 years of government expansion jammed into one bill and sold as stimulus,” said Brian Riedl, the director of budget analysis for the Heritage Foundation,

Indeed. Like a school of entranced, confused piranhas enjoying the largest power-pork frenzy in American history, even in the face of economic collapse it’s politics as usual for our leaders. While millions of productive individuals face daunting uncertainty watching their retirement circle the drain, or wading through a year’s worth of online out-of-state shopping receipts in order to accurately report use tax, our dear representatives in Washington are bickering over how many billions of dollars they can squeeze in for eco-friendly golf carts, Socialized medicine plumbing and any other pet they can lead to the trough.

If the motives of Congress, and the nature of American Government aren’t brilliantly clear to you at this point, please check your pulse. As Myrhaf @ The New Clarion put it, “This bill is the most dishonest government act of my lifetime, if not all of American history. “ - I couldn’t agree more.

Many are quick to spin this conversation into partisan terms, but very little would be different if the other team were calling the shots. Keynesian policies are poisonous regardless of who’s administering the dosage. Lack of explicit principles is why we are in this situation and exactly what will render attempts to remedy as futile.

The truth lies in the fact that our leaders don’t know what to do, so they resort to their penchant for spending other people’s money. The seemingly unanimous sense of urgent necessity for this bill coupled with fear in the private sector brews a green light for ruthless indulgence. This is as close to free-reign looting as they’ve ever been allowed. Like teenagers in a shopping mall with unlimited credit - anything goes.

Economics is a science of elegant simplicity, one that markets of the utmost complexity follow with strict compliance. Supply and demand for capital, labor and goods are the supreme rulers. Their only stipulation is the freedom of choice on behalf of suppliers and demanders. So long as this requirement is met, the market will function in perfect accord with reality and justice. Individuals are free to produce in order to survive and improve their quality of life, specialization will allow men to focus their energies where they are most productive, and the resulting innovation will add value to the lives of all participants. So long as men are free to think, act and keep the results there will be economic growth. Freedom and productivity lead to supply and demand - simple and elegant justice.

Only when the gremlin of Government intervention is introduced does the market become saddled with a layer of foggy complexity. Freedom is limited, production is reduced. Regulatory coercion serves to distort supply and demand in immeasurable ways by granting immunity from any number of economic laws to any number of market entities. For the Yin of every nudge there’s a Yang of market repercussions. In a free market, individuals will direct their time and energy towards whatever endeavor will provide the most return. A good decision on where to spend time or money rewards the individual with wealth, a bad decision destroys wealth. So long as the decision is left to the individual, the market will regulate itself. Conversely, when the productive efforts of individuals are restricted or amplified by forces outside the market of choice, supply of and demand for capital, labor, or goods is affected. These affects represent the tangible departure from justice because the gauges that indicate a good or bad business decision are no longer calibrated with reality. Faulty gauges represent a corrupted economy because men no longer can exert energy or direct capital as effectively. To destroy a man’s wealth, or even worse, hamper his means to produce wealth, is to restrict his ability to survive. Men will always seek to avoid a force acting to their detriment, so their behavior is distorted. They are acting against their own judgment by force. Add into the mix a set of arbitrary rules further restricting an individual’s ability to make good decisions precisely because of his tendency to do so and only chaos, uncertainty or crime are his possible avenues. The reason that regulation is impractical is that it is immoral. Destruction of wealth is the only possible result of trampling a man’s right to life, liberty and property by regulating trade amongst voluntary individuals.

These unnatural complexities are the same reason it’s virtually impossible to concoct a remedy, especially one that requires and prescribes more of the same infectious agent. Like an act of viral combat, our leaders aim to introduce Smallpox to alleviate Ebola. Even if the symptoms of Ebola are mitigated short term, does it matter now that the patient has Smallpox?

A mixed-economy is how we refer to the perfect market infected with the virus of regulation. Like any virus, regulation conveys damaging structural effects on its host. This is the exact nature of what the American economy has suffered from throughout the last 119 years. Not only have we ignored the cause, we’ve continued to amplify it at every opportunity.

The obvious something that is better than nothing is to stop introducing new viral agents. Let the infection run its painful course and act to administer a vaccine. The vaccine should be dismantling entities or legislation that interfere with the market. Any form of regulation should be removed, and we should return to an objectively backed currency. If a trillion dollar shopping spree is the decision, the only moral usage for that money is to send it back to the individuals that earned it.

History brilliantly illustrates the correlation of prosperity to freedom. The economic growth of America highlights the immeasurable benefits of a market void of the regulatory virus. Our current economic realities reveal the immeasurable degradation to human existence where the virus runs exacerbated by repeat exposure. To survive, man must think and act according to his rational judgment. If you want man to produce and innovate, get out of his way.

This is the only something that we should consider.

This is an very clear and concise explanation of deflation as it pertains to our current mixed-economy nightmare. Being somewhat of an economic noob, I had to read it carefully a few times to grasp all the underlying premises - good stuff.

George Reisman is my favorite and most reliable source for coherent and rational economic musings.

Put on your mixed-economy goggles for this one…

The impending conclusion is that price fluctuation is not due to supply and demand. Note the mindset of these economically ignorant cannibals confused individuals.  What distinguishes real consumers (according to their mindset) from speculators? The difference is need. They use need as their qualifying attribute of a consumer.  The extent of ones need determines their position on the right-trumping social totem pole. In the mind of an altruist, speculators don’t need the commodities the way Bob the gas station owner does, and Bob doesn’t need it the way Joe the truck-driver does. Mr. Speculator is a greedy crook trying to make a profit.  He doesn’t need oil therefore he’s not deemed a proper consumer and shouldn’t be considered in the supply/demand equation.  Speculators are merely moochers feeding off the market and pursuing their selfish ends, while driving up the price for average Joe.  What the market needs, according to the spirit of this video, is Government force via regulation.

What exactly do they think Bob and Jo are using fuel for - charity?

The underlying premise here is that Altruism considers profit as selfish, so speculators are demonized for seeking a profit on commodities futures.  Profit seeking is unjustly denigrated as a flaw in the “free” market which should be corrected by Government force. Who’s right to what are they violating?  None, but in our age of subjective-law it doesn’t matter. They aren’t adhering to the altruist-collectivist playbook, so they must be led to the sacrificial altar.  This of course leads to the fundamental error, or evasion, with this story - the implication that oil price fluctuation is not due to supply and demand, but as a distortion by those greedy speculators buying up all the futures. Speculators bid (purchase) a particular quantity of stuff. That stuff is no longer available, .i.e., supply is reduced. When supply lowers independently of demand, the price goes up. Demand means consumption, regardless of what a consumer does with a product after consuming it. Speculators, even though they don’t actually obtain the product in tangible form, are qualified as consumers just as an individual purchasing gas for and automobile. The price fluctuation is due to supply and demand, and speculators are a component of such demand.

If principles matter, we should remind these clowns who moan about the evil speculators the next time they purchase real-estate, stocks, bonds or any other investment, that doing such is no different in principle than speculating futures.

Unless one can identify whose specific right to what is being forcefully violated by speculators then there’s no legitimate justification for regulating anyone.

This is the exact pattern and nature by which every market suffers erosion and inevitable destruction courtesy of Government meddling. The speculation market is surely on the government lynching radar.

A potential answer for all the screams for fuel efficiency will likely never meet Americas highways.

Ford’s 2009 Fiesta ECOnetic goes on sale in November. But here’s the catch: Despite the car’s potential to transform Ford’s image and help it compete with Toyota Motor ™ and Honda Motor (HMC) in its home market, the company will sell the little fuel sipper only in Europe. “We know it’s an awesome vehicle,” says Ford America President Mark Fields. “But there are business reasons why we can’t sell it in the U.S.” The main one: The Fiesta ECOnetic runs on diesel.

………………..

Yet while half of all cars sold in Europe last year ran on diesel, the U.S. market remains relatively unfriendly to the fuel. Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline.

Other sources cite the tremendous costs and technical changes Ford would face trying to meet EPA approval. To put it in other terms - Ford can’t build and sell a product according to their terms, because the US Government violates property rights.

Stumbled across this image on wikipedia with the accompanying caption:

“Without a gold standard, governments can print as much money as they want, destroying wealth through inflation. A German woman in 1924 feeding a stove with currency notes, which burn longer than the amount of firewood they can buy.”

Is this where the US is heading? The markets aren’t safe, being subject to the immeasurable economic destruction wreaked by the planners. Savings accounts can be sucked dry by wreckless money printing.

Is there a safe investment for wealth? Land maybe?

Send this to every productive individual you know.

I’m unfamiliar with the host or the associated website, but insofar as this video is concerned I agree. Just close your ears during his reference of “drugs for the elderly” as a supposed proper role of government.

Whatever his flaws, Ron Paul is the only politician (that I’m aware) adamantly stating the obvious folly of Government meddling in the economy.

Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to obtain a [coercive] monopoly position in the mortgage market, especially the mortgage-backed securities market, because of the advantages bestowed upon them by the federal government.

Laws passed by Congress such as the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make loans to previously underserved segments of their communities, thus forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks.

These governmental measures, combined with the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy, led to an unsustainable housing boom. The key measure by which the Fed caused this boom was through the manipulation of interest rates, and the open market operations that accompany this lowering.

Same ole story, different scale. Controls breed controls - always have, always will.

This bill seems to be almost unanimously rejected by both sides of the pragmatic isle. Instinctively, the slightly more rational economic sense of the right invokes hesitation for support - not enough to outweigh their altruistic motives nor the temptation to seize the power-steak dangling before them.

The left, who burns with a passion to further socialize our economy, but are loathe to support Bush in such a “progressive” measure - especially one which could remedy the punishment of economic accountability for corporate executives, can’t stand not getting credit for one of their signature plays. To them, the bill isn’t quite unjust or irrational enough. They’ll compromise anything, including their own non-principles.

Damn! They’re amusing as long as you ignore the fact that they’re destroying America.

Yaron Brook again calls out GovCo. for their meddling and the results.

A brilliantly written piece by Yaron Brook which points out the positive and negative impacts of embracing capitalism.

For all of capitalism’s astounding accomplishments, the intellectual underpinning sufficient to deflect its critics has never been fully identified or understood. Capitalism and the profit motive continue to be viewed with suspicion.

After all, even in America, we live in a culture that lauds self-sacrifice, community service and “giving back” as its moral ideals. Businessmen who selfishly pursue profits, in contradiction to those ideals, are consigned to a moral dungeon from which they can only hope to escape on evenings and weekends. This is why Barack Obama can get away with belittling the “money culture,” his wife can smugly counsel youth to shun “corporate America” and John McCain can brag about working “out of patriotism, not for profit.” [bold added]

I especially like this line…

Capitalism will remain the world’s punching bag until such time as the profit motive is rescued from moral oblivion. Ideas shape history–and therefore political reform requires active, fundamental intellectual change, not passive reliance on favorable trends.

In other words, we must learn to explicitly identity and proclaim the moral foundations of Capitalism. Most of our media today bickers about political fluff with nary a mention of the virtually abandoned ideal of our nations economy. Until such fundamentals - our natural right to live freely while pursuing and retaining values - are more widely accepted, the system will merely sputter along subject to varying degrees of destructive statist intervention.