Lone Ranger of the Fed issues warning

Pop economic theory is about to be killed off with a massive error, not there haven't been enough in the past.  The problem is the Keynesian choir sings to itself. Common sense is for the masses.

The Fed is going to continue printing money and stop the nation from taking its  medicine.  This may sound arcane, but it is not.  Anyone knows you can't stop an economic crisis by deciding to spend more on you credit card.

What would you do if a business that owed you money kept reducing the amount you are due?  At some point, you no longer do business with it.  It may take time if the business is big and important, but eventually you don't accept being ripped off.

The Fed is about to do that by reducing the value of our dollar, again.  It is that simple.

Anyway, buy silver.  Vote Tuesday for sanity.

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Archive for Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Federal Reserve leader Thomas Hoenig warns of future economic downturn

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By Chad Lawhorn

October 26, 2010

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A very big bet on the U.S. economy is about to be made, and one of the leading economists in the country fears federal leaders are set to bet wrong, a Kansas University crowd was told Monday.

Thomas Hoenig

Thomas Hoenig, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, invoked memories of the 1980s inflation crisis and warned that the country could face another major downturn if federal policymakers become too impatient with high levels of unemployment.

“There are no shortcuts,” said Hoenig, who spoke as part of the KU Business School’s Chandler Lecture Series. “You can’t go through this horrendous crisis, this horrendous recession and suddenly think the next day things are back to normal.”

Hoenig has emerged as the country’s leading critic of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s discussion to stimulate the economy by purchasing more U.S. Treasury bonds and making it cheap for banks to lend money. The policy is expected to be discussed at the Fed’s next meeting on Nov. 2-3.

Hoenig, who serves on the 10-member Federal Open Markets Committee with Bernanke, called the policy a “very dangerous gamble.” He said the actions now under consideration cause him to recall the aggressive actions taken by the Federal Reserve in the 1970s to push down interest rates and unemployment levels. Hoenig argues those actions led to the high levels of inflation in the 1980s that produced a damaging recession.

“It put us in a harsh crisis that in this part of the world popped an energy bubble, an ag bubble, a residential real estate bubble and a commercial real estate bubble,” Hoenig said. “And in this region alone 350 banks failed.

“Now, there was never an intention to have those banks fail, there was never an intention to have high inflation. There was always the intention to bring unemployment down quickly. But when you have this kind of structural change it takes time for that to happen. When you try to accelerate it with monetary policy alone, you are making a bargain, I’m afraid, with the devil.”

Hoenig is urging fellow policymakers at the Fed to slightly raise interest rates before inflation gains momentum. But thus far Hoenig has been the only Fed leader to take that position. The majority of Fed leaders argue that raising interest rates even slightly could choke off the fragile recovery and the economy could fall into a dangerous period of deflation.

A large Lied Center crowd, estimated by KU leaders at 1,500 people, tried to make sense of it. Stu Entz, a Topeka attorney, said he’s uncertain which side has the correct answer....

Must see TV: Geert Wilders trial. Also, Juan Williams and CAIR

GEERT WILDERS trial:  Judge reads testimony of a well-known Arab woman living in the U.S. She is testifying for the defense. She agrees her religion is a violent religion where the Q'uran, in Arabic, explains there is no talking to other religions and that Muslims must infiltrate, penetrate, and convert.  Killing is fine. The holy book says cut of the heads and fingers of infidels. 


She notes Mohamed himself said to outnumber others in order to conquer, as they are doing in Denmark and starting in the U.S.  She states it was in the U.S. she was able to see her religion objectively.


She further notes Islam is more dangerous than NAZIISM in that it is more than a mere political movement. It is covered with religion.


Every American should watch this.


This testimony may wake people up.  You won't find our news media sound a warning.  See story below.


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You are likely aware that Juan Williams was fired by NPR, which is related at the hip to PBS, because he said on the O'Reilly show that he was apprehensive when he saw Arabs in their outfits on a plane.  Not a particularly odd thing to say considering the point of terrorism is to worry the enemy. 


People have wondered what the hell NPR was doing. 


Note this:  On October 9, 2010, before the firing, PBS had an envoy at a CAIR gathering.   Joel Schwartzberg, Senior Editor of PBS Interactive was a presenter at the CAIR Leadership Conference preceding their 16th annual national banquet.  He was sent to help train CAIR.




Sometime before the conference, PBS was given $325,000 by the Organization of Islamic Conference. The gift was to help fight Islamophobia. There is a plan to do so that includes ten years of punishments for those deemed afraid of Muslims.

...PBS’s sister organization NPR fired Juan Williams after CAIR called for them to “address” Williams’ “irresponsible and inflammatory” comments with “professional consequences....”

CAIR is a known terrorist front in the U.S., if you don't know.  It likes to sue people so many shut up when CAIR knocks on the door.  Michael Savage is enjoying himself suing them back.


CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism finance trial in history, and where another team of prosecutors apparently are conducting a Grand Jury investigation of CAIR. 


Final note: within a day, Juan Williams was hired by Fox at a better salary. He says he is still a liberal and respects the NPR system, but now understand the forces of the left.


NPR and PBS are the enemy within and you fund them. The firing of Williams is in violation of federal law, as it was directed by a foreign group, but you will see no prosecution by this administration.


Or, I am just crazy.  You decide which way you want to go.

Global warming: "most successful pseudoscientific fraud"

Greg sent this along.  Below you will find Harold Lewis' resignation from the American Physical Society. He was a member for sixty years. He is being likened to Martin Luther publishing his theses.  Of course, we should see what Mr. Gore thinks in order to get a balanced view.
Nothing I can add to this. It is sad to see everything become corrupted and that there are so few incorruptible people.  You will see more "deniers" quickly appear, lest they be flushed down the toiled in the physic departments' toilet. 


Mr. Lewis vitae:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor SafetyChairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question....

His resignation: 

Dear Curt: 

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch.... 

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.<

In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity.... 

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise.

This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago....  

As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

All you have do is breathe

Something completely different:

1.  Waking Up Is Hard To Do

2.  Breathe 

Voting WIth Your Feet

From Irene:  Below is a projection of the coming apportionment of Congressional seats. This reflects upon the electoral vote.

It is not brain surgery to understand why the die-hard leftist states are losing votes.  California is interesting in that it remained the same.  Must be the sun.