- Deflation hysteria spreads to Eurozone (BBC)
- Inflation, not deflation, is the real danger (Fin Times)
- Durable goods orders fall (Reuters)
- Gold may top $400 (Bloomberg): “The economy is a mess,’’ said Joseph Foster, who manages the $200 million Van Eck International Gold Fund. “We are under deflationary pressure. The Fed cut interest rates, and that’s done nothing to revive the economy.’’
- “Going Public” loses its allure (CNN): “What is the point, after all, of being a public company anymore? The stock market has not been kind over the past three years and increased regulatory scrutiny has made company heads spend more time bean counting and wading through legal problems than running their companies.”
- Saddam Dinar holds its own (The Scotsman): “The logic is simple: Iraqi civil servants are now getting paid by Americans, in dollars - a $20 one-off payment so far. Looted cash is also finding its way to market. The more dollars in circulation, the lower the price, and so the Iraqi dinar is doing better.”
- Surprise: government cannot provide (Washington Post): “[Iraqis] are confused that U.S. military forces, assumed to be all-powerful, have delivered little. They are unsettled by the lawlessness that has encouraged religious forces to step into the breach and vigilantes to dole out their own brand of justice. They are bitter at the promises -- yet unfulfilled -- of a better life that would follow the war. To many of its residents, Baghdad is a capital both liberated and occupied, but most of all just bewildered”
- Feds may Cut, but states increase taxes (Christian Science Monitor): “Faced with budget shortfalls and mounting pressure to avoid cutting social services during economic doldrums, more state lawmakers are abandoning their usual reluctance and raising taxes, some boldly enough to risk their political futures in the process. Alabama, New York, California, and Nevada are moving to raise taxes by record amounts.” Now, none of this would be necessary if the states had their own central banks!
- OSHA gave us safe jobs; it had nothing to do with economic development or the competitive marketplace--at least that’s what the Washington Post implies with its usual statocentrism: “Broadly speaking, the U.S. workplace has become markedly safer since 1971, when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created. Workplace fatalities have been cut in half, and injury and illness have fallen 40 percent. But while some jobs have always been pretty dismal because they are dirty, smelly, hazardous or pay poorly, the emergence of new kinds of health risks -- from terrorism to SARS -- are making some formerly good jobs bad, and some formerly bad jobs awful.”
- Ilana Mercer has a different spin on the claim that US jobs are being shipped overseas (WND.com): “In the U.S., companies must, moreover, endure endless, punishing, government-imposed regulations, which make doing business and staying competitive increasingly difficult. To the cost of the assorted alphabet soup of regulatory agencies a corporation must pay off, add exorbitant corporate taxes and expenses like workers compensation insurance. Factored into the wage price the corporation pays are large government-imposed costs. The company’s before-tax wage package must offset the cost of the income-tax burden as well as the cost of a government rape known as Social Security. Put it this way: the top high-tech employee rarely sees more than $70,000 in after-tax income, despite the fact that on paper he has a six-figure income, which the company duly pays. Without these onerous government taxes, this employee would cost the firm 30 to 40 percent less.”
- Chris Manion offers this take on the “eternal flame“ (LRC): “For our own times, no political personality surpasses John F. Kennedy as the epitome of the modern secular saint (the adjective “beloved” has been duly appended, so as to facilitate his becoming an object of national veneration). For this federal martyr the government has erected a modern secular shrine, and, in the manner of conquerors of earlier times, it has chosen ground sacred to the traditional religion it seeks to replace – Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of our nation’s truly beloved dead. To decorate Kennedy’s grave, the government has stolen a Christian symbol, the flickering flame that burns in every Catholic Church to represent the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. “
- Item that only appears to be self promotion: I’ve reviewed the movie Catch Me If You Can for LRC.
