Pep talk for academics

I have been out of academia and working for think tanks for a while now, and so I may have a better ear for the changing climate than those of you still grading papers. “Real people” are a lot more receptive to thinking hard about economic issues lately, for obvious reasons.

Govn’t Stimulus Means More Debt Burdens Come

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this Federal fiscal year will see a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion. And that is not counting what will be borrowed to cover the $775 billion “stimulus” package soon to be passed by Congress and signed by our in-coming president.

Since the beginning of this decade, the Federal debt has grown from over $5 trillion to more than $10 trillion. The two-year stimulus package and “regular” government spending will likely add another $3 trillion to the Federal government’s debt before the end of Obama’s first term.

On “Private Tyrannies”

If you have ever read much of the political philosophy and commentary of renowned anarchosyndicalist intellectual Noam Chomsky, then you are probably familiar with his view that large private business organizations are “private tyrannies” — oversized and antidemocratic institutions that function according to that most hated of organizational principles, the hierarchy!

Saving Alabama from Bingo

Alabama Governor Bob Riley has become a paradigm of state interventionism and tax-and-spend policies. Historically, Governor Riley has carried out his big-government policies with the help of his attorney general, Troy King. Together they helped to expand the government’s control towards a police state. Recent events have disrupted the rather unfortunate status quo.

The Future of Gold

The US dollar’s strength as the equity and commodity markets collapsed was due to deleveraging and an effect of the Fed’s temporary sequestration of dollars, taking dollars out of supply. That is over. Oil seems to be putting in a bottom on strong volume, no one is left to buy any more negative real-yield securities the Treasury is issuing, and gold has started looking very bullish.

Financial Crisis: The Failure of Accounting Reform

The greatest error of the accounting reform recently introduced worldwide is that it scraps centuries of accounting experience and business management. It replaces the prudence principle, as the highest ranking among all traditional accounting principles, with the “fair-value” principle, which is simply the introduction of the volatile market value for an entire set of assets, particularly financial assets.

Rules for International Monetary Reform

Any future reform will fail as miserably as past reforms unless it strikes at the very root of the present problems and rests on the following principles: the reestablishment of a 100% reserve requirement on all bank demand deposits and equivalents; the elimination of central banks as lenders of last resort; and the privatization of the current, monopolistic, and fiduciary state-issued money and its replacement with a classic gold standard.

A Book that Changes Everything

With piracy and struggles over intellectual property in the news daily, it is time to wonder about this issue, its relationship to freedom, property rights, and efficiency. You have to think seriously about where you stand. Read Against Intellectual Monopoly (Cambridge University Press, 2008) by Michele Boldrin and David Levine, two daring professors of economics at Washington University in St. Louis. They have written a book that is likely to rock your world, as it has mine.
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