Friday, June 20, 2008

I Pass On Profits

The market is near where it was last march, before it began its March up. All the finance people I read named it, and I could have sold high and rebought at these new lows and earned another 10%(I am shorting the market so I make money when it goes bad). I am not an investor, and timing is important, so I did nothing, passing on an oppty to make money. Now when gold goes up above $1000 again my portfolio will resume its previous high. I'd rather be trading goods and services.


Thursday, June 19, 2008

News From Ghana

One of the reason African countries are poor is because their leaders are corrupt as ours. But things are changing. A few notes on this article...

Note the Ghanaian nurse in Great Britain that heads back to Ghana as soon as her youngest gets accepted in a British University. There is the technology transfer. Note one farmer builds a farm with no assistance, yet there is a call for government help with credit. Credit is always a trap in starting a business.

Note the export programs to help Ghana export to USA, a democrat program, is almost impossible to comply with. EASier to sell to China and elsewhere, thus changing trade patterns worldwide. Once these things set, they are hard to change.


How Politics Work

After telecoms broke the law to advance totalitarianism in the USA for the Republicans, democrats threatened to enforce the law, and send a lot of top telecom officials to prison. Now that has changed, the democrats are giving them immunity, so the telecoms can do in the future for the dems what they did for the republicans in the past.


Wednesday, June 18, 2008

India Buys Hollywood

As part of the Hamiltonians terms of surrender, the Wall Street Journal reports that our top Hollywood talent is signing up with India.

The foolishness of our economic policies was a matter of acceleration... they stretch back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, but slowly gain momentum and acceleration. You can blame this on the Bush administration, since they have done more damage in the last 7 years than done in all of the previous 70..., but it was pretty much inevitable.

The good part is these policies were hamiltonian, not Jeffersonian, so we can always resume where we left off, after some reform. There will be disaster in the meantime.

The good part of this story is the buyer of our assets is a good man. We used to have people like this heading up top USA businesses.


Yikes RBS Calls Crash

This does not look good...


Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Heartbreak: Liuhua Complex Shuttered

News from Guangzhou is the Communists are rearranging the Canton Fair, and not using the LiuHua complex any longer. The new complex is beautiful, but I have so many delightful memories of the old buildings, and staying at the Dong Fang Binguan across the street. This was back in the good/bad old days of the 1970's when the hard-core communists were in charge... the contrast between Hong Kong and China was the beginning of my interest in economics as an explanation for the disparity.

Marxism did not explain the differences, nor kyenesianism, not the german historical school, nor the monetarists, Chicago school was a gateway drug, but proved ineefective... supply side sounded promising, and finally I arrived at the Austrian School of Economics, which seemed to get is mostly right.


Not A Book Review

But you should know, that in 1920 John Maynard Keynes published The End of Laissez-Faire: The Economic Consequences of the Peace. A money quote pp. 235-36:

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers,’ who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.”


Video Explanations

Thanks for the feedback on the videos... yes, we'll get them uploaded to youtube america next time, my editor works off italian equipment and sites; yes, I intend to film it all and more, and I believe you can subscribe on youtube so they are sent to you as I put them up.

Youtube limits to ten minutes, so none will be longer than that.

And yes, for those who have never seen me before, the picture on the book is of me when I BEFORE writing the book... the videos show me AFTER writing the book. It was a struggle.


Monday, June 16, 2008

Whose Fault Is Oil Price

People are blaming the democrats for failure to exploit USA oil as contributing to the price of oil. This is so wildly off, that I wonder at how IBD has any readers!

First, there is a war, which has cut supplies, which has raised prices.

Of course the democrats support this war, as lie about being against it, as this congressman explains.

George Bush himself is on record as desiring high oil prices. At a low price, the USA oil industry is out of work. At a high price, that army of Texas engineers and bankers and lawyers is busy. As we keep our oil, and the Arabs pump theirs out, what we have underground grows more valuable.

The democrats are responsuble for the high cost of food, with their ethnal projects. Even with oil at a high price, ethanol must be subsidized to work.

This is how the democrats and republicans operate. This is why we must be self-employed, so we may secede in place.


Innovation in Fabrics

To get cranberry color in glass, gold must be introducedm hence the higher cost. Now nanotechnology is being used to dye new colors for high-end fabrics.

Scabal makes high-end fabricsm including a pinstripe with 22 carat gold thread for the striping. Must be a problem goiing through airports.

That is not for me, but I had a suit made Scabal's Tweed material. I think high-end fabric is one of those areas you get what you pay for.


Tent Cities

Mish Shedlock has put together a distressing collection of reports on tent cities going up as people lose their homes. In the depression these were called Hoovervilles, after Prse. Hoover whose econ policies helped create the depression. So what will these be called? Bushvilles? Neoncontowns? Inevitavilles?


Sunday, June 15, 2008

Online Video Project

I've filmed some on-location shots of starting your own business, plus broke up my class to six week sections and filmed it with a view to putting my entire course online.

Youtube only allows 10 minute maximum clips, so the course will be thus broken down.

You can see my first installment here, and feel free to let me know what you think.