Last Updated: Nov 19th, 2009 - 11:07:39 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 Thought for the Day Helen sold herself to the UN on the excellent work she had done in New Zealand achieving a very low unemployment rate and equality for all. According to this morning's DomPost: Our unemployment rate has only increased from 4.7% to 5.0%. An increase of 0.3%. Brilliant! Our employed number 2,182,000 which is down 1.1%. A pretty good effort all round, wouldn't you say? However if we look closer at these two statistics we see that if Unemployment is 5% then presumably Employed must be 95% and therefore since Employed number 2,182,000 then Unemployed must number 114,842 giving a total of Unemployed plus Employed adding up to 2,296,842 persons in the work place. But they say that Employed went down by 1.1% so previous Employed must have numbered 2,206,002. Thus our previous Unemployed must have been 115187. That is 345 people have become unemployed in the past 3 months. Yeah, right! Unfortunately, as I have pointed out in the past it is not possible to make sensible deductions from statistical information provided by the government as vital information is missing so that obvious and seemingly logical deductions are well astray from the facts. They never point out that there is another category called jobless people which is split up into two parts. And that unemployed is very narrowly defined so that most people who are not working are likely to fall into the jobless categories thus making unemployed smaller than common sense would indicate. This sort of thing is leading to distrust in government figures. Information is one thing - propaganda another! May 8, 2009, 11:51 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 Socialism An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, okay, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little... The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased, as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings, and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. May 8, 2009, 13:14 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 No, the Free Market Did Not Cause the Financial Crisis Our problems are two-fold: Bankers insisting on using paper money, and, Governments insisting on "controlling" the "free" market. It also doesn't help that our current crop of economists are led astray by the education they receive at our universities into believing improbable foundations to the study of economics. This leads us to two versions of economics: What we currently do - called FAKE Economics, and, what is carefully built up from basic principles as demonstrated by Ludwig von Mises - called REAL Economics. This article shows the difference clearly in the current crisis in America. We are knee deep in doo-doo and the government and the Central Bank are supplying more doo-doo than ever before in the history of the world. This depression will last a long time and be very bad for us all. Unfortunately the government and all associated with this mess seem to be blaming the "Free Market". Hold onto your hats, its going to be a bumpy ride! May 7, 2009, 10:48 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 Congressman Paul on the Recent Swine Flu Scare A relaxed politician - and physician! [ Visit Website ] May 5, 2009, 16:07 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 Swine Flu Propaganda - 1976 A statistic I read in the paper the other day (and therefore it must be right) said that 30,000 people a year die of influenza every year. Puts the Swine Flu' into perspective a bit. Still if we are worrying about dying of Swine Flu' we may not think about the disaster created by governments and their paper money. But, we have seen it all before! [ Visit Website ] May 5, 2009, 10:39 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 An Even Greater Depression New Zealand is, at this moment, living wildly beyond its means. The Clark governments' policies have killed off the Golden Goose of private enterprise and now tax receipts are plummeting and the new National government is stuck with a major problem. We have been in recession for 18 months now and I don't see any logical and guaranteed way of easily alleviating this problem. All the nice little graphs from our economists that our papers reproduce show a sharp and clear growth spurt in the immediate future. No logical explanation as to how this may be caused is offered. How do they know that we won't just dribble on for another 18 months? Or for 18 years like the Japanese? No explanations are offered. On the 28th of May Bill English will read out his first budget and that will give us some idea of the future. We have two options: the hard grind to repay debt and build up our assets again or print money (to buy votes) and hope that things come right in time for our children and grand children to pay off our debts with their taxes. Maybe the kids will wise-up and be off to Australia. If so I will be off to join them! May 5, 2009, 10:02 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 China's Gold Buy Raises Eyebrows For All The Right Reasons As with people - so with Central Banks. Watch and understand what they do, not what they say. May 4, 2009, 12:26 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 The Health Czar Can't Calculate If you really want to know why no government can provide the health service we deserve then read this article. Central planning is theoretically unable to spend the money to provide the services required because their are no price signals for the intermediate stages and inter-relationships. But of course we can see that our practical experience just keeps on proving that this statement is absolutely true. So if we want the best service in a timely fashion then we must provide ourselves with private health insurance as well as pay the tax portion of the government's health system. The last Labour government increased spending on "health" by $5 billion from $6 billion to $11 billion. That extra $5 billion would have bought a very good private health insurance for every man woman and child in the country. We could have had both for the price of the faltering public system alone. ARE WE MAD? [ Visit Website ] May 1, 2009, 13:58 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 The Link Between Obama and John Law Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose. [ Visit Website ] Apr 30, 2009, 12:41 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 Celtic Kitten: The Failure of Intervention in Ireland Ireland is managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with a heavy dose of government command and control over the economy. Bye-bye to the Irish. [ Visit Website ] Apr 30, 2009, 10:38 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 The Upside-down World of John Maynard Keynes When we compare the Keynesian efforts of America, Britain and most of the Western World it seems that New Zealand is muddling along not too badly with a not very Keynesian point of view. We didn't have the vast excesses of the USA and when our finance sector went belly up the government of the day just ignored it and it quietly went bankrupt. Unfortunately reducing many investors to poverty, but then they chose to believe the blandishments of get rich quick experts and they have paid the price. Bernanke and Gordon Brown seem to think they can save everyone from the excesses of a paper based money system by printing and borrowing trillions of dollars and pushing this money into the banking system. They are mistaken. Far better to take our lumps, let the fancy asset prices deflate and start again. If we stay with paper money the same thing will occur again and again and those that were burnt this time will be more cautious next time. It may eventually happen that ordinary people demand the stability provided by a gold standard. Don't hold your breath. [ Visit Website ] Apr 28, 2009, 17:56 Newsletters : 2009 Newsletters : 8 May 2009 Quote for the Week "You know your country is dying when you have to make a distinction between what is moral and ethical, and what is legal." - John De Armond Appropos of which: [ Visit Website ] Apr 6, 2009, 11:19