Hiatus is self-explanatory. I’ve taken a break from my political blogging activities of indefinite length but don’t necessarily want to get rid of the blog as I may want to return to it. What isn’t self-explanatory is why and for the few of you who keep track of what I have to say, I think it’s only fair for me to offer an explanation. So, here goes.

Blogging has been dual-purpose project for me from the outset. Of course, I did want to ‘put myself out there’ and share my view of the political scene from a libertarian perspective, and it’s been fun to do so. But I was also looking to learn about what’s happening on the web. Along the way I’ve built several other sites and have several business interests that I’ve explored online, all of which were helped by creating and building traffic for this blog. I’m no longer focused on building my own online business so that aspect of my interest has waned and frankly, I learned what I wanted to about blogging, social media, ecommerce and the web in general. Of course, it’s all outdated in 15 minutes, but that is also something I learned. The web is evolving continuously, and in fact, the pace of its evolution seems to be speeding up. As dizzying as it all may seem, it is truly a phenomenon that is awe inspiring to witness and be part of in some infinitely small way.

But none of the above has much to do with why I’ve stopped my political blogging entirely. The reasons are much more personal. First, I’m literally disgusted with the state of our politics and spending time on the topic is just a severe downer. Even worse yet, the state of libertarian politics and the party itself is pathetic, bifurcated and corrupted. I cannot in good conscience, for example, claim to be part of a political movement that gives the odious, morally questionable crank, Ron Paul a pass for his past. His present is not terribly attractive to me either, as his hodge-podge of policies/beliefs and ideas run from Utopian to ignorant to fanciful, which I know is fun to do but has very little to do with the classical liberal values I hold dear or what this great country was founded upon.

The libertarian movement is also home to a growing crop of pseudo-intellectual adult-children who alternately refer to themselves as “anarcho-capitalists”, “stateless society” supporters and/or “voluntarists”. What most of them don’t understand is that they are subscribing to magical thinking and a political philosophy which is morally bankrupt – but that doesn’t stop them from infantile moralizing and asserting their view as somehow worthy of anything other than speculation. I should make clear that I think there are serious thinkers who adhere to anarchy, such as the brilliant Tom Palmer and others, but they are much more humble in their assertions. Yet even then, much of what emanates from those true intellectuals is a critique of the state rather than any kind of complete, morally sound political philosophy (anarchy is a solely a personal philosophy). As well, they don’t associate with crypto-racists like Lew Rockwell and others who cloak their hate and conspiracy mongering in the rhetoric of liberty.

I’m a classical liberal. Not a libertarian, not a conservative, not a constitutionalist (whatever that even means). The values of classical liberalism are what the founders of this country adhered to in forming our nation, drawing on the greatest thinkers our world has ever known starting with the Greeks and Romans, tracing their way forward along the lines of liberty and the good life. I’m content to be in that company and confident that this political philosophy is morally correct for one who supports individual sovereignty and a free society.

The final blow for me was realizing that most political junkies on the web only want to hear what “their side” believes. Ideology seems to be a proxy for reason for these folks and very few engage in real, honest and logical arguments. It’s more like rooting for your sports team than discussing political ideas in a search for truth. Sadly, I came to the conclusion that I was influencing no one and was often engaging in what I saw in so many others; reveling in the fantasy of being relevant, seeing my words appear on web pages and pretending it made any “difference” in the world. It doesn’t and I don’t substitute wishful thinking for facts, so I’m compelled to react to what I’ve learned. Farewell. Thanks and I wish you all a free, prosperous year.

Technorati Tags: anarcho-capitalism, anarchy, classical liberal values

I haven’t had a drink in 16 years, but I’m very tempted to buy a bottle of scotch tonight, drink it and talk philosophy, politics and morality all night, in honor of Hitch.

So much has been said about his intellect, so instead, I’d rather focus on how he affected me personally. I saw him as a safe harbor of integrity and wisdom in a sea of ideologically driven partisans. As such, he gave me a signal, a lead, an idea that I could attempt to hold a moral view of the world and make up my own mind about the affairs of the day rather than taking my cues from others.

Of course, concomitant with standing on my own feet intellectually came the responsibility to learn, to be informed, to never stop seeking knowledge. I rediscovered my own interest in “the classics” and the entire classical liberal experiment that we’ve been undertaking for the past 500 years as a result. It’s been a humbling and awe inspiring journey.

All due to Hitch. He showed me the way to reject ugly partisanship, dogma and its attendant hypocrisy. Of course, this required me to walk my own path, and Hitch his, but without fail, Hitch was always a beacon of moral integrity and intellectual rigor that I could take a bearing on, like a star in the night sky I could reference to guide me.

Most of all, I found his humanity, his generosity of spirit and his willingness to castigate evil and denigrate that which deserves denigration, warming and reassuring somehow. To be a thinking man, but to not retreat from the ‘real world, but instead be an actor in it: I would not know how to be so were it not for Hitch. He demonstrated a zest for life, and acceptance of its – and his – contradictions, and embraced his humanity without shame or fear. It is this quality, which I think is inseparable from his other traits, that touched me most of all. Hitch, I salute you, bid you farewell and will forever commemorate your life as an example for us all.

Technorati Tags: christopher hitchens, hitch

I know it’s fashionable in right-wing Christian circles to adopt a pose of being a victim of our increasingly secular society. Criticism of Tim Tebow’s continuous insertion of his faith into the normally secular sports conversation is seen as just another such attack by the partisans in this dustup, and according to the script, Christians are adopting a defensive posture, crying foul and claiming they are under attack.

As a superficial sports fan I’ve been amused by this for a while but now that the Broncos are on a hot streak, it’s pushing its way into the public dialog in the wider media and in popular culture. I have a few observations that I think are worth considering as to why there is so much hubbub.

A fundamental aspect of being American is freedom of conscience. This idea is the bedrock of classical liberalism and of individual sovereignty. We respect the individual’s right to make up his/her own mind about one’s relationship with God, and other important moral decisions. Some traditions have emerged over time in the U.S. with regards to how religious life and secular life intermingle. It seems to me that we’ve tacitly agreed that certain spaces are ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e.; we recognize that people of conflicting beliefs will all want to participate in such areas of civic life and accordingly, as a matter of politeness, we keep our religion to ourselves in those spaces in society. Most of us know what these places are. For example, in a diner, you don’t stand up and ask everyone to say grace.  You don’t preach at a dinner party of many strangers, realizing that there may be people of many faiths present who don’t want to be subjected to religious hectoring. Conversely, at gatherings in which most people are known to share the same faith, it’s quite appropriate to engage in overt displays of religious expression. I won’t drag this out – hopefully you readily recognize that this is traditional in the U.S.

Tebow constantly thanks Jesus Christ in a sports setting, in ways that intrude on our expectations of what are secular spaces, and in ways that don’t make sense – according to his own logic. If he thanks Jesus and then says, I don’t think God cares about the outcome of a football game – one can only conclude that he’s either lying or deluded. I mean, if God has nothing to do with the outcome of a football game, why would he thank him? He might as well thank Lucille Ball. But of course, what Tebow says at other times is that he “thanks God for everything” – football is part of “everything” therefore he is thanking God for winning football games, meaning that he believes God is somehow involved.

This is dishonest, but he does so to avoid the painful questions which arise from his beliefs. The most pointed question is why does God care about winning football games? And, btw, what about Africa? Was he too busy helping Tebow win football games to help those folks out? He was trapped early on in his campaign by these kind of unanswerable questions, hence his adoption of this slippery position.

Worse yet, we all know what Tebow is up to. He’s flacking for his religion to recruit new followers and to provide encouragement to other believers. I think most of us would not complain if he did it rarely and spontaneously on an enormously significant occasion. But he does so all the time, every chance he gets. I doubt he does so as frequently in regular conversation, or else he likely has very few friends. His objections to those who criticize him for this seem to imply that this is just the way he is, that it’s no big deal, but that is so obviously not true to most of us, adding to our perception of his hypocrisy.

This is why so many Americans are offended. Most Americans, including me, have no interest in attacking his personal beliefs. There are other professional athletes who are fundamentalist Christians, are they in any way “under attack”? Of course not, for just as we consider objectionable his intrusions into what most of us consider secular spaces in society, we would also object to any intrusion on his personal beliefs.

To put it plainly, Mr. Tebow, we think you’re being rude, inconsiderate and hypocritical. My advice? Mind your manners and respect our traditions. Otherwise, don’t whine when you get called out on it.

Technorati Tags: cosmopolitan, secular, tebow, tim tebow, tradition

Sigh, listening to the likes of Peter Schwiezer and the right wing echo chamber discuss ‘crony capitalism’, one would think that this kind of thing never happened in government before, or that other’s haven’t been complaining about it for years. I say welcome to the party, but you should realize most on the right are still largely ignorant of the true nature of the problem.

Why do I say this? Just listen to what Peter and his fellow travelers suggest as a ‘solution’ – “Throw them all out”. Really, that’s going to solve anything? Hmmm, I’m not nearly as sure that will make any difference at all. In fact, when one considers the broad sweep of how various government interventions actually work in the real world, and how individuals and institutions organize themselves to best suit their interests around these interventions, why is it reasonable to conclude that one set of office inhabitants are “the problem”? If fact, a much smarter observation might be that there is something inherent in the system, in the very nature of what government is up to in the U.S. that causes such uniformly self-serving behavior to become endemic.

I’m not at all sanguine about ‘legal corruption’ – but really, how are you folks cashing social security checks any better morally? Or collecting farm subsidies or just a subsidized student loan? You are all using political power to gain property – and using the law/state to create and protect your perquisites. There is something corrupting in its very nature about government picking winners and losers in society, taking property from one “group” of people and giving it to another “group”. Keep in mind that in actuality, there are no groups in society, nor is there even such a thing as “society” itself, only individuals who lose and gain very unevenly at the effect of these interventions.

There is an entire academic field dedicated to understanding such phenomena, it’s called “Political Economy”. This field considers the consequences of government actions via institutions, regulations and law upon individual actions. It understands, for example, that if you subsidize energy production of one type, that political forces will be drawn into action to promote or defeat it. That individuals will seek to benefit from these interventions, that those who run institutions will seek to reinforce their powers and expand their purview simply due to the individuals involved pursuing their self interest in legal and rational ways.

What it doesn’t do is demonize the individual participants in the system. In fact, once one gets realistic about how politics, regulation and self-interest intersects, it becomes readily apparent that the government cannot intervene in free markets without such behavior that the right is suddenly bemoaning from occurring. It’s axiomatic and unavoidable.

I am very pleased the right is getting worked up about this. Properly understood, this issue could actually be a strong platform to advocate for a real rollback of government, if the philosophical case is advanced properly. But instead, the right is personalizing it, focusing on one elected official or another – which is okay, as far as it goes. But the bigger issue would require right wingers to question their view of “good government” interventions such as social security or drug laws – and if you want to see abuse of power and ridiculous, un-American actions, just look at the drug war – 50% of U.S. criminal justice spending is on drug enforcment now. It is filled with government employees perpetuating their own and their institutions interests, and locking people up who never hurt a soul. Just looking at DEA property seizures should be enough to get Tea Partiers out in the streets, but that would take an actually consistent moral stand, one that I’ve yet to see emanating from them or the other denizens of right wing politics.

Unfortunately, the right isn’t willing to look hard at the basic problems in our society yet and is content to become ever more morally self-righteous. Have at it, I’m sure it feels good, but don’t for a moment think this campaign will result in better government or politics. To believe so is simply wishful thinking.

Next time you hear Tom Friedman or some other supposed ‘sophisticate’ praising China’s enlightened, technocratic government or it’s vaunted economic wisdom, remind them of these prisons and prisoners. This is an ongoing human rights violation and a crime against humanity. Friedman once longed for the U.S. to be “China for a day” so the U.S. president could just order the policies he knows that would be best for the U.S. How delusional!

Watch the video and weep for these poor souls.

Technorati Tags: china, prison labor, slavery

Adbusters, an anarcho-communist activist group, is the organizing force behind ‘Occupy’. Adbusters and their fellow travelers subscribe to a political philosophy called anarcho-communism. This letter is an attempt to take you folks and your ideas seriously, and to respond to you.

I know your ideas come from Kropotkin, Baikunin and Proudhon, and that you believe they saw through this corrupt system of control we idiots call freedom and capitalism. But you see, just like all other communist/collectivist ideologies, that worldview is only interesting as criticism. It doesn’t possess a stitch of real world applicability, and I think we see this reflected in the ‘Occupy’ movement in the sense that you hear complaints informed by this view ‘it’s our park’, ‘it’s our street’ etc., as a fundamental precept of this philosophy is that property per se should be eliminated. (I’m also writing for people who know nothing about you). Anarcho-communists should also be aware that this entire line of thinking was debunked a long time ago – here’s an article from 1970 that will straighten out anyone confused enough to be anarcho-communist  http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard122.html .

You see, there is no way to replicate the information transmission system of free markets. Economists and political philosophers had this debate for the most of the 20th century, and even Robert Heilbronner finally gave up the ghost in 1989. There is no effective way to replicate the wealth producing effects of private markets. The mechanics of price, profits and property in conjunction with free people trading in that system, with recourse to state enforcement of contracts unleashed a wave of wealth creation that is simply unprecedented in the history of human civilization.  Any data driven analysis shows this is true to a shocking scale, it’s not subtle, it’s revolutionary. The adoption of what is referred to as ‘classical liberal’ political system utterly changed the world in a way that nobody predicted. It was a step function – unprecedented and responsible for the explosion of wealth in the world.

Your critique of capitalism and property neglects to properly weight the huge, unequivocal benefits to mankind in lifespan, health, wealth and other real measures of human quality of life that this flawed version of capitalism and liberty has delivered.  Societies that haven’t adopted this classically liberal system have been left to suffer unnecessarily, almost always under the jackboot of some thuggish dictator who claimed to stand for ‘the people’. And please don’t go on about the exploitative nature of wage labor – the data doesn’t support that either. and you should know that the labor theory of value was also disproved (a long time ago, all economists agree). That pesky, wealthy middle class just keeps slowing down the revolution, I know. How can you folks believe such disproved ideas in 2011?  You have to ignore huge amounts of data and create “facts” from whole cloth to miss what’s really going on in the world, but it’s you who call us delusional? What a galling combination of arrogance and naivete.

I know, I know, you are just bubbling with anger and readiness to explain how “property is theft” and the exploitative nature of “wage labor” as part of you conspiracy narrative, but your arguments don’t pass muster. The part that is missing in the west is the large cabal controlling the financial  conspiracy you think exists, when in fact the root problem is an over- encroaching state informed by such collectivist philosophies as Social Justice Theory, Marxism and socialism in the first place. The problem is an unlimited, busy body state that destroys virtually everything it touches.

Take your view of the banking/monetary system – it only gets the powers it holds over our destiny by government. We don’t have a free market banking/securities/insurance market, so any critique of  it should start with the fact that it’s not a free market. Also, you shouldn’t be surprised that government controlled banks et al seek to affect the actions of those regulatory bodies that govern them. We have a fundamental right to petition our government and whether you like it or not, corporations are collections of people – collectivist in fact, just voluntary – and yes, hierarchical and wage based. I know you object to these things but your opinion doesn’t reduce the rights of people in corporations to express their interests collectively . Why should folks who work in such settings lose their rights to free speech and to petition their government on behalf of their interests? Are trade unions the only collectivist groups that are allowed a voice in your worldview?

There is no evil cabal of wealthy people conspiring to manipulate the global financial system to keep exploiting the people. Rather, there is a very imperfect financial marketplace that is intervened in by governments in absurd ways all around the world, mostly without regard to the unintended consequences of their actions. Fyi, this is why bankers/securities industry collect so much wealth. They are able to tilt the field to their favor via government protection, but they don’t  don’t do so by breaking the law. Rather, they simply try to influence the politicians and regulators to make decisions in their interests via legal means. Please  understand this. When you assign our difficulties to a conspiracy of evil rich people or criminal acts this causes you to miss the real problem in the first place – state intervention to try and “protect” us.

Jeffrey Friedman and Wladimir Kraus’s Engineering the Financial Crisis explains the nature of this problem, particularly with respect to the perverse incentives of the institutional structure of global financial regulation, very clearly. They provide a much more evidence based and coherent explanation of our economic crisis than any conspiracy theory you folks have ever dreamed up. A video summarizing this view can be seen here http://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/engineering-financial-crisis-systemic-risk-failure-regulation

Worse yet, your incomplete, Utopian prescriptions for a collectivist, anarchic society based on fanciful views of human nature’s propensity for mutual aid ignore the fact that I don’t need protection from mankind’s good impulses, I need protection from mankind’s bad impulses (like your’s). The entire classical liberal vision can be explained as a desire to protect the “people” from exploitation by ‘bad’ people taking power in government. Even more to the point, your anarchic beliefs simply don’t prescribe a workable institutional structure or really any kind of implementation vision. In my opinion, they are very likely to result in chaos and then totalitarian government if one examines history for the results of similar Utopian efforts

In closing, I do want to say that I  understand your anger. The current combination of crony capitalism and out of control local, state and federal governments that are destroying our liberty and prosperity is unworkable and crumbling before our eyes. It’s also true that the current crop of political choices are mostly unappealing to anyone seriously wanting to improve our society. However, proscriptions for more government intervention and more handouts (wiping out student loan debt, for example) are the kind of policies that created this mess in the first place. Rolling back government to its role of protecting individual rights and delivering some public good and protecting us from dangerous externalities is the solution that will deliver higher levels of prosperity – not anarchy or a larger state.

Technorati Tags: adbusters, anarcho communism, anarchy, free banking, kropotkin, liberty, occupy wall street, proudon

The spectacle happening on Wall Street and in other cities across the U.S. is no mystery. We turned government into a teat for special interests to suckle from a long time ago. It’s inevitable that some people will get angry and believe that they should get a chance to live off the rest of us too, the weak and confused especially. We are at the point where putting our heads in the sand and hoping that things will eventually work out is over and either we radically change the role of govt in our societies or we go the way of the Roman empire.

Government, Progressives, Marxists and other Socialists have infected large parts of society with an illiberal philosophy, one that craves power and is in the business of “social justice”. It sounds like such a nice term, but think about it. It takes the notion of justice which is about law, crime and punishment, which we have traditionally limited to crimes against persons and property, or tort law for contracts, and applies it to social outcomes that they arbitrarily deem as “fair” (those of you informed about political philosophy will know that I’m referring to Rawls, not Wallis).

There is ample academic criticism of this ideology for it to have been set aside by now or at a minimum, regarded with proper skepticism, but see, they just don’t care. They’ve combined this flawed belief system (one that gives them certain moral superiority, a priori) with the power based politics of the leftists and the new leftists who concluded that their philosophies were useless if they didn’t gain power decades ago. That’s why they so value Mao’s insight about “power coming from the barrel of a gun”. The amalgam that results is this confused and rudderless mob babbling like morons. The good news is that they are largely harmless as these folks wouldn’t for a second actually sacrifice themselves for any cause, no less this one. They just want to have a tantrum and they don’t even realize that the rest of us are treating them like three year old children who don’t know any better.

Once you start to get how deep the rot is, you should get really scared. This isn’t going to be solved in one election cycle. The very character of the American people has been degraded by generations of people perpetuating the myth that government is the source of social well being via state coercion (at the barrel of a gun, ultimately) instead of voluntary orders which organize themselves inside of a framework of law that protects our negative rights to liberty and property. These folks have utterly disconnected from reality, enabled to do so by a complicit govt and other parts of society that tell them they are ‘entitled’ to certain things that other people produce without having to pay for them. They would laugh at the assertion that it’s actually their worldview that is unfair – so deluded are they.

My take? We are way too far gone to ever right this ship. What comes next, who knows? Chaos is the only certain answer I can come up with.

Technorati Tags: occupy wall street, rawls, social justice

Watch this video. Jon Stewart skewers Fox and CNN for their willful exclusion of Ron Paul from their coverage. It’s too good to not pass on!

To hear the comments of the pundits and politicians over the past couple of days, one would think that the Tea Party and other’s who support fiscal responsibility are some kind of lunatics. Whether it’s New York Times columnists calling them Jihadists or congressmen calling them “un-democratic”, the rhetoric has become heated up in a way that bears little resemblance to reality. That’s a good thing, it means they are really starting to worry.

The Leftist edifice to itself is at stake in this debate. It is Leftists who go to work in government (outside of law enforcement and the military). It is Leftist NGO’s and non-profits who feed at the teat of government grants and subsidies. It is Leftists who run government employee unions. It is Leftists who have feathered their nests in academia. It is Leftists who create regulations and laws that facilitate ridiculous law suits like Pigford 2. They have been very craftily been creating laws and policies that grow government and suit their interests out of the sight of most of the public for years now and the cutting of government means that their livelihoods are at stake.

I was talking to someone recently, an actual socialist, who works for state government in information technology about the libertarian open immigration stance. He said that if we had unlimited immigration, the value of his job might drop in half due to immigrants who would come here and do the work he currently does more cheaply. I didn’t say anything to him about this as I don’t want to get into a fight, but inside I was cheering, hell yeah! I want government to operate as inexpensively as possible. The question he seems to not ask himself is why he thinks his job deserves protection by the government in the first place instead of doing everything to minimize the amount of money we take from tax payers? His sense of entitlement is so well developed that it doesn’t occur to him that he’s a cost we’d love to eliminate given half a chance.

The Left is on defense now. What doesn’t seem to be getting noticed by most people is that Obama and the Lefties lost this battle – there were no tax increases. They are on defense now, and accordingly, now is the time to get serious about real change. This means advocating for specific policy changes, not just “no tax increases” and “spending cuts” as we head into the 2012 budget fight. We need to begin to develop support for policy changes that we think can gain popular support. I say we start with the following areas:

1.USDA Farm Subsidies – The USDA employs over 100,000 people and spends over 100 billion USD per year. Can you imagine? For what? Why does agriculture need so much oversight and intervention from the federal government? Advocates of liberty should stand firm on this. Republicans would gain a lot of respect from libertarians and Tea Partiers by making this bold move.

2. Defense – Let’s get out of Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq right now. 58% of the American People support this and we could get real support from lefties for this too. Furthermore, we should re-evaluate every overseas post we have, including Europe and South Korea and reduce force and commitments significantly. However, we should also make clear that we want to maintain our overwhelming superiority against our current and potential adversaries, particularly with respect to technology advantages such as the F-22 (much of our ability to protect ourselves and project power depends on air superiority and funding the F 22 would solidify this lead for decades). We should cut our extraneous activities, but not our core capabilities.  We could probably save 200 billion USD per year without reducing our readiness or capabilities one bit.

3.  Eliminate every social program that has failed to meet its initial goals or that is a ‘nice to have’. Head Start is a perfect example of this. It was sold as a means to offset disadvantages that poor kids have in the start of their lives, but every study since it’s inception has shown that any advantage realized is temporary and by 5th grade, there is no difference in the performance of children in or out of Head Start. It’s become a free daycare program – in other words federal welfare with no observable benefit. There are hundreds of such programs that the Feds run such as the 21st Century Conservation Youth Corp which are simply luxury items and full employment acts for sociology degree holders. The Republicans should gather a list of all such programs and push for their defunding.

4. Shut down Fannie/Freddie/FHA/VA/RHS mortgage operations. Sell their portfolios for whatever we can get for them and fire all the employees. Haven’t we learned anything from the recent debacle?

There are many other things we could focus on, but I think by focusing on a small number of items and building the case for these cuts carefully, we can really start putting the Lefties on defense. Let them justify spending money on such things when we are on the verge of financial collapse. And if the Republicans were bold enough to take on defense proactively, we could get ahead of Obama’s cuts, which you know are coming. By getting specific, we can also say we want to preserve what the government should be doing. By avoiding huge issues like entitlements and health care until we have real power, we can avoid fights that we can’t win and allow us to keep on offense.

A friend of mine recently asked me to comment on some investment advice from Robert Anorth, commented on by Jonathan Burton, at Marketwatch (here)in a recent article. I think he’s spot on in many respects, but I also took the opportunity to write down how I see our current problems and my assessment was indeed bleek. I thought you might enjoy my economic perspective.

I think Burton is laying out some very good advice. I’m not so sure about his last point on junk bonds as rising interest rates make existing bonds trade at discounts. I may misunderstand something about what he’s recommending, as he otherwise seems like a smart guy for sure. Emerging markets, played selectively, should be part of your game too, maybe the recent pullback is a dip you can buy into? Not sure, but overall his thesis makes sense.

I do have a view of my own which coincides with Mr. Burton’s but I diagnose and describe the problems a bit differently.

1. Debt Crisis – U.S. federal, state and local govts, consumer debt at 130% of gdp, banks still with very high degrees of leverage and massive exposure to decreasing real estate values, and many corporates leveraged like crazy ends up in catastrophe. Bernanke referred to the necessary “deleveraging” in his remarks yesterday. It is a huge drag on our economy now, and it is unsustainable. We will have to let the rest of the credit crisis occur. The fed has said, we’ve done all we can do. Real estate is plummeting again. The readjustment left to happen is huge, it’s in the trillions. This alone could throw us into 20% unemployment, with massive dislocations of people from their homes, and disruptions to governmental functions. I mean, when your cops aren’t getting paid, what do you do then?

2. Currency Crisis – The inflationary actions of the fed to the tune of several trillion dollars to date are already showing up in some commodity prices and a weird bubble in Iowa farmland due to 7 dollar a bushel corn. Gold is at historic levels against the dollar, the dollar is at or has recently met new historic lows against the swiss franc, the aussie dollar and other currencies. The fed is trying to inflate it’s way out debt, but it’s doing so at the price of the value of the dollar.

3. Governmental fiscal crisis – I’m sure you are hearing it in your local politics in NJ. I see it up here, hard choices are being made, big “cuts” are happening. Although I have to say some of the “cuts” are really just slowing down the projected growth of programs, not absolute year over year cuts to funding, while others are pretty serious. And I think you are just seeing the start. Over 200 billion of the stimulus program was aid to states and localities. The money flow is: 30% of state budgets come from the feds now, 25% of local budgets come from states now. What happens when that money stops flowing? Can you imagine what happens when the first state pension fund collapses? What if it’s CalPers? The results of these set events alone could put society on its ass.

My forecast? I think that we’re all screwed. If you have wealth, you will lose it. If broke, like me, you are incredibly vulnerable. It’s a pretty scary picture out there. I don’t think it ends well. If we have the same constitution and form of government without armed insurrection having occurred 20 years from now, I’d be shocked. This issue of the proper role and size of government has to addressed, but we are at a standoff with each other. The Republicans just walked away from the table on the budget negotiations. It’s all coming to a head. There is way too much disagreement in society on some very basic things and it’s tearing our government, politics and society apart at the seams. Did you see that 54% want us completely out of Afghanistan? Have you noticed that each side is becoming more strident, more shrill and, dare I say, aggressive or even militant?

There are zillions of folks in the blogosphere would grab their guns and go where Ron Paul or Glenn Beck or Keith Olberman or Hilary Clinton or Barack Oama told them to, for real. All it needs is a spark, like a stumble by the economy? I think we are in for tumultuous times, my friends. It’s interesting being in the company of lots of the “have nots” in society, as a roamer of the earth while other people are in offices. The level of hopelessness and resignation some kid making eight bucks an hour feels, having to still live with parents after college, and with no job to even interview for in or out of their fields if they went to college, is palpable.

There are a lot of young people in that boat for whom the American dream isn’t available. I mean, they can’t even buy cars. None of the ten other kids in my daughter’s graduating design class got jobs in their field (my daughter did, but she is extraordinarily talented and ambitious) and this is the third year in a row of the same outcomes. It’s unprecedented and it’s only gotten a little better, but not by much. Young men are the tinder of revolution, and there are a lot of them who don’t see much in this world for themselves, nor do they feel like anybody cares about them. Try to get a kid of 25 to talk about how they feel about our generation, say financially, or on the environment or Iraq. They think we are a bunch of screw-ups. They hear the medicare/social security stuff and gulp thinking, I’ve got to pay my student loans and for my mom and dad’s retirement too?

In that case, you”ll want to be able to get away from civilization for a while. You might be best advised to buy some cheap cabin way up in the middle of nowhere and provision it up so you can go there in the worst case, and live off the grid for a while. I’m not kidding, actually. All kinds of bad stuff could happen to you in densely populated areas. You also might want to consider buying some physical gold (bullion, not pnumismatic coins). I know this sounds crazy, but really, it could go all Greek style pretty quickly. One quick law of survival. It only takes 3 days for people to start killing each other? Why? Water. People die from dehydration in 3-4 days, and when it’s die or bash someone’s door down, or their head in, to get water, they will generally will bash away.