Putin's Cabana Girl

Skolkovo Foundation

Vavilov, the chairman of SuperOx, which is part of Skolkovo’s nuclear-research cluster, donated between $10,000 and $25,000 (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton’s family charity. Skolkovo Foundation chief and billionaire Putin confidant Viktor Vekselberg also gave to the Clinton Foundation through his company, Renova Group.  Of the 28 “partners,” 17, or 60%, have made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton.  WSJ

Uranium One

Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.  And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.  NYT 

Podesta Group

The Podesta Group is one of the most influential Democratic Party-linked lobbyists in the U.S. And it is headed by a top Hillary Clinton fundraiser who has been referred to as the “Hillary moneyman.”  In March, the Podesta Group registered with the U.S. government as a lobbyist for Sberbank.  The bank plays an enormous role in the Russian economy. It controls almost 30 percent of Russia’s aggregate banking assets, employs a quarter-million people and “is functionally an arm of the Kremlin, although it’s ostensibly a private institution,” Salon

A fool and his money...

Rumor has it that George Zimmerman managed to sell his Kel Tec PF9 at auction... for $138,900.  The gun retails for around $200.  Like I said, a fool and his money are soon parted, I don't care who you shot with it.

Uh, yeah, right.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is preparing to charge large institutional customers for some deposits, citing new rules that make holding money for the clients too costly, according to a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the plan.

J.P. Morgan is making the moves because certain deposits are less profitable to handle than they used to be. New federal rules essentially penalize banks for holding deposits viewed as prone to fleeing during a crisis or a stressed environment.

Market Watch
Wall Street Journal

Let's see.... I give you my money, you give me some trivial amount of interest, turn around and loan it out for 5, 10, 15%... and it's too costly?  I got news for you J.P, you're not doing it right.

How long do you think it will take for this to trickle down to retail accounts?

Back on the Road Again: The Supremes

The Supremes overturned aggregate campaign finance limits Wednesday, freeing wealthy Americans to give to as many federal candidates as they want — though the justices left in place the cap on how much can be given to any one person.

“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” the chief justice wrote. “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”

The value of money

Pity the poor statists. They got their global crisis, but by the time it arrived they had squandered all the public trust. Yeah, we know it’s broken, but we sure as hell don’t entrust the solution to the people who broke it.

Big Government a Bigger Threat to Us than Big Business

Recent Gallup polls show a fall to barely 41 percent in the number of Americans who see their county as divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” Some 64 percent of Americans -- and 48 percent of Democrats -- see “big government” as a greater threat to the country than “big business,” a number near record levels. (Clive Crook – A Crisis of Leadership)

It's a pretty good article Clive Crook has written, but he stumbles in a few places, such as when he questions  free markets (why do people like him never question government interventions?)

Orthodox economics, according to recent reports, says markets are always right. Really? (Clive Crook – A Crisis of Leadership)

Yes, really. The market was right when house prices crashed. Free money stoked rampant speculation and irrational exuberance, and the walls came tumbling down. The markets are "right" in the same cruel way that the grocery store cash register says the groceries you bought add up top $210 when you only have $200 in your pocket.

It's no different with money and its market price.  The only thing keeping the dollar from crashing is that the Euro is even worse.  We are the least dirty shirt.

Theft by Government is Still Theft

Since the abandonment of Bretton Woods, the dollar has lost 77% of its value against the GDP deflator and 97% of its value relative to gold. In October 2011, real wages for ordinary workers were 6.7% lower than they had been 39 years before. This is all the cumulative effect of 1% lower growth rates for decades.

How can we reverse course? A modern version of a link to gold for the dollar is known as the “price rule.” That means the Fed is to be guided in its monetary policies by the market prices of a basket of price sensitive commodities, such as gold, oil, silver, copper, and other precious metals and minerals. When those prices start to rise, that signals inflation, and time for the Fed to slow down the money expansion. When those prices start to fall, that signals deflation and recession, and time for the Fed to step up money expansion.

The Fed would then be guided by markets, rather than by progressive bureaucrats who think they know it all and should rule over the rest of us in their wisdom (see, e.g., disastrous inflation/recession cycles of the 1970s). That would have the added advantage of enabling the Fed to dismiss most of its troublemaking staff, which could mostly be replaced by a few interns monitoring market prices. (The Monetary Foundations of Economic Prosperity)

The US Government is devaluing our savings and purchasing power while food and energy costs have risen around 10% over the past 18 months.  That's why you're feeling poorer despite the lollipops and sunshine being peddled by the Obama hallelujah choir in the press.  Government theft is eating us alive.  

Saturday Reading

Yeah... It's a boring headline, but so what?  Everybody's tuned into football, leaf peeping, or enjoying the Indian summer.  Here are some interesting links I collected but ended up not blogging about.

Why Ron Paul Will Never Be Elected President

Praise Allah, we schwacked another turd in a turban who has been plotting America's destruction.  As a bonus, he was a traitor to America as well.

Instead of celebrating, Ron Paul called it an illegal assassination.  That's not presidential; unless you are president of an America-hating turd-world nation.  Dr. Paul is awesome on banking, economics and small government, but he loses me when he starts talking crap like this.


How Money Works

If you want a quick lesson on international currency, how one goes up and others down, and just what it means to have the dollar as the reserve currency (and why losing reserve currency status could be a good thing), read this article:  FP - An Exorbitant Burden

Ve hav Vays of making you stop talking...

Even Liberals are Fed Up with TSA.  Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, no conservative but a great blogger, has accused the TSA of rape.  In true Chicago fashion, HeimatlandSicherheit Kommissar Janet Napoleonitano looks on approvingly as the accused TSA groper threatens to file a defamation lawsuit against blogger Alkon for writing about the incident.

How to Balance the Budget

John Stossel explains how to balance the federal budget

Cosmetology Cartel Kills Jobs
George Will tells a true story that illustrates how government regulation protects big business and guards the prerogatives of special interest cartels, killing jobs in the process.

Clearing out the job-killing regulations would give us an immediate economy stimulating jobs program without the half-trillion price tag.

Finally, the Quote of the Week

The honor goes to the plain-spoken and always on his A-Game, 98ZJUSMC

I never brag about my paltry foreign adventures, but our leftist friend Ducky will nonetheless zero in on them from time to time, for some strange reason.  On this particular day, he was chiding me for my service in Colombia, a beautiful country full of wonderful people and an excellent military and police force.

How much did we pay you to guard the pipeline in Colombia?

98ZJUSMC Responded:

But, everything's just ducky when Shanks McMulligan, Lightbringer of the Receeding Oceans, Possessor of the Magic Key, Guardian of the Idiot Realm and purveyor of Keynesian economic nonsense pulls off another teleprompter enabled coup of Fordian dimensions.

Good as Gold

http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/06/chairmen-of-federal-reserve.html

Monetary policy and the gold standard can be confusing topics, but we must understand them if we are going to put a stop to government's wealth destroying shenanigans 

I've dipped my toes into Austrian School economics and f oundthe water a pleasant intellectual temperature but very, very deep.  I've read Ron Paul, I've read Murray Rothbard, and I still have at best a only very fundamental understanding of money and banking.

Why the Opposition to the Gold Standard?

Government meddling has destroyed the value of our currency, which in turn robs us of our savings and destroys our buying power.  Nathan Lewis has a gift for breaking down complex issues like the gold standard.  First, he explains why money manipulation is attractive to the mercantilists (those who oppose a gold standard or fixed currency.)

Mercantilists don't see currency instability and monetary fiddling as problems; they see them as solutions. A gold standard system prevents them from implementing this apparent solution, which is why they sometimes refer to the "golden fetters" that used to hold them back.

A standard pro-Federal Reserve argument says that the Fed expands and contracts the money supply to keep the economy on an even keel.  We know how well that has worked over the past 100 years.  Lewis explains the flaw in this argument:

In the short term, a currency devaluation, or an easy-money policy, can create what appears to be an improvement in economic conditions. We saw this with QE1 in March 2009 and QE2 in late 2010. In the longer term, however, this sort of strategy tends to cause stagnation and economic decline. The notion that a country can become wealthy just by fiddling with its currency is patently ridiculous. The most successful countries worldwide have always been those with the most stable currencies.

Such manipulations provide the illusion of wealth, but that's all it is, an illusion.  My house is worth more now than it was 10 years ago, but the dollars that it is priced in are worth so much less, it's probably a wash.  Again, Lewis explains how the Dow Jones Industrial Average is valued higher now than in 2000.  However...

The Dow Jones industrial average was worth about 43 ounces of gold at its peak in 2000. Today, it is worth about 8.5 ounces, a decline of about 80%!

So, like my house or the DJIA, it all looks good on paper, but it's just paper!  You can add zeros on to the price of something, but it will not increase or create real wealth.

A similar story could be told by per-capita GDP, in nominal and gold terms. Today, after 40 years of floating currencies--since 1971--U.S. per-capita GDP, as measured in ounces of gold, is back to levels first seen in the early 1950s. Forty years of easy-money currency fiddling has caused stagnation and decline, just as the Classical economists said it would.

This explains why when government economists point to statistics to say how much better off we are, we really don't feel any better off.  It's all accounting tricks done with currency manipulation.  We went off the gold standard in stages, with Nixon dealing the final blow:

The floating currency system appeared in 1971 for this exact reason. Richard Nixon wanted to boost the economy with easy-money before the 1972 election. Did it work? Officially, GDP rose 5.3% in 1972. Nixon was re-elected. This kicked off a decade of inflation and economic decline.

The Reagan recovery was real because it was driven by a strong dollar.  We all really did get richer because our money was not losing value in the 80's.  Alas, George W. Bush went back to the old government tricks, with President Obama kicking the printing presses into hyperdrive.  Here we are today, richer on paper, poorer in reality.  Thank the Federal Reserve.

Nathan Lewis - If the Gold Standard is so Great...
Market Skeptics