Sic Semper Tyrannis

I just had an interesting conversation with a customer service rep for Verizon Wireless.

I was interested in getting access to my call history for the current billing cycle. Of course, I tried to get the information using Verizon Wireless Online first. Unfortunately, all that was available there was the history starting at the last billing cycle -- as far as I could see. I assumed I was doing something wrong, so I called customer service. Then things got interesting.

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In his May 2nd, 2008 New York Times article "Determining Who gets to Ride the LifeBoat", Floyd Norris discusses this issue of mortgage "bailouts" and economic downward spirals. Many have acknowledged that the question of "who is worth helping" is a thorny one -- in theory, it would take a court case and judge for each and every underwater borrower to determine if they were culpable or predated upon, and hence worthy of public aid. Obviously, that approach won't work for what must (presumably) be a rapid, broad-brush bailout.

Nothing new there. But what is interesting is the second half of Norris' article, where he takes a cue from a Bush Administration official's mention of the late economist Hyman Minsky. Minsky has been mentioned quite frequently over the past year on blogs and then the mainstream media (and now, apparently, in political circles), in my mind, because of his insights about the importance of the credit cycle to the economy. That immediately leads to exploring the causes of the credit cycle, and questioning how to ameliorate them.

But Norris and many in government apparently now are reading Minsky a bit differently, and the lessons they are gleaning from Minsky deeply concern me.

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Now that commodities inflation is undeniable -- it is hard to ignore pan-global food riots -- there is naturally a great deal of bickering over the cause.

This "ag-flation" surely must agitate many on Planet Wall Street, since they had decided by the beginning of the decade that inflation was dead forever -- vanquished by the "enlightened" Fed and its legion of obedient clones worldwide.

If you ask Ben Bernanke where the inflation is coming from, he'll point to anything other than the Fed itself. Roaring global demand is a popular excuse. A more mysterious answer the man invokes often is "inflation expectations". Whatever the excuse, The Fed doesn't like the damned stuff, which is why they (and other government bureaus) work so hard at stripping any trace of it from their key "inflation metrics" (CPI, core-CPI, PCE, GDP deflator and friends).

But there are big problems with each of Bernanke's excuses.

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Here is a video of me explaining my home-made anti-Fed poster at the April 15, 2008 "Grannie Warriors" Ron Paul rally in DC.

The poster puts the anti-Fed movement in historical context: in fact, the United States had two central banks before the Fed: The First Bank of the United States and ... The Second Bank of the United States. The first was effectively shut down by Thomas Jefferson, and the second was knocked off by Andrew Jackson.

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Today was transformative for me.

Not because I met Ron Paul in the flesh for the first time -- though that did happen, at the campaign rally in Greenville, South Carolina. I even shook his hand, and suggested he quiz Fed Chairman Bernanke on how exactly the shadowy and mysterious "inflation expectations" he always cites could be the source of actual inflation.

No, the day was a watershed for me not because of Ron Paul -- whom I understand pretty well and am already in support of -- but because of everyone except Ron Paul at that rally. The surprise to me was the people.

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Ok, you think this is going to be about Ron Paul, right?

Well, it's not! Hah!

Well, it kinda is, but only in a round-about way, and that actually bodes well for our beloved "Dr. No". From the article:

... are Americans merely frustrated with the current Democratic leadership of the House and Senate, or are they disenchanted, as well, with the leaders of the Republican caucuses?

An indication of the indignation with Republican leaders came from a unique Georgia special election Tuesday, in which two Republicans ran against one another. Under Georgia law, candidates of all parties run together in primaries to fill open House seats. Then the top two finishers -- no matter what their partisan affiliation -- face each other in a runoff.

In the overwhelmingly Republican district of the late Congressman Charlie Norwood, primary voting last month produced a run-off featuring two conservative Republicans.

His opponent, Paul Broun, was a quirky physician who claims to be "the only doctor in Georgia whose practice is almost exclusively house calls." A frequent candidate who was very much on the outs with party insiders, Broun barely squeaked into the run-off and most pundits stopped paying attention to a race it was assumed Whitehead would win with ease.

On Tuesday, Broun came from far behind to lead Whitehead by 394 after Tuesday night's count. The win came thanks to a remarkable coalition of very conservative voters in the rural counties of north Georgia, more liberal voters in Athens -- the home of the University of Georgia -- and African Americans.

With such a close result, a recount is likely. But Broun's come-from-behind win is likely to hold, and it is already being described by Georgia media as a "stunning upset."

And there's more than just house calls to this guy:

Broun emphasized a Ron Paul-like committment to "work to restore government according to the Constitution as our Founders intended." While the Georgian appears to be a more cautious constitutionalist than the maverick Texas congressman who is making a longshot bid for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, Broun borrowed one of the most popular of Paul's principles, promising that if elected he would assess any new legislation by first asking: "Is it constitutional and a proper function of government?"

No one was going to confuse Broun with a liberal, but he did display a Paul-like libertarian streak, suggesting that the federal government ought to stay away away from issues like gay marriage and legalizing marijuana -- matters that the candidate suggested are best handled at the state level.

So freedom is popular. And it is possible to throw a wrench in the party machine.

No, this isn't a riddle or a joke, though it seems you could hardly pick two more dissimilar aspects of the consumer economy. The short answer, put colloquially, is that "both suck, because both are far too expensive and rising in price rapidly".

But there is a deeper connection between the two, having to do with why they're so expensive and why they are both spiralling out of control in the United States. Of course, the problem with the health care (or health "insurance", as it is often inaccurately termed) complex is far worse, given the magnitude of that sector and its critical importance to human well-being. However, the structural similarities are eerie.

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... hilarity---and tragedy---often ensue. Case in point; in today's news:

A new study finds that against popular belief, eating tomatoes does not reduce man's risk of developing prostate cancer.

...

Previous studies found that eating foods high in tomato ingredients actually reduced a man's risk of developing the disease. The FDA even allowed the makers of tomato-based products to advertize on their products of the benefits of eating them.

Lycopenes are a form of antioxidents in tomatoes which apparently offer protection against prostate cancer, but now a new study has proven this to be simply not true.

Oopsie! But this was all harmless, right? Maybe not...

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One simply has to see to believe Sean Hannity's attack on Ron Paul subsequent to the second Republican candidate debate last night. Regardless of your view on whether the US government's foreign policy was a significant contributing factor to 9/11, reasonable people would have to admit that Hannity's haranguing of Paul to the point of preventing him from even talking was just indecent.

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Monday the US Postal Service will release it's "forever stamps" -- stamps that will always buy the same amount of postal services, no matter what the current cost is, in dollars/cents. This change is of course coincident with raising the first-class postal rate from $.39 to $.41, and raising other rates as well.

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In the latest "Credit Bubble Bulletin," from Doug Noland, a peerless job is done (as always) diagnosing the state, trend, mechanics, and consequences of the global credit bubble. But this time, Noland delves more into the prescriptive: how to fix the mess; how to do things differently?

Noland's call, like that of so many others observing the credit bubble (or any of its myriad asset-market bubbles, or any other large-scale financial shenanigans), is for more regulation. Not surprising. Noland trots out a number of quotes from the first half of the 20th century warning of bubbles and calling for greater central control of the money supply and the issuance of credit -- why didn't we listen to these sages? And of course, he doesn't forget to roast Milton Friedman a bit for unspecified reasons (that one's obligatory for those that advocate more regulation in general).

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Picking up on the point raised by Russ Winter over on his blog, I want to emphasize the wide gulf between the media's coverage of the Republican debate and people's high level of receptiveness to minarchist, "paleo-conservative" candidate Ron Paul afterwards.

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"People who trample on the Second Amendment, that's who."

Wise words from Ted Nugent, in response to a really horrid gun control essay crapped out by Tom Plate after the VT massacre. I've already written one reaction to the incident, but in riposte to Plates's essay, I wrote another, below (CNN's system would not let me submit it -- how convenient!):

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Today's tragedy -- nay, massacre -- is particularly real for me, as I was a student at Virginia Tech for six years, until about four years ago. While I don't know anyone still there who was directly harmed, I can actually visualize the places where the events happened, and vividly imagine them unfolding. It is chilling, to say the least.

But I don't think this can be written off as just "another crazy going on a shooting rampage". In many ways, the incident was officially mis-handled. Two or more hours elapsed between the first shooting with the first two deaths, and the second shooting, with the other thirty-plus killed. There was time there to do something; to get prepared.

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Paul Wolfowitz, Iraq War II mastermind and current president of the World Bank, has admitted he erred in intervening to get his girlfriend an unusually lucrative posting in 2005, shortly afer arriving at the institution (after fleeing the Bush Administration and the mess he helped to make in Iraq).

I find this more than slightly ironic, as Wolfowitz's platform at the World Bank has been a take-no-prisoners anti-corruption programme, which some have criticized as unrealistic and too extreme. And here I thought his main failing was his out-in-the-open neoconservativism!

Guess it's not so easy to be clean, eh Wolfie?