Forum Post: Like Lemmings Off the Keynesian Cliff
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 6, 2011, 11:37 a.m. EST by ProAntiState
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The Great Western Crackup by Peter Schiff
From World War II until very recently, the West – specifically Europe and the United States – was on a course for greater centralization, greater integration, and greater economic intervention. But this consensus is breaking down. In Europe, the euro has gone from steadily adding new members to now facing the prospect of having its weaker members quit. In America, the US Congressional Supercommittee has now officially failed in its mandate to bring even meager cuts to the bleeding US deficit.
This is the beginning of the end. Both the EU and US are politically paralyzed, seeming only to be able to make compromises that involve more spending, more debt, and more central planning. The results are all too predictable to free-market thinkers: bailouts leading to moral hazard, low interest rates leading to ballooning debt, and eventually a cascade of systemic failures – leading to more bailouts.
This was confirmed yet again last Wednesday when central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic announced a coordinated tidal wave of new money to bailout the Western banking system yet again. Now, the only money you can trust is the gold and silver in your pocket.
LIKE LEMMINGS OFF A CLIFF
The poison of Keynesianism has left the politicians unable to even listen to free-market solutions. Personally, I have found it nearly impossible to find a Keynesian professor or official to debate me – even though (or perhaps because) I have a track record of accurate economic predictions. You would think at least one of them would want to tell me why I'm wrong... to offer some excuses for their failure to predict the dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, or anything that has come after that.
EUROPE
I have repeatedly stated that...
Markets are no free when some people can accumulate so much economic power to themselves that they can then use it to deny others their economic freedom.
Economic fascism is what it is.
The fact of the matter is that Europe is now talking about greater fiscal unification as the solution to their problems.
While America's fiscal problems get ever worse as libertarian Republicans with their extremist free market anarchy block all efforts to apply sound Keynesian fiscal programs that would stop the decline.
Peter Schiff is a pathological liar and a conman http://www.selfemployed-tax-deductions.com/small-business-tax-help/liar-peter-schiff-claims-on-stossel-he-was-planning-to-expand-his-failing-business-10-fold
And this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wGzZqAKbiw
You have to be a real dingaling to buy into his level of BS.
Thanks to the link to Schiff's video. I have made the same arguments for a long time when it comes to there being a double dip in this so-called Great Recession: there will be a double dip ,and it is NOT REALLY a double dip and not really a "recession." It is all part of one long economic depression. Peter is one of the few accurate people in making such statements about the economy.
If you don't think it is, please, at least, take a look at this argument:
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2011/10/great-recession-or-great-depression
What he says above about Europe and the U.S. both being in COMPLETE political gridlock is right on. He's also in complete synch with the Occupy Wall Street movement on his statement that the bank bailouts create extreme moral hazard -- where the rich do not fear taking extravagant risks because extravagant risks (if you are big enough) result in extravagant amounts of bailout money if your bet fails.
I think he's wrong about Keynesian economics. There is a place for it, but certainly not in bailouts. He is only half-right about unemployment benefits in the video you present. They ARE a disincentive for SOME to find work. For others, they are life-saving. For still others, they buy time to create new kinds of self-employment. The truth about unemployment benefits is not nearly as simple as he makes it out to be based on his own experience.
He's also right that gold is safer than money right now. Of course, he makes money off of giving this advice, so his thoughts need to be carefully regarded in that light. Gold is not always a good buy, but right now dollars and euros are quite perilous as never before have we witnesses such enormous games being played with them.
Peter Schiff is a mixed bag. His anti-regulation stance is also baloney. He probably should have been regulated because it may well been that the kind of things he didn't want to comply with WOULD HAVE BEEN RISKY TO OTHERS. He is probably right, however, that the regulations are ALL set up to benefit the largest firms and shut out all the smaller start-up. After all, they regulations we have left were all created or kept in place by congresses that we all know serve the rich.
Our current economy is a welfare system for the mega-rich.
--Knave Dave http://thegreatrecession.info/blog