“Our friend is doing his part. The marble for his new countertops will be cut in Italy… making employment for stonecutters and shippers. Carpenters will spend months knocking together frames and staircases. Heating and air-conditioning specialists, architects, wallpaper salesmen, decorators, roofers, electricians, plumbers, surveyors… We will raise a glass – or two – in honor of the spendthrifts who keep the wheels turning. And we give special thanks for that little subset of the 1% – those who sacrifice their own balance sheets for the benefit of the consumer economy. Yes, they will be poorer – financially – but at least they will have nice houses to live in when the next crisis comes.”
Category Archives: Essays
7 Lessons I Learned About Investing in Bitcoin
“This is Satoshi’s gift to the world, an amazing network and community for the storage and exchange of value. And the only way to transact on that network, is by making use of digital currency units called ‘bitcoins’, of which there will only ever be 21 million in circulation. That is what makes these bitcoins so very special as an investment. And this is why, when you become familiar with the Bitcoin culture, you’ll bump into phrases like ‘one never sells all of his bitcoins’, or: ‘To the moon!’ – pointing out the enormous long term potential of this technology.”
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/7-lessons-a-talk-in-buenos-aires/
Former U.S. Mint Director: Bitcoin ‘Likely Here To Stay’
“The next five to 10 years will be critical. But like how the mobile devices, Internet, cable, television, movies, musicals, operas and symphonies all have found their niches, the same will be with currency. Precious metals like silver and gold will co-exist with coins and bills (necessary if the lights go out or cyber attack), checks and money orders, credit and debit cards, online payments and digital currency. This technology has the ability to disrupt the status quo and springboard the global economy into the future. It gets sovereign nations out of the currency manipulation business. It may or may not be Bitcoin or its imitators, but chances are likely that digital currency is here to stay.”
http://www.moneynews.com/Ed-Moy/Bitcoin-digital-currency-sovereign/2013/12/20/id/542981
Housing “Bubble 2.0″; Same as “Bubble 1.0″, only different actors

“Why a ‘strong economy‘ is negative for this housing market; houses are far ‘more expensive‘ today then from 2003-2007 (i.e., ‘affordability‘ much worse); and how everybody has been ‘fooled by stimulus‘ and unprecedented monetary policy, yet again. This housing market is ‘resetting‘ right now; for the third time in six years. It might look and feel a little different, but as I detail in this note, it’s not really different this time around.”
South Africa and Ending Apartheid: The Free-Market Road Not Taken
“Many private businesses in South Africa were interested and willing to employ black workers and invest in their training and acquisition of more highly valued marketable skills. However, the Afrikaner government used its regulatory and fiscal tools of control and intimidation to ‘keep in line’ white employers who saw economic gain by ‘crossing the color line’ in their businesses and enterprises. Thus, it was political goals of the South African government and not the market motive of profit that prevented black South Africans from having the opportunities to rise more out of poverty through peaceful competition and cooperative commercial association.”
Jeffrey Tucker: Why We Love “The Nutcracker”

“How could they have known? Nothing like this had ever happened. And so this late-nineteenth-century generation was innocent and delightfully so. To this generation, the injustices they intended to purge from the world were slavery, remnants of the bondage of women, the perpetuation of feuds and duels, the despotism of the monarchical class, debtors prisons, and the like. What they could not imagine was the much vaster injustice that was just around the historical corner: mass use of poison gas, universal enslavement of the wartime draft, famine as a war tactic, the gulag, the Holocaust, mass incineration at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/why-we-love-the-nutcracker
Being an Austrian Is Easier Than Ever

“In April 2011, two years shy of its 100th birthday, the Fed held its first press conference in history in response to mounting criticism of its lack of transparency. In other words, the Fed felt that it had to walk out into the sunshine and defend itself. And, as no doubt part of the same public relations effort, recent Fed publications reveal a concerted effort to perpetuate the myth that the Federal Reserve System is not a central bank at all, but a system of banks that serve ‘our local communities.’ What’s different this time is that, with the help of the web, Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign, and of course, the Mises Institute, the Austrian School of economics is no longer an obscure and ignored minority.”
http://mises.org/daily/6613/Being-an-Austrian-Is-Easier-Than-Ever
The Bitcoin Central Bank’s Perfect Monetary Policy

“The following post provides an analytical framework so that critics and proponents of Bitcoin’s monetary policy can engage in a constructive debate. Bitcoin has a central bank called the ‘Bitcoin network,’ which we will refer to as the Bitcoin Central Bank (BCB). This central bank issues a currency called ‘bitcoins’ and processes the transfer of bitcoins between accounts. The BCB’s rule-based monetary policy was set at its creation and its independence is secured by the distributed nature of the underlying network. This non-discretionary monetary policy can best be described as asymptotic money supply targeting (AMST).”
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/12/15/the-bitcoin-central-banks-perfect-monetary-policy/
Ron Paul: After 100 Years Of Failure, It’s Time To End The Fed
“A week from now, the Federal Reserve System will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. Resulting from secret negotiations between bankers and politicians at Jekyll Island, the Fed’s creation established a banking cartel and a board of government overseers that has grown ever stronger through the years. One would think this anniversary would elicit some sort of public recognition of the Fed’s growth from a quasi-agent of the Treasury Department intended to provide an elastic currency, to a de facto independent institution that has taken complete control of the economy through its central monetary planning.”
It’s Not “If;” It’s “When”

“A populace that is otherwise unhappy with its government tends to toe the line if the country is at war. Further, the government has a greater ability to silence domestic detractors in time of war. Thus, the ability to hold power is assured. A state of war is the single most effective tool in silencing dissent in any country. In considering all of the above, not only as a present-day anomaly, but as a recurrent theme throughout history, any discussion of ‘if’ there will be an economic collapse, ‘if’ there will be an increase in the loss of basic freedoms, ‘if’ there will be a ramping up of warfare, becomes a non-starter. It is a question of ‘when.'”
https://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/1062-it-s-not-if-it-s-when


