AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

 The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

Federal Bake Sale Ban Set To Hit Schools This Fall, by Barry Donegan, at benswann.com. Someone must have slipped some fine print into The Healthy Hungry Free Kids Act (read here) of 2010 that added bake sales to the list of “foods sold on school grounds” that must meet “strict nutritional requirements”. This act was Michelle Obama’s baby, but in the “do as I say not as I do” world  that tyrants live in, she sang a different tune at a White House event this week (read here). She said she told her children, “….to use Instagram to take a picture of something really important rather than their food…I mean, No one really cares what you had for lunch“.  So let me see if I have this correct: No one cares about what you buy at a bake sale, except food Nazis.

FBI To Hire Contractor To Analyze Media Coverage Of The Agency, by Zach  McAuliffe, at benswann.com. In true tyrannical fashion, the FBI is warning reporters to be very careful about writing negative stories about the agency. Just like the IRS, the FBI can make the cost of writing a negative story very high. It”s a subtle threat, but a threat none the less.

Toledo Residence Should Be Complaining About Greedy Water-Hording Panic Buyers During The Cities Water Crisis, by Mark J. Perry, at aei-ideas.org. This is a great article that turns the tables on the conventional wisdom that always complains about “price gouging” during a temporary shortage caused by a crisis. Shouldn’t the greedy person that buys more than they need be the bad guy? If we would just shut up and let prices ration the goods that are in short supply, we wouldn’t demonstrate our ignorance about economic laws related to supply and demand.

Central Planners Fail To Herd Money Market Funds Into Over Priced Stocks, at zerohedge.com. Since the Fed has cut it’s QE money printing from $85 billion a month to $25 billion a month, the central planners have to figure out a way to make up the difference in order to keep the stock market bubble pumped up. They saw $2.5 Trillion sitting in Money Market funds and decided to to after it. The SEC changed the rules pertaining to these funds, creating an incentive to purchase stocks instead of keeping them parked in Money Market funds. They essentially raised the cost of parking. But like all central planners plans, people acted differently than planned. They purchased Treasury Bills instead of purchasing stocks. Central planners will never learn.

Gun Grabbing City Councilman vs. Concealed Carry Citizen, youtube. I wrote a post this week titled Anti vs. Pro-Gun Visions Of The World. The difference in these visions are on full display in this video of a city council meeting in Oak Harbor Washington.

GE Looking To Sell It’s Appliance Division, fool.com. The appliance division has had sluggish sales since the recession. Since GE is a crony capitalist entity, it wants to sell this division instead of compete in the market. It’s easier to have as many of their divisions as possible be subsidized by Government instead of having them compete in the market without Government subsidies . GE capital, aviation, healthcare, energy (wind turbins), feed off of our tax dollars.

Will Tea Partiers Sink Mitch McConnells Kentucky Senate Reelection Bid, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Mitch McConnells antics in his primary and his support of Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Senate Primary, have alienated conservatives, tea partiers, and libertarians. For many of these people this is the marginal straw that has broken the camels back when it comes to voting for him in the general election. He has upset the wrong people.

Is Thinking Obsolete, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com. I don’t have to say much about this article, just read and enjoy. Here is the money quote, “In an age when scientists are creating artificial intelligence, too many to our educational institutions seem to be creating artificial stupidity.”

The Ethanol Industry: An Engine Of Economic Destruction, by Joseph Salerno, at bastiat.mises.blog.org. The ethanol industry is a misallocation of scarce resources into an activity that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t mandated by Government regulation and subsidized by tax dollars. This is a combination of environmental regulations going too far, and agribusiness seeing a pile of Government money that is there for the taking. What could have been produced with all of this wasted land, labor, resources, and capital?