08:07 – The taxes are done, other than printing off final copies to mail in. I’ll print those today, Barbara will sign the returns tonight, and I’ll mail them tomorrow.
So, it’ll be Romney versus Obama in November. I don’t much like Romney, to put it mildly, but he’s certainly worlds better than Obama. Let’s hope that Romney kicks Obama’s ass in November, and that the Republicans retake the Senate on Romney’s coattails. Ordinarily, I prefer that the president and congress be at each other’s throats, but we really need the Republicans in control to repeal all the laws that the Democrats passed and undo as much as possible of the damage that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and their crowd have done.
And it looks like the economy will turn sour again, just in time to frustrate Obama’s hopes. From about mid-2011, telegraph.co.uk had a “Financial Crisis” link on the hot news bar on their front page every day. That disappeared a few weeks ago, but I predict it will soon be back. The effects of Draghi’s LTRO have by now pretty much completely worn off, and the market euphoria from the Greek default is fast dissipating. People are realizing that the LTRO and Greek default didn’t improve matters at all. Fundamentally, Europe is still bankrupt, and now the vultures are coming home to roost. The euro crisis is about to come roaring back, worse than ever before. Europe, having wasted a lot of money to buy a little time, is now in a worse position than it was. Spain will soon be forced to seek a bail-out, with Portugal and Italy not far behind. And the cupboard is bare. This will be an exciting spring and summer.
I for one am glad Santorum dropped out. All his talk about the cable and Internet porn problem made me realize that he wasn’t the candidate for me. Not that I’m a proponent of cable and Internet porn, because I’m not. I think the government trying to do something about it would be about as effective as alcohol prohibition was. More importantly, there are other things that are far more important. Making government fiscally responsible is more important than any other issue. Scratch that. Making government fiscally responsible is more important than every other issue combined.
You have more faith in the Establishment Republicans than I do. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
I think there is a slim chance that Romney and other establishment Republicans will listen to those who know what needs to be done. The only reason I’ll be voting for Romney is there is absolutely no chance that Obama and company will listen to those who know what needs to be done. Given a choice between slim and none, I’ll take slim.
I live in Indiana, and in the Republican primary we have a choice between Richard Lugar, establishment Republican whose only residence is in the DC Metro area, and Richard Mourdock who appears to get the Tea Party ideas. I’ll be voting for Mourdock in the primary May 8th.
I have little faith that either “major” party will do the right thing. Both favor the interests of their major donors. Both have made this country into a police state. The current administration supported the idea that you can be strip searched if you’re arrested for a traffic violation. The Bush administration followed the 1933 Reichstag fire model after 9/11. I am not optimistic.
Rick in Portland
I will not be voting for Romney. It is a complete and utter pipe dream that ANYONE connected with the Republican party will repeal any laws passed by a previous Congress and President — and the do-nothing Tea Party has shown that in spades. Don’t come back to me with that line that they are getting the lay of the land and giving things time. They were elected to reverse what had been done, and I previously pointed to the NYTimes chart of how many of them have made an effort to to that: a tiny, tiny, miniscule number of about 3.
Lugar should have been ejected immediately after supporting the G.W. Bush personal war in Iraq, while he was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committe, and could have stopped that war. I won’t be voting as a Republican in the primary, so others will have to eject him. Which should have happened a decade ago.
Debate between Lugar and Mourdock tonight at 19:00 EDT on the Indy Public TV/Radio stations.
Btw, Lugar is pronounced just exactly as the guns Luger and Ruger. NOT LOU-gaar, as the national news media keeps mis-calling him (intentionally, I believe).
I’d have to agree with Chuck: is it even worth voting?
I’d have to agree with Chuck: is it even worth voting?
Yep. There will be one or two supreme court vacancies in the next presidential term. I’d rather have Romney making that choice than Obama. If McCain had been president, Sotomayor would not have been appointed and Obamacare would definitely be struck down, probably the entire law due to the lack of a severability clause.
As for the Tea Party’s effectivness, remember that the Senate is still in Democratic hands and so they are limited in what they can do. You have to think long term, not short term – that kind of thinking got the Republicans thrown out after Gingrich’s shutdown of the government. It’s hard to directly buck a popular president, Clinton knew that and he faced down Gingrich. Obama is still well liked as a person, so you have to bide your time.
Ron Paul, who is in line with many Tea Party ideas, has been in the house for long time and has accomplished nothing because he has no allies.
ech says:
As for the Tea Party’s effectivness, remember that the Senate is still in Democratic hands and so they are limited in what they can do.
Well, the one thing they can do is to vote how they promised to vote, which got them elected. And that, the overwhelming majority of them, have not done. The Tea Party is nothing more than a cover for more of the same. Which is worse, the Republicans, who trample on every civil right imaginable on their way to totalitarianism? or Democrats, who at least have a tiny respect for civil liberties at the expense of spending the country into the poor house? In the end, you end up with rights and no money with the Democrats, while with Republicans, you end up with the evil society of the USSR, which they once swore to us kids was the devil incarnate — a proposition which nobody I ran into in East Germany would agree with, even in the slightest. Those who had a complaint were opposed only to the premise that you cannot get rich under communism.
I will no longer vote for Republicans for the reason of a mere hope that they MIGHT — on the odd day — do the right thing. Guys like Lugar prove that day never comes.
OFD sez a pox on them both. I will be staying home this year for the first time in my life for a national election. The whole system is rotten and falling apart, and I will not take any part in the efforts of the usual suspects to shore it up anymore. We have no one. Let’s face it, Paul is too old and too doddering and even at that the media and the War/Money Party pulled out all the stops to shut him up and shut him down. These bastards are terrified. And I say, bully! I want them hounded from coast to coast, flogged, tarred and feathered, and a good percentage of them hanged.
Later I will say how I really feel.
OFD said: “Democrats, who at least have a tiny respect for civil liberties”
No they don’t. Anybody who would support strip searches for traffic offenses has no respect for civil liberties. Neither the D’s or R’s have any respect for civil liberties, unless, of course, you’re a corporation.
unless, of course, you’re a corporation with a lot of money.
There, fixed it for you.
No matter how distasteful the Republicans are the Democrats are worse. It follows that voting Republican is the best choice.
“…OFD said: “Democrats, who at least have a tiny respect for civil liberties”
You will have to show me, sir, where I said such a thing. It does not sound like me, no it does not. If I said such a thing it probably means I have gone back very heavily into the booze and dope again or I am now criminally insane. Please help an old farmer to correct the record here, sir.
I said it. And I believe it is true — they do not have respect for all rights, and apparently want to see people naked more than the other party (okay with me, but that must be voluntary), but in general, Democrats and Democrat judges come down on the side of civil liberties more often than Republicans. Personally, I believe they could have prevented a Bush II second term by campaigning solely on repeal of the Patriot Act, but well, they do not believe in civil liberties THAT much — just more than Republicans, whom Tricky Dick Nixon, showed are among the biggest hypocrites on the planet — and the most determined tyrants, in that they believe in giving big business anything it wants. I am certainly more socially aligned with Democrats than Republicans.
Well, Mourdock certainly did nothing to knock off Lugar in tonight’s debate. In fact, it was nearly a mutual admiration contest. Old-style debate, thank goodness, with a dead-silent audience.
This is turning out to be the most useless, even repulsive, election of my life, I believe.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-12/us-sues-apple2c-publishers-yield-on-e-book-pricing/3944840
“Apple is accused of teaming up with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Penguin and colluding over the prices of e-books they sell.”
Surely not… LOL
I knew it was you that said that, Chuck, and found it amusing that I got confused wid youse. I did not mean to imply, however, that you or anyone else who said what you said is on the sauce, dope or is insane. That I would only characterize for myself, of course.
I have zero use for either half of the War/Money Party and its collections of thieves, con artists, carny barkers, etc., not to mention its war criminals once they are elected and get their hands on DOD and the perfumed princes of the Pentagon. In social issues I tend toward the libertarian end of things, for the most part, but not an extreme of anything goes, especially if I think it tends to hurt the family, the country and Western civilization. Foreign policy? I am what they accuse me of: an isolationist, xenophobe, nativist, etc. Economics and finance? Tending toward the Austrians but with a definite protectionist slant for us Americans, goddamit.
What organization or periodical most closely fits my views on these and other sundry matters?
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/
Yeah, they got the goods on Apple in the price fixing, but I’m sure your shock was mock.
Now in Berlin, price-fixing was mandated. Want to buy a book? It would be the same price (within 4¢) anywhere it is for sale, so shopping other than the Tante Emma Laden (mom & pop store) would be no incentive, and Tante Emma thus has a better chance against the big chains and Amazon. Of course, we can’t have that in America. If Walmart wants to drive everybody else out of business by selling below cost, so be it. But just wait until you see the price elevation after they destroy the competition.
What a country!
Yes, my surprise with Apple was mock. It’s one reason I don’t buy their stuff. Another is that it’s way overpriced.
The Gold Standard. Who thinks the US should return to it? Apart from Chuck.
Assuming, of course, that the political will exists to do it, which I very much doubt.
I will not buy Apple stuff, either, both for their overpricing since Day One, and for their arrogant proprietary garden attitude. Ditto Microslop. And Sony. Pretty much like Bob’s list, I think.
Yes, we should return to the gold standard and get the hell out of the business of printing fiat currency on a continuous basis, being in debt way over our heads all the time, and wacky speculative financial adventuring on the part of thieves, cutthroats, pirates, highwaymen, brigands, and assorted riff-raff bankers and Wall Street shysters.
And no, the political will does not exist at this time to do that and won’t until after the whole system crashes down and is rebuilt again, i.e. after OFD is long gone, probably.
I always got a kick out of this Warren Buffet quote about gold:
Add my vote in support of the gold standard.
I’ll readily acknowledge the shortcomings of gold or any other hard currency: increase in supply doesn’t always match the real economic growth, doesn’t provide economic flexibility in case of crisis, etc. But gold’s detractors always refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of fiat currencies, namely that politicians and central banks have no willpower and cannot resist the temptation to inflate the currency and play games with derivatives and stimulus. To paraphrase Churchill, gold is the worst basis for a currency, except for all the others.
Exactly. I don’t care about the standard being gold, but we do need a hard money standard to prevent the government from constantly playing games with the currency. Even a commodities market basket would be better than the pure fiat currency we have now.
I’d agree that currency should be hard-based; and that gold is an excellent basis for it. Without that, those printing presses will always provide too powerful a temptation. The long-term damage they do in inflation, in devaluation of people’s investments and retirement income, is not immediately apparent, but it is nevertheless all too real. Absent a hard basis for a currency, then I think that gold is an excellent basis for personal investment within the current market structures.
Mind, when I say gold I mean gold – Au – the soft metal. I don’t mean stocks in gold mines. I don’t mean pieces of paper that purport to guarantee you ownership of real, physical gold – no, honestly, really, we mean it – we’re NOT actually playing float on the international currency market with your money for a few days first – honest, really. You won’t get caught out when the market crashes and it turns out we didn’t actually really have the actual real
goldphysical assets we told you we were buying with your money – no, honest, this time we really mean it.I mean GOLD – metal – guaranteed weight, guaranteed purity from guaranteed assayers.
Gold would have made a fantastic investment over the past decade or two, and may do so in the next ten or twenty years. However, one thing it is being touted as providing, and it doesn’t, is as a store of value. Within strict limits – established by current market conditions – it will do that as well. However, people are looking towards some sort of post-apocalyptic global economic meltdown, and saying gold is the panacea for all ills in that scenario. Maybe, maybe not, but there’s no guarantee that with a major change in markets gold will retain its value. Warren Buffet’s point is perfectly valid. Gold has almost no real utility consonant with market value – its market value is established only by agreement and negotiation. Anyone who, post-TSHTF, swans out into a marketplace expecting gold to be king may well be in for a nasty shock. The rabid survivalist nutters who’ve said all along that the heavy metals they will trust are lead and iron, may well turn out to have been prophets. A box of fifty .22LR cartridges, or a box of of nails, may well be worth more than an ounce of gold – or even a kilo.
As to gold, if the organic fertilizer hits the fan, the price of gold will drop significantly, because everybody will want to sell, and nobody will be buying.
Well, preppers aside, I’d suggest a market basket of non-perishable commodities for which the US is a primary or at least major producer and for which there is a broad market. I would have no problem, for example, with defining $1,000,000 as the value of a basket that contains a certain number of kilos of steel, a certain number of kilos of aluminum, and so on. To minimize the effect of supply/demand fluctuations, there should be at least several dozen commodities in that basket, with each of them initially making up about the same percentage of the overall value, and the makeup of the basket should remain unchanged over many years to many decades. And the government should actually have the requisite amounts of each of those commodities stockpiled for each dollar it issues.
Redemption might seem a problem. I couldn’t show up at a bank, hand them a $100 dollar bill, and demand that they cough up x kilograms of steel, y kilograms of aluminum, and so on. In reality, all that means is that banks would standardize on value stores. I might be given a choice of trading that $100 bill for x grams of 0.999 fine silver or y grams of 0.999 fine gold, or even copper, with the prices of those fluctuating with the market. But there needs to be some real item backing up that currency. Otherwise, the government can inflate at will.
And if the government does print currency without having the requisite hard backing in hand, everyone who had any hand in it should be hanged.
Who says the government (or the central bank) has to be the one issuing the paper notes and holding on to the physical assets. Multiple issuing banks worked well enough from a consumer’s perspective a century or so ago and there’s no good reason they wouldn’t work better now. The inefficiencies of the floating soundness of the various dollars (ie, exchange rates aren’t always 1:1) can be addressed easily in the digital, networked era. But of course we won’t go back to that because having a central bank gives the power to manipulate the currency to the central government, which gets us right back to fiat currency and the many lovely games that can be played with it.
Note the comparison between America’s multiple issuing banks in the late 1800s and Europe before the Euro became All. Sure, the exchange inefficiency was a nuisance, but look what’s happened in Europe now that the bloom is off the Euro rose. How’d that work out for you guys?
The nabobs in Brussels will soon enough be sent packing, and will be lucky to escape hanging from lamp posts. Good riddance to the Euro and the perfumed princes and princesses of a socialist united Europe. Buggers learned nothing, evidently, from seventy years of the Soviet regimes.
Although I support a gold standard, I do not agree with the doomsayers that Krugerrand and such will become the accepted currency of societies in breakdown. More likely barter will return than for zillions of people who know nothing about gold and its various pure coins, to suddenly learn all about it overnight.
A commodity basket is subject to the same problems it is in determining the cost of living: important stuff ends up being removed and it no longer is a basket representative of the economy or even much related to consumers. On the other hand, a full gold standard cannot be messed with.
These spoutings of Keynes and Buffet are lunatic ravings. I do not care one whipstitch WHY gold is the most revered touchstone on the planet or what people on Mars think–all one has to do is read history to know that it IS a touchstone since Egyptian times.
A gold standard brings its own problems, which are different than those in a Keynesian fiat currency. But who cares that it has different problems? The main thing is that it keeps government, politicians, and central banks from messing with the value of money, and taxing you indirectly by stealing the wealth you have worked to earn and accumulate, as it takes more and more of your assets to buy the basics. That needs to come to a stop. But you have to be really old, like me, to remember a time when there never was inflation: gas never changed a penny over many years; and a can of green beans cost exactly the same over the length of my entire childhood.
Chuck wrote:
“These spoutings of Keynes and Buffet are lunatic ravings. ”
Wow Chuck. I don’t entirely like Buffet myself but I wouldn’t call his views “lunatic ravings.” Not given his wealth and success.
I am no fan of Buffet’s. One of the primary ways he has made his money, is to buy into an industry, then short the stock of his competitors, assuming their stock will go down. Just because you are good at taking money from other people that way, and seemingly successful at a dubious life, makes you no Wunderkind in my book.
Did the rivals stock go down? If so was Buffet responsible in a criminal sense? Stocks go up and down, and people quite often over- or undervalue companies. It’s their money.
One of the reasons I don’t play the stock market and very very rarely bet on horses is that I know very little about either. That stuff just doesn’t interest me.
I never said Buffet committed any crime. My criticism is in the way he chooses to make money, which does not agree with my own set of ethics. What he has to say about gold is of no interest whatever to me. He’s no economist; just a gambler of a guy who figured out how to game the system and make a lot of money. I do not even agree with the way he has treated his children, with regard to his personal fortune. I’m glad he wasn’t my father.
I’m with Chuck on what he’s said here about gold and Buffet. And I am old enough to remember the economics that he does.
Plus he got off Germany and is now on ancient Egypt.
I think parents owe their kids a good education, health care and so on while they’re young and dependent. Once their adults I don’t see why they can’t make their own money. If he had given billions to his kids they might have turned into party animals like the lovely Paris Hilton.
If I was Buffet or Bill and Melinda I’d probably want to leave a fair chunk to them, but they don’t have the right to it all.
I think what Buffet does is to penalise people who are ill-informed or careless with their assets. I wouldn’t want deliberately to impoverish people but if they don’t take the time to become acquainted with their investments they should put their money in the bank. Just not a Greek or Spanish one.