Last Updated: Mar 25th, 2013 - 16:46:15 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 30 May 2008 Thought for the Day Socialism is NOT sustainable. Helen Clark and Michael Cullen between them are "doing a Muldoon" on New Zealanders. Remember what Muldoon said to Lange after Labour won the election in 1984? "Good luck, Mr Lange. You'll need it. I've spent the lot!" Well, Michael has, referring to National's tax policies, "stolen their fox, eviscerated it, strangled it and thrown it into their back garden." - Michael has now "spent the lot." Tit for tat - and the population is much the poorer for all that! It is way beyond time that New Zealanders voted in some sensible people who had a firm grasp on what policies will grow the economy. Labour has taken a thriving economy growing at 4% or 5% nine years ago and produced a dog which is shrinking this year. All done following good socialist principles; Redistribute wealth from those that earn it to Labour voters, Increase the bureaucracy to "improve" Central Planning, Tell people what they can eat, how they should bring up their kids, and Control young minds by making state education (indoctrination) compulsory for toddlers to teenagers. Socialism is not sustainable but getting poorer while we wait for the socialists to self-destruct is not much fun. May 26, 2008, 10:57 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 30 May 2008 Everything You Love You Owe to Capitalism This talk was delivered at the Mises Circle in Seattle on May 17, 2008. Llewellyn Rockwell reminds us of a past that no-one should wish to repeat. Socialism. The all powerful State with a plan for everybody. Although we have seen the collapse of Russian socialism some people do not understand what they have seen. Our own government is one such. Dr. Cullen has just bought a railway system. When we first sold Railways it was costing us $1 million per day. That is $365 million per year. Not owning Railways has saved us taxpayers $7.3 billion over the last 20 years. Now we have it back. Our only large company, Telecom, has been dealt a severe blow by our socialist government. Will this do any good for anyone? Has anyone noticed how the price of phone calls has dropped since privatisation - all without the government doing anything? I personally use TelstraClear glass fibre to my house - a tremendous benefit and a free choice I am able to make. Socialism and a State bureaucracy did not make this happen for me. Free enterprise did. When our Post Office was privatised the price of letters dropped to 40c. After Labour took control the price went back up to 45c and more recently to 50c. Why? Remember the old Bank of New Zealand. It went bust and we taxpayers had to bail it out to the tune of nearly $1 billion and then recapitalise it with another $700 million so we could sell it off successfully as a going concern. Now we have Kiwi bank and the government can provide mortgages cheaper than any other bank. (Mind you the Reserve Bank is accepting mortgages as collateral these days). The government provides a super saving scheme which is subsidised by the taxpayer to such an extent that it is a no-brainer for anyone to join up. Money from the government (read "other taxpayers") for nothing. How can this be a good thing? And so it goes - on and on. The old socialists have never died they just disguised themselves a bit. The truth about Economics is there for us all to see but some cannot discern the truth. This talk by Llewellyn Rockwell says it all very much better than I can. With all the examples around the world of socialism producing poverty for the masses and capitalism producing overwhelming abundance why do socialists insist on their theories. Are they just mad for power at any cost? May 30, 2008, 16:54 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 30 May 2008 Liberty Is Worth the Abuse "We get a lot of abuse, those of us who publicly defend private property rights and voluntary arrangements against the varied depredations of government. Having to constantly face such attacks is a substantial part of the cost of speaking out, and probably explains why more people don't take the risk." So says Professor Galles introducing his logical explanation of why rent controls are a bad thing. [ Visit Website ] May 30, 2008, 11:00 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 30 May 2008 The Government's Statistical Whopper of the Year I have written about our shonky unemployment statistics where it is easily seen that the results are completely skewed and rendered useless by working from strange definitions of what constitutes unemployment. We further notice how governments juggle numbers when talking about inflation and now refer to "headline" inflation and "core" inflation when they want to lower peoples' inflationary expectations. If they just published the M3 figures each month then nobody would be surprised at the REAL inflation that we are all experiencing at the moment. Robert has spent some time examining the USA government's Producer Price Inflation numbers as they came to the quite extrordinary conclusion that petrol had got cheaper in April compared with March this year. We suffer from the same syndrome. Governments will insist on juggling numbers to meet their expectations of what the population ought to think. This makes it very difficult for us to believe government statistics. [ Visit Website ] May 30, 2008, 09:24 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 30 May 2008 Debt Markets Again Flash Warnings The world is awash with paper money. Central Banks have been issuing an extra 10% or more money into their economies and it is all borrowed money - not earned money. At some stage the overhead of all this debt becomes too much and people begin to become fearful. Then it is a matter of "first into the lifeboats" are the survivors. This downturn looks increasingly likely to get worse and debtors will suffer. Fortunately Dr. Cullen has kept government debt down - but unfortunately his policies have encouraged a huge rise in debt amongst the population. We are in for hard times. May 30, 2008, 09:22 Newsletters : 2008 Newsletters : 30 May 2008 LIBOR Cracks Widen as Bankers Struggle with Reforms REAL economics of the Austrian variety predict that paper money banking will cause booms and busts until the final "Crack up Bust". When Ludwig von Mises was writing about this there were many examples of this happening and some of countries going bust - ie Germany in the 1920s with hyperinflation. Zimbabwe is currently going the same way. The worrying thing is that the whole world is now moving along the same track and as the years go by the booms and busts are becoming more and more synchronised across countries. We will be in big trouble if the developed countries world of the world plus the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India & China) all go bust together. Maybe the BRICs will be OK this time round. People who think the worst is over will need to revamp their thinking. Are major banks of the world really lying about their interbank interest rates? May 28, 2008, 10:50