Friday 11 March 2011

Friday Morning Ramble: Are we recovering?

It’s a long haul to recovery. Post-earthquake, post-economic bust, and post-political oblivion. How has everyone been doing this week?

  • Danyl has a great idea to put  John Minto, Chris Trotter and Keith Locke to work. 
    The dependency trap –  D I M   P O S T
  • Alan Bollard demonstrates he’s never read the Broken Window Fallacy, or learned anything about booms and busts:
    Rebuilding Christchurch will create conditions similar to the building boom between 2002 and 2007, Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard says.” [hat tip Berend]
    Building boom 'will help economy' – N Z  H E R A L D
  • OliverCooper sums up why Alan Bollard and other central bankers are getting paid the big bread: Interest rates are kept at 0.5%. Price inflation, in case you forgot, is at least 5%. So you're PAID 4.5% to borrow money. No wonder we do so recklessly...
  • What rights to unions have? “People have the right to associate freely, but no right to force their conditions on others.”
    Guarantee to Unions the Same Rights the Rest of Us Have – Ari Armstrong,  F R E E  C O L O R A D O
  • Bar-owners are outraged that competition from supermarkets has forced them to cut their prices and offer a better deal to consumers. If you’re worried about the shrinking profits of bar owners in New Zealand, Rauparaha recommends you head on down to a bar and make a donation tonight.
    There are others who need your generosity – V I S I B L E   H A N D
  • What do you get when a former Minister of Energy writes to the chairman of the panel reviewing Nick Smith’s Emissions Tax Scam? A surprising amount of good sense, actually.
    NZ ETS review under way – C L I M A T E  C O N V E R S A T I O N   G R O U P
  • The principle of non-initiation of physical force (sometimes called the non-aggression principle) is at the bottom of any rational politics.  But what ideas underpins the principle?
    Reduction of “the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil” – Roderick Fitts,  I N D U C T I V E  Q U E S T
  • Yaron Brook comments on Abraham Lincoln’s legacy at the 150th anniversary of his inauguration.
    President Lincoln, 150 Years Later – P J T V
  • “The literature that recounts the evils of the political/theological ideology of Islam is vast, growing, and informative. Unfortunately much of it is wrongly premised and written by individuals of a religious bent who have yet to check their premises. They really have no reason to cast the first stone at Islam, when the stones thrown at them share a striking similarity to the stones they hurl back.”
    Mosques vs. Churches vs. Freedom - Edward Cline, R U L E  O F   R E A S O N
  • What happens when an anti-jihadist cartoonist (and former Muslim) meets Jon Stewarts’s Daily Show? Does insight ensue? Or hilarity? Or just some very neat editing?
    Don't Judge a Comic Book by its creator's appearance on The Daily Show – B O S C H  F A W S T I N
    Batman’s Muslim Sidekick – D A I L Y  S H O W

Killian on OX news with Bo Reilly Source Bosch Fawstin

  • “New Senator Randall Paul is championing economic freedom while at the same time championing the morality that prevents it from existing.”
    Senator Rand Paul’s Morality and the Welfare State
    – Joshua Lipana,  C A P I T A L I S M  M A G A Z I N E
  • What you would have made if you had bought Apple stock instead of Apple products [hat tip Geek Press]
    Had You Bought Apple Shares Instead Of Apple Products… – M O N E Y   C O N E
  • Cartoonist Jon Cox keeps spotting his cartoons all round the Middle East, especially in nearly every street protest.
    Gadhafi Caricature Gets Around – J O H N  C O X  A R T
  • Has globalisation caused food riots in the Middle East and elsewhere?  No, says Don Boudreaux. “The people who today are hungry and starving are not those of us living in globalized, liberal economies; it is, rather, the poor souls cursed with the misfortune of living in countries whose governments follow the advice of the [anti-globalists] and ‘protect’ their citizens from ‘global economic liberalization’.”
    Food, Famine & Globalisation – Don Boudreaux, C A F E   H A Y E K
  • Andrew Schiff is the coauthor, with his brother, Peter Schiff, of the great introduction to economics How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. And he’s pretty smart too.
    An Interview with Andrew Schiff about Fishing Nets, Hut Gluts, and other Economic Matters 
    – O B J E C T I V E  S T A N D A R D
  • Events in the Middle East have made it abundantly clear—or should have—that If policymakers want to maintain food security they had better reconsider the arguments behind inflationism.
     Inflationism and Social Unrest – E C O N O M I C   P O L I C Y  J O U R N A L
  • America has a huge government debt crisis. How big? Take a look…

  • PS: You can get the graph Duquesne University economics professor Antony Davies uses in his presentation at his website.
  • So with a debt like that, is a crash inevitable? Find out…
    The Powell History "Crash Course" on the Coming Crash! – P O W E L L  H I S T O R Y
  • Don Boudreaux demonstrates how to debunk the Balance of Trade Fallacy in 200 words or less.
    Protectionists are to economics what astrologers are to astrophysics – C A F E   H A Y E K
  • Amazon have dropped the price on new book The Price of Everything. Some wags have suggested the author of The Price of Everything did not understand the price of his own book. The author responds, leading to this neat headline...
    The Price of the Price of Everything – Russ Roberts,  C A F E  H A Y E K
  • Here’s a lecture by Frederic Sautet to savour over the weekend on the Austrian school of economic thought (for all of you  who have been asking about it).

Austrians and Other Schools of Economic Thought from FEE on Vimeo.

Cheers, and have a good weekend.
PC

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,"

"For Sidney Bechet." (The first stanza.)

Philip Larkin, 15th January 1954.

One superb man writing about another.

Chris R.