DecliNATIONblog

Well at least Donte Stallworth wasn’t fighting dogs…then they would have broken him off 23 months.

Holy Crap!  30 days?  Really???

Today, NFL WR Donte Stallworth pleaded guilty to murdering a man with a Bentley that he was too incapacitated to operate, and was consequently ordered to spend 30 days in jail with 2 years of house arrest. 

I think I am going to be sick.

Michael Vick was fighting his OWN DAMN dogs and received 2 years of prison with 30 days of house arrest.  Where is the justice?

Hell, Martha Stewart received 9 months for LYING!  About a crime she was found innocent of…

Personally, I hate the concepts of jails and prison.  I would rather see us move to a restitution system instead of locking people in a cage like they are animals.  But 30 days for murder?  9 Months for lying?  23 months for fighting your own dog? 

Something is just not right here.

So, will MADD be out boycotting upcoming Stallworth games?  Will ESPN run entire segments on every move this murderer makes?  After all, that is how they are treating the dog fighter.  How will the press treat a MURDERER?

Here is the simple rule for understading the Libertarian concept of justice:  If there is no victim, there is no crime.  Who was the victim in the Michael Vick dog-fighting?  Who is the victim in drug use?  Who is the victim in prostitution?

That’s right, no one.  Thus they are not crimes.

But MURDER on the other hand is different.  And in my system of restitution, and eye-for-eye will work just fine.

But at least Stallworth feels bad:

“I accept full responsibility for this horrible tragedy,” said Stallworth, who was accompanied at the hearing by his parents, siblings and other supporters. “I will bear this burden for the rest of my life.”

Thanks, that makes it all feel so much better.

Some 30 years ago, the great free-market economist Milton Friedman appeared on The Donahue Show with Phil Donahue.  The entire interview can be viewed on Youtube here (note: The interview is in 5 parts). 

The following is a 2 minute transcription where Friedman takes Donahue to task for his government-interventionist ideas:

 Donahue:  When you see around the globe, the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few “haves” and so many “have nots”, when you see the greed and the concentration of power; aren’t you ever…did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism?  And whether greed is a good idea to run on?

Friedman:  Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed?  You think Russia doesn’t run on greed?  You think China doesn’t run on greed?  What is greed?  Of course none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow whose greedy.  The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests.  The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.  Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a…from a bureaucrat.  Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.  In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history; are where they have had capitalism and largely free-trade.  If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that.  So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

Donahue:  But it seems to reward, not virtue, as much as ability to manipulate the system.

Friedman:  And what does reward virtue?  You think the Communist Commissar rewards virtue?  Do you think a Hitler rewards virtue?  Do you think, excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, do you think American Presidents reward virtue?  Do they choose their appointees on the bases of the virtue of the people appointed or on the bases of their political clout?  Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

You know, I think you’re taking a lot of things for granted.  Just tell me where in the world you find these angels, who are going to organize society for us.

Donahue:  Well…

Friedman:  I don’t even trust you to do that.

You just don’t find that kind of exchange on TV anymore.  It is so easy to sit back and pick on free-market capitalism, as is the zeitgeist, but truth be told it was not the free-market that put us in this position, but government intervention into the free-market.  A great expose testifying to this fact is Meltdown by Tom Woods.  I appreciate Milton Friedman’s contribution to academia and free-market capitalism and it is my guess that his keen insight is going to gain more and more fans as people begin to realize how accurate he was. 

After Peter Schiff’s great internet fame of mid-to-late ‘08 came the ridicule and furry of the bloggers and the WSJ.  Sure the dollar surged and Schiff’s advice looked bad in early ‘09.  But he stayed consistant and asked his investors to stay the course and now…he looks like a prophet yet again.

If you have not already done so, please read Crash Proof by Peter Schiff.  In the book he outlines why we had the dot.com boom, the housing bubble, and why they both HAD to fail.

He has been preaching the collapse of the dollar, the rise in gold and silver, and how investors can capitalize to get ahead of the game.

Well this week was sweet redemption as reported by Bloomberg:

The dollar declined beyond $1.41 against the euro for the first time this year as evidence the global recession is easing sent investors in search of assets with higher returns.

and this:

The dollar weakened 1.4 percent to $1.4136 per euro at 4:17 p.m. in New York, from $1.3941 yesterday, extending its decline this month to 6.4 percent, the biggest since December, when it dropped 9.2 percent. The dollar depreciated 1.7 percent to 95.24 yen from 96.85. The yen advanced 0.3 percent to 134.67 per euro from 135.04 yesterday.

The truth is the global economy is doing quite well and as I posted last week, our foreign creditors are catching on to “Our Lord and Savior” Obama’s plan to inflate our way out of debt.

International investors own about 51 percent of the $6.36 trillion in marketable U.S. government debt outstanding, up from 35 percent in 2000, according to data compiled by the Treasury.

South Korea is the latest holder of U.S. government debt to reduce its holdings. China, the largest foreign owner of Treasuries, said in March it was “worried” about its $767.9 billion investment and looking for assurances the value of its holdings would be protected. China has shifted holdings into bills from notes, more at risk when interest rates rise.

Virtually all of the losses Schiff’s clients experienced in late ‘08 and early ‘09 have been erased and many are now seeing serious growth.

Don’t worry, this is going to get much much worse before it gets any better-which means there is plenty of money to be made with the Peter Schiff approach to investing.

…and righfully so.

Our nations #1 creditor is getting concerned that we will be ‘printing’ our way out of debt, which of course means all of the dollars they own will become worthless.

From the Telegraph (click to read the entire article) comes this beauty:

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: “Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature.”

“I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

This comes as no surprise to anyone that read Crash Proof by Peter Schiff or Meltdown by Tom Woods.  The problem is all the freaking Keynesian Economists that love and are loved by Washington and the media just can’t figure why this is happening.

Let me put it this way.  The Federal Government is one agency that has no obligation to pay any of it’s debt back.  By the time creditors come calling, individuals in Washington have either left town or they come up with policies (like they are doing now) that allow them to miraculously purchase US Treasuries.  This action of course devalues the dollar, which means the creditor will eventually get paid back, but not with a currency that has any value.

I am sure that this point has not been missed by our Chinese Creditors.

This is probably a really good time to buy gold

Couple this with the hyper-inflation that our devaluing dollar is about to produce and we should start to see some serious economic turmoil.

Gold anyone?

I discovered Peter Schiff about a 9 months ago from a YouTube video, Peter Schiff was Right.  Since then I have read his book “Crash Proof” at which point I became a believer.  I frequent his website daily and on Fridays I make it a point to read his weekly commentary.  Today was no exception.  I had actually found this article last night from thestreet.com, but this edition comes directly from his website.

While economists and real estate investors “celebrate” the slight deceleration in the pace of home price declines in the recent data, a quick look at home price trajectories over the past 100 and 50 years reveals little to cheer about and much to be feared.

More significant than small month-to-month changes is the flow of home price patterns over decades. In his book Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller determined that in the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, home prices in the U.S. increased by an average of about 3.4% per year. These figures have not been adjusted for inflation. If they had, home prices would have outpaced inflation by only the slimmest of margins.

I for one and sick and tired of people calling their homes an “investment”, or worse those that expect their home to actually appreciate at 10% a year and NEVER depreciate.  Americans fell in love with the idea that their home doubled as their ATM but those days where one large head fake and hopefully we will never see them again.

He continues…

The government, through deficit spending, stimuli and bailouts, is literally pumping trillions and trillions of new dollars into the economy. Once the bloated inventories of the boom years are worked through, this torrent of new cash will push prices up with across the board. Inflation, more virulent than the variety seen in the 1970s, will put a nominal floor under home prices. But the benefits of seemingly stable home prices will be illusory. What good is a $200,000 house if it costs nearly that much to fill the refrigerator? However, inflation putting a floor under home prices does nothing to increase real demand for houses. With the prices for stocks, commodities and food going up faster than the prices of homes, residential real estate will remain a lousy investment. As a result, be wary of those who have called a housing bottom and now recommend beaten-down homebuilding stocks.

I realize that some individuals have fallen off the Peter Schiff bandwagon because of the dollar rally of late ‘08 and early ‘09, but they will be back soon enough when our dollar is worthless and his long-term investment strategy proves true.

Enjoy the complete article here.