Ron Paul: Stop Dreaming Video – Remastered Version
posted by Josiah Garber on November 17, 2009
in Economics, Fun, Politics, War & Peace
Today was a good day!
posted by Josiah Garber on November 16, 2009
in Family, Friends, Fun
I woke up to the alarm beeping and stayed in bed for another half hour. Then some getting ready for work. I had a lot of fun tearing off a roof with my dad and my cousin Justin Garber. Then I came home to my lovely wife and ate the African meal that she prepared. Yummy! Hung out with Carmen and did some sermon planning. Now it’s time for some relaxing with some tea and a great book ‘Lord of the Rings’. Woot! God is good. 
Ron Paul’s Investment Advice – New Orleans Investment Conference 2009
posted by Josiah Garber on November 16, 2009
in Economics, Personal Development
Be Prepared for the Worst – Forbes.com
posted by Josiah Garber on November 13, 2009
in Economics, Politics
by Ron Paul,
Forbes Magazine dated November 16, 2009
The large-scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.
Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.
A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble.
Anytime the central bank intervenes to pump trillions of dollars into the financial system, a bubble is created that must eventually deflate. We have seen the results of Alan Greenspan’s excessively low interest rates: the housing bubble, the explosion of subprime loans and the subsequent collapse of the bubble, which took down numerous financial institutions. Rather than allow the market to correct itself and clear away the worst excesses of the boom period, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury colluded to put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. Those banks and financial institutions that took on the largest risks and performed worst were rewarded with billions in taxpayer dollars, allowing them to survive and compete with their better-managed peers.
This is nothing less than the creation of another bubble. By attempting to cushion the economy from the worst shocks of the housing bubble’s collapse, the Federal Reserve has ensured that the ultimate correction of its flawed economic policies will be more severe than it otherwise would have been. Even with the massive interventions, unemployment is near 10% and likely to increase, foreigners are cutting back on purchases of Treasury debt and the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet remains bloated at an unprecedented $2 trillion. Can anyone realistically argue that a few small upticks in a handful of economic indicators are a sign that the recession is over?
What is more likely happening is a repeat of the Great Depression. We might have up to a year or so of an economy growing just slightly above stagnation, followed by a drop in growth worse than anything we have seen in the past two years. As the housing market fails to return to any sense of normalcy, commercial real estate begins to collapse and manufacturers produce goods that cannot be purchased by debt-strapped consumers, the economy will falter. That will go on until we come to our senses and end this wasteful government spending.
Government intervention cannot lead to economic growth. Where does the money come from for Tarp (Treasury’s program to buy bad bank paper), the stimulus handouts and the cash for clunkers? It can come only from taxpayers, from sales of Treasury debt or through the printing of new money. Paying for these programs out of tax revenues is pure redistribution; it takes money out of one person’s pocket and gives it to someone else without creating any new wealth. Besides, tax revenues have fallen drastically as unemployment has risen, yet government spending continues to increase. As for Treasury debt, the Chinese and other foreign investors are more and more reluctant to buy it, denominated as it is in depreciating dollars.
Health Insurance: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?
posted by Josiah Garber on November 12, 2009
in Economics, Health, Politics
by D. Saul Weiner
Watching the so-called health care debate in this country, the health insurance industry obviously has come under fire. Why is this? In part, it is due to being in the position of being the bearer of bad news. The insurance company informs us that our premiums are rising yet again, that we are not covered for something that we thought we were, or that we will no longer be offered coverage. Even if our expenses are covered, we may find it frustrating and confusing to go through all of the paperwork required, especially when we are confronted with a major health problem.
From a political standpoint, there is another reason for this. Politicians find that they can gain support for their schemes when they can frame the problems that they are trying to address as the result of the behavior of a bad actor (i.e. a scapegoat) that may or may not have very much to do with the problem at hand. Demagoguery will elicit support for their scheme to punish the bad guys and drive attention away from an objective assessment of whether or not their scheme is likely to improve conditions or make things worse. Bad guys are chosen, like so much in politics, based on the path of least resistance. Of course, the politicians are not likely to highlight their own role in creating the problem. And while they may know that past actions taken by the AMA have contributed significantly to the health care crisis, they also know full well that many people like their own doctor and regularly watch handsome and compassionate MD’s on TV who perform heroic acts for suffering humanity. On the other hand, people rarely, if ever, see handsome and compassionate health insurance executives on TV going to bat for patients in need. For this reason and the ones mentioned earlier, health insurers make an inviting target.
Note that my intent here is not to rationalize the role that health insurance plays in the current environment. First, I will briefly discuss how some of the problems that people associate with today’s health insurance companies are not inherent. Then I will discuss how health insurance companies operating in a free market actually could play a critical role in solving the problems of cost containment and access to services that seem so intractable in the current environment.
The first thing to note in analyzing “health insurance” offered in the United States today is that most of it is not really insurance at all. I am referring to the benefits offered through employers. Insurance, for one thing, refers to the spreading of the expected costs of coverage proportionately amongst people who pose similar levels of risk. Thus, for example for life insurance, there are different rates for males and females, people of different ages, smokers and non-smokers, and so forth. For employer-based health insurance, employers pay most of the cost and the employees each typically pay the same cost (except if they are insuring other family members). In such a context, there is little financial incentive for an employee to minimize his risk or to economize in his usage of health care. What is more, due to mandates, insurance must cover a great many benefits that companies and individuals would not pay for, if they were allowed to choose. In effect, part of the premium represents insurance and part of the premium is a tax which redistributes wealth to providers with political clout.
One might wonder how it became the norm for health insurance to be offered through one’s employer, when the need for health care is independent of one’s working status. It turns out that this arrangement had a lot to do with government intervention. During WW2, when resources were scarce and wage increases were limited by law, as a workaround companies offered fringe benefits such as health insurance and pension plans as incentives in order to attract sufficient workers. The costs for such coverage were tax deductible to employers (though not for individuals buying their own insurance) and this also encouraged our current system to evolve as it did. In light of all this, one can see that many of the problems that people today associate with health insurance are not inherent, but are the result of perverse incentives which have shaped the current environment. We might reasonably ask how things might be different if free market conditions prevailed.
We know that, in a free market, over time goods and services tend to improve in quality and become less expensive. Since that has not been the case, for the most part, in health care, we must consider the possibility that government interventions have interfered with that process. While medical licensing, patents, and FDA regulations have undoubtedly played a major role in the costliness of today’s health care, interference in the free market for health insurance may be the straw that is breaking the economy’s back. To see why this is the case, consider the role that health insurance in a free market could play in driving costs down and quality up. There have always been medical entrepreneurs who have found more cost-effective approaches, but health insurance companies have never been free to pay for only the most cost-effective treatments. The “approved treatments” are subject to the determination of medical boards which, not surprisingly, favor established treatments and look askance at innovations which have not yet been widely accepted in professional circles, regardless of the promise that they hold or the appeal they may have to patients.
Confronting the Myth of Deflation
posted by Josiah Garber on November 12, 2009
in Economics, Politics
Continental Congress 2009 – Watch Live Stream
posted by Josiah Garber on November 11, 2009
in Economics, Politics, War & Peace
The 2009 Continental Congress – November 11-22, 2009
Watch Live Below
A Year With Obama – and US Foreign Relations Have Only Worsened
posted by Josiah Garber on November 11, 2009
in Politics, War & Peace
by William Pfaff, November 11, 2009
Who would have thought a year ago that most of the issues of conflict in America’s foreign relations would be made worse during the first year following Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president?
Even those disputes or differences that were appeased or quiet a year ago are now worse. On Iraq, the new president has faithfully followed the policy of George W. Bush, and now Iraq threatens breakdown.
Mr. Obama ran on a promise to fight the “right war” in Afghanistan. This policy rests upon the monumental assumption that victory can be found in a military campaign meant to alter the character of Central Asian political and religious society so as to remake it in the American image – as Condoleezza Rice defined what a year ago was the Bush administration’s policy, and is now the apparent Obama policy.
In the time-honored bureaucratic fashion, the president’s military advisers have offered him three troop options: one impossibly high, one suicidally small, and one – the one they actually want – in between, and “just right.”(In poker games, this is known as “forcing” the card onto the patsy.) The troops are already on the move. It will be some time before we see them again.
Put aside, for a moment, this military disaster that is now in the course of manufacture in the “AfPak” theater of unwinnable wars.
Jake Towne on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano
posted by Josiah Garber on November 11, 2009
in Economics, Politics, War & Peace
Great Job to Jake Towne! Keep up the great work!
Peter Schiff speaks at Harvard University
posted by Josiah Garber on November 10, 2009
in Economics, Fun, Politics, War & Peace