- The Re-Monetization of Gold (Gary North, LRC): “If gold is to be re-monetized, then this must mean that it has been de-monetized. But isn’t gold money?No, gold is not money. It has not been money for Europeans since 1914, when the commercial banks stole it from depositors at the outbreak of World War I, and central banks then stole it from commercial banks before the war was over. Gold has not been money for Americans since 1933, when Roosevelt unilaterally by executive order stole it from the public. Gold is high-powered money for central bankers, who settle their banks’ accounts in gold. But this is so far removed from the decisions of consumers that I can safely say that gold is not money. The question is: Will it ever again become money?” See also the Study Guide on Money.
- Jury Acquits Tax Protestor (NYT): “A federal jury in Memphis has acquitted a FedEx pilot on six counts of tax evasion after she testified that she wrote letters asking the Internal Revenue Service what law required her to pay taxes but never received a response. The verdict, reached on Friday, brings into question the I.R.S. practice of ignoring such questions, which it regards as frivolous because the first words of the Internal Revenue Code are “a tax is hereby imposed.” The pilot, Vernice Kuglin, 58, filed a withholding statement on Dec. 30, 1995, directing that no taxes be withheld from her pay. From 1996 through 2001 she earned $920,000 as a pilot for FedEx, but no taxes were withheld, she said yesterday. Normal withholding for the period would have been about $250,000.”
- 600 Military Families Demand Iraqi Pullout (Reuters): “A group of about 600 U.S. military families, upset about the living conditions of soldiers in Iraq, are launching a campaign asking their relatives to urge members of Congress and President George W. Bush to bring the troops home.” (thanks www.antiwar.com)
- Fed says it still worries about deflation (CNN.com): “The Federal Reserve left its key short-term interest rate unchanged Tuesday, and central bank policy makers said they still were concerned about a drop in inflation, though they saw signs of strength in the U.S. economy.”
- Worm Attacks Windows XP (NYT): “Known by a variety of names — including W32.Blaster, MSBlast and W32/Lovsan — the viruslike program, called a worm, first appeared on Monday. Even though the possibility of such an attack had been widely anticipated by computer security experts, the worm managed to take advantage of a vulnerability in a common component of Windows to invade numerous computer hard drives, where it was in position to impede operations and attack other computers.” (Note that the government’s warning came after the Microsoft’s.)
- Is there a global debt bubble? (Business Standard): “Many savvy global investors one speaks to are convinced that we are in the midst of a global debt bubble, and one that is looking quite over extended at this point in time. They point to the unique nature of the current debt cycle and its atypical behaviour post the stock market collapse of 2000. The concern stems from the fact that private sector(household plus corporate) leverage has never been higher in most of the developed economies of the world. In the UK it is currently189 per cent of GDP(private sector debt/GDP), in both the US and Germany it is approximately 145 per cent of GDP. “ (thanks www.prudentbear.com)
The Austrian School of Thought Packs a Massive Political Punch (Sydney Morning Herald). “If there was a global godfather of this neo-conservative movement, it would be Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist and social theorist was a rival of British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes’ interventionist ideas came to dominate policy after World War II, while Hayek’s drifted into the back rooms of history.But he didn’t give up: in 1947, he set up the Mont Pelerin Society, a secretive group that met annually to map out a neo-conservative counterattack against the growing socialist character of postwar economies. It played midwife to scores of neo-conservative think tanks, among them the Heritage Foundation (1973) and the Cato Institute (1977) in the US and Australia’s CIS (1975).” Warning: a very confused piece.
