We're about six weeks into fiscal year 2024, but if this year looks anything like last year, we can assume the federal government will continue to pile up debt at astonishing rates. According to the September Monthly Treasury report, the US government accumulated an additional 1.7 trillion dollars in debt for the 2023 fiscal year, which ended October 31. That' up by $319 billion, or 23 percent, from the 2022 fiscal year. As recently as June, budget-watchers had...
Read More »Israel Isn’t the Brilliant Friend of Freedom the Beltway Claims It to Be
It certainly wasn’t the only time calling a perceived ally of DC a democracy became a tradition with India. While India could have been the first non-European “ally” to receive such treatment since the heydays of the Cold War, the immense support India currently enjoys despite a litany of human rights violations will never outclass the kind of prowess Tel Aviv has from the grassroots and political elite in the Beltway. Between the dying enthusiasm for nation-building...
Read More »Fighting the Surveillance State Begins with the Individual
Fed up with the state's surveillance regime? There are ways to use available technology to frustrate government efforts to spy on you. Original Article: The Parasitic Rich Men North of Richmond [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »The Federal Reserve is Running Losses. Does This Cost Anyone Anything?
Financial statements of the US Federal Reserve, which consists of the board of governors in Washington and twelve district reserve banks across the country, indicate that the consolidated system has generated both capital and operating losses for the past couple of years. The Fed was created in 1913 to issue and circulate an “elastic currency” that could respond to consumers’ demand for cash, end bank runs known then as “money panics,” and serve as a “lender of last...
Read More »Killers of the Flower Moon Is about Government Failure
Most reviewers of the motion picture Killers of the Flower Moon distill just one lesson from the story: greed is deadly. The love of money leads to evil. But the real lesson should be of government failure. The movie follows the book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. It tells the story of the Osage tribe during the 1920s oil boom in Oklahoma. Tribal members became very wealthy because of the discovery of oil on...
Read More »The Parasitic Rich Men North of Richmond
Oliver Anthony's popular song, "Rich Men North of Richmond," describes the parasitic world of the Beltway. One hopes people understand the damage the political classes have done. Original Article: The Parasitic Rich Men North of Richmond [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »Is Migration a Tool of the Consumptive Class?
Migration is part of the wider concept of economic freedom. This makes it desirable if prosperity is the goal of policy. But more applicable to the current attitudes and values of Western leaders than mundane economic arguments, migration presents an opportunity to increase the pool from which they extract real income. This is required in the face of poor demographics and growing socialistic ambitions. The extraction is achieved by taxation and inflation, which...
Read More »Rothbard, Milei and the New Right in Argentina
Instead of the usual statist candidates, Argentine voters have to opportunity to elect a Rothbardian who is calling for radical free-market changes in the nation's economy. Original Article: Rothbard, Milei and the New Right in Argentina [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »The Interest Rate Shock Will Blow Up the Government’s Ponzi Game
In the international fixed-income markets, interest rates are rising, and the decades-long trend of declining bond yields has undoubtedly been broken. On August 2, 2022, the ten-year United States Treasury yield was 0.5 percent; on October 9, 2023, it had risen to 4.8 percent. Long-term interest rates in Europe, Asia, and Latin America have also risen sharply. The key reason for the rise in capital market interest rates is the central banks’ interest rate hikes—a...
Read More »Destroying Liberty Through State Protection: The First Amendment
Leave it to government judges and politicians to turn constitutional protections of free speech into new ways to centralize and grow state power. Original Article: Destroying Liberty Through State Protection: The First Amendment [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
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