Posted tagged ‘Economic Reality’

Must Reads For The Week 1/23/16

January 23, 2016

ECONOMIC FORCES EVENTUALLY WIN

China Promises To Keep Intervening To “Look After” Stock Market “Investors”, Hurt “Speculators“, at zerohedge.com. So the cure for the Chinese stock market bust is Government intervention? Didn’t Government intervention cause the boom in the first place?  Government planners can’t stop reality. Economic forces are always in the process of correcting Government interventions.

The Rest Belt Goes Red – Glory Days Of China’s Steel Boom Leave Behind Abandoned Mills And Broken Lives, at davidstockmanscontracorner.com. Another example of a Government created bubble ending in a bust. Government centrally planning an economy doesn’t work. Ask the former Soviet Union.

The Three Musketeers Of Global Deflation – China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, at davidstockmanscontracorner.com. We know about China’s problems, but over 65% of Russia’s and 45% of Saudi Arabia’s GDP comes from oil. Oil below $30 a barrel hurts these two countries. Economic forces can’t be stopped by Government central planners.

The Fragile Forty & How The Word Lost $17 Trillion In 6 Months, at zerohedge.com. Forty global stock indices are in bear markets, as over $17 trillion of equity has evaporated in the last six months. Central banks think the wealth effect created by their money printing will reignite the global economic engine. It hasn’t worked because economic forces eventually prevail.

This Is What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like; Venezuela Prepares for 720% Hyperinflation, at zerohedge.com. Bernie Sanders take note. This is what a socialist utopia looks like. Excerpt from the article: “..in reality the Venezuela economy no longer exists, with all transactions now taking place in grey or black markets, and the government apparatus effectively operating in a vacuum.” Economic forces creating a black markets was inevitable.

Schlumberger Fires 10,000 As It Announces $10 Billion Stock Buy Back, at zerohedge.com. To keep your slumping stock price up, all you have to do is buy back your stock. Simple supply and demand. How do you finance this buyback. Either borrow low interest printed money like many companies have and are doing, or get rid of your biggest expense, your workers. Economic reality forces businesses to make decisions.

A Post Boom World, Auto Prices Will Fall,, by Patrick Barron, at mises.org. Easy credit and sup-prime loans for cars will eventually end in a bust, like the housing bubble. Economic forces of supply and demand will bring the car market back in line.

And You Thought QE Was Over: The Fed Will Monetize Half Of This Years U.S. Treasury Issuance, at zerohedge.com. Over the next four years, the Federal Reserve is going to have to repurchase, with printed money, $1.1 trillion in maturing Government debt that it owns. The Federal Government can only grow to it’s present size if it is financed by it’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.

A RECESSION IS THE CORRECTION

Why We Need A Recession, by Ronald-Peter Stoferle, at mises.org. A recession is nothing more than economic forces correcting the misallocation of resources, labor, land and capital that was brought about by previous central bank money creation and easy credit.

As Ludwig von Mises said: “The return to monetary stability does not generate a crisis. It only brings to light the malinvestments and other mistakes that were made under the hallucination of the illusory prosperity created by the easy money.

And as F. A. Hayek said: “To combat a depression by a forced credit expansion, is akin to the attempt to fight an evil by its own causes; because we suffer from a misdirection of production, we want even more misdirection – an approach that necessarily leads to an even more serious crisis once the credit expansion comes to an end.

GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST

How Government Poisoned The People Of Flint, by John Counts, at mlive.com. Government doesn’t know what’s best.

Texas Adopts New York Values On Fantasy Football, Tho Bishop, at mises.org. Government wants to protect you from illegal gambling. It’s better for you to buy legal state lottery tickets.

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Central Planners Hate Economics

August 26, 2015

F A Hayek

F.A. HAYEK The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

 

Politicians get voted into office because they promise to use the power of government to ‘do something’ to fix fake ‘crises’. They try to blame the unfettered free market for every inequality or unmet need found in society. Politicians blame economics because it is an easy target since most people don’t understand basic principles of economics.

Economic reality puts a limit on the unlimited designs of planners. The first law of economics, scarcity, especially the scarcity of knowledge, sees to it that everything has limits. Economic laws don’t limit the planners plans. Economic laws reveal the reasons the plans won’t work but they don’t create the underlying economic reality.

Ludwig von Mises

LUDWIG VON MISES  – “Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.”

Planners have charged their central banks to do away with scarcity by using electronically printed counterfeit money. It sounds plausible on the surface if you look at ‘that which is seen’. But we all know from reading Bastiat that ‘that which is not seen’ is more important. The unintended consequences of Central Bankers policies, of money printing and zero percent interest rates, are playing out right now for all to see. Wasted resources and capital consumption are two of these results.

F. A. Hayek – “It has already been suggested that it is not necessary for the working of this system (free market capitalism) that anybody should understand it. But people are not likely to let it work if they do not understand it.

Central planners condemn free market capitalism because it doesn’t produce perfect results, (which means it doesn’t produce their desired result). Free market capitalism is the best system for allowing individuals the freedom to pursue their desires. This individual freedom has lifted the masses of people to a higher standard of living. Is it perfect? Nothing that man does is perfect. It is the responsibility of each voter to understand basic economic principles in order to protect the free market from the planners who want to destroy it. Start now because your individual freedom to pursue your interests in a free market is under siege.

 

LUDWIG VON MISES  – “Many think that governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena….they maintain that the state is God.”

These quotes by Hayek and Mises came to mind as I was reading an article titled, Economics Is Dead, And It Is Being Killed Again, by Per Bylund, at mises.org. here are some excerpts from the article.

“You have to applaud the anti-economics left for this rhetorical masterpiece. They have struggled for decades to sink the ship of economics, the generally acclaimed science that has firmly stood in the way of their anti-market and egalitarian policies, hindered the growth of big government, and raised obstacles to enact everything else that is beautiful to the anti-economics left. The financial crisis is exactly the excuse the Left has been waiting for. It is a slam dunk: government grows, Keynesianism is revived, and economics is made the culprit for all our troubles.”

“If this weren’t so serious, it would be amusing that the failure of Keynesian macro-economics (whether it is formally Keynes’s theory or post-Keynesian, new Keynesian, neo-Keynesian, monetarist, etc.) is taken as an excuse to do away with sound micro-economic theory to be replaced with Keynesian and other anti-market ideas. But it is not amusing. If most of the discussions heard are to be believed, the failures of central planning is a reason for central planning, just like socialism is a reason for socialism. The success of the market, on the other hand, is not a reason for the market.”

“…. the Left hates all that is economics. Because it points out that creating a better world through central planning, money-printing, and political manipulation is indeed impossible. The market is neither perfect nor efficient, but it is better than any available alternative. In fact, the unhampered market is the only positive-sum means available for human society. The market is indeed the only way of progress; all else is a step backward.

Related ArticleCapital Consumption aka. Eating Our Seed Corn, at austrianaddict.com.

Related ArticleWe’re All Born In The Middle Of The Story, at austrianaddict.com.

Related ArticlePolitician’s “Affordable” Ideas Must Obey Economic Forces, at austrianaddict.com.