United Liberty

Stephen Baskerville paints a frightening picture of American family law— a picture that seems to be torn from a book about communism or Nazism. Although I disagree with his designation of family law as “totalitarian”, I think his arguments about the extent to which the government has betrayed American families are quite compelling. Given his personal experiences with the family court system, Baskerville’s opinions cannot be dismissed as abstractions. Baskerville writes:

China, the largest holder of United States’ debt, is expressing concern over the our economy:

The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, spoke in unusually blunt terms on Friday about the “safety” of China’s $1 trillion investment in American government debt, the world’s largest such holding, and urged the Obama administration to offer assurances that the securities would maintain their value.
[…]
“President Obama and his new government have adopted a series of measures to deal with the financial crisis. We have expectations as to the effects of these measures,” Mr. Wen said. “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.”

The trend of labeling the Islamic religion as “totalitarian” is far too provocative to leave unanswered. Those who argue that Islam, or the Muslim faith, is by its very nature totalitarian turn a semantic gaffe into a pejorative and hostile dogma which, in turn, becomes an article of faith for the avid fans of Fox News. Given the social cost of mobilizing a large segment of the population to fear and abhor Muslims, this error must be addressed.

When no other explanations make sense, you can always count on a little pop psychology to soothe the American soul. Here is what Psychology Today has to say about the economy:

People cheat more when they aren’t dealing with real money. Abstractions—whether it’s a poker chip or a stock option—make people more comfortable with fudging the rules. Start trading fancy derivatives and your morals just might come unmoored.

When people feel at the mercy of a volatile market, they’re more likely to see false trends in financial data. Lacking control causes the mind to spot patterns in order to regain a sense of agency. When the patterns are illusions, bad trades can result.

Barack Obama doesn’t have the votes to pass his $4 trillion budget:

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he has spoken to enough colleagues about several different provisions in the budget request to make him think Congress won’t pass it.

Conrad urged White House budget director Peter Orszag not to “draw lines in the sand” with lawmakers, most notably on Obama’s plan for a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions.

After the latest school shooting in Germany, I think we all need to get together and decide to get serious about ending school violence – by banning schools!

Something goes on in modern schools that lead more and more young people to grab guns and blow away their teachers and classmates.

School shootings are even more numerous than shootings at Post Offices or other Government buildings. So, we need to take drastic measures and ban all schools.

Who’s with me?

For a country so steeped in patriotism, we are surprisingly speechless when it comes to naming American heroes that are not somehow attached to ESPN. So it is with great delight that I discovered Heroes of Capitalism, a blog devoted to profiling those whose heroism involved the use of private property to create wealth.Everyday features at least one new hero of capitalism and his or her accomplishment/s.

A few of my personal favorites:

According to a recent report released by Chicago based research and consulting organization Spectrem Group, examining the effects the recent market downturn has had on America’s affluent, the number of American households with a networth over $1,000,000 has declined dramatically since 2007.

While this statistic is not a direct measure of inequality, this drop in the number of millionaires will inevitably have a significant effect in bringing down total inequality in our economic system.

For most investable assets, the market has been in a 25 year bubble, instigated by the poor monetary, regulatory, and fiscal policies created by our goverment and the institutions (i.e., the Fed) that closely surround it. This bubble artificially created a greater number of affluent than the economy would naturally support, and which could no longer be sustained once the bubble popped.