Greek Unemployment

How can unemployment get to 26%, or nearly 60% for under 25 year olds?  Only too much government can cause this result.

Unemployment in debt-crippled Greece rose to a record of 26 percent in the last quarter of 2012, as austerity measures combined with a deep recession took a harsh toll on the workforce.

The figures were worse than the previous quarter's 24.8 percent, and 20.7 percent a year earlier.

The national statistical authority said Thursday that 1.29 million people were out of a job in October-December 2012. In the under 25 age group, unemployment was 57.8 percent.

By letting the state control any and all, there is no rational limit to its control.  Problem is, the few who play king "to fight our battles for us" simply are not capable of directing an economy (from the Greek "household").

Those who clamor to be oppressed find at the end of the line any faculties in self-employment (what I now call customer-employment) have atrophied to the point where they become a mere statistic.

There is no end to the work that needs to be done.  Instead of working, people take to the street and protest that the state has failed.  They demand the state not fail.  Of course it is desperate, since they have a false dilemma: state success or death.

We all love a system that works for us, even if we can see that it does not.  Even if we can know that it can not.  This is not limited to Greece.  C'est la vie.



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Stella Artois & Inflation

After Deng Xiaoping liberalized life in China, fancy restaurants began to pop up.  You never knew what would pass for fancy, and we ordered the best beer in the house.  Out came Pabst Blue Ribbon, in the bottle.  To be sure, it looked fancy.

Belgium has a Pabst Blue Ribbon kind of beer, called Stella Artois.  It too is pitched as a super premium beer, at least from the ads, and the offer for Stella-branded "chalices" from which to drink.

It is a nice beer, and when I saw it at about $1 a bottle at Costco, I bought a case, as an alternative to water.  Thirsty the next day, I grabbed a bottle and felt something was wrong.  I studied the label.  11.2 ounces.  Arrggghhh... inflation again.

It's bad enough that over the last few years a 12 oz bottle of beer has gone from 75 cents to a buck.  That 8/10ths less is about 6.67% increase in price. By reducing 6.67% for the same price, the price is in fact going up.

It is great for the brewers since they make less beer, smaller glass, and since this is apparently shipped in from Belgium less freight, for the same money.

When too much money is created, then inflation occurs.  More money chasing the same of fewer goods leads to the price rises.   Governments should NEVER be allowed to go near the money.

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New Pope Terrorizes Cafeteria Catholics!

The last two Popes did some heavy lifting on their own, allowing cafeteria Catholics, the vast majority, to form crowds and sneer at each other.  The term cafeteria Catholic refers to the tendency to pick and choose which teachings certain Catholics want to obey.

The peace and justice left wing crowds around the dessert section and ogles the sweets, while the right wing hangs out at the utensil stand and admires how sharp the forks are and how big the spoons are.    Neither has the discipline to get a balanced diet.

Out of the gate this Pope said -

He urged priests to build their churches on solid foundations, warning: "What happens when children build sand castles on the beach? It all comes down."

"If we don't proclaim Jesus, we become a pitiful NGO, not the bride of the Lord," he said.

"When we walk without the cross, and when we preach about Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are mundane. We are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but we are not disciples of the Lord."

Pitiful NGO. Ouch!  The right wingers are grinning right now, but I bet he saves the best for last, that is  to correct the pro-war wing of the Church.

No more Mr. Nice Guy, the whip comes down!

UPDATE:  Looks like "pitiful" NGO is a bad translation of "charitable NGO."  I can see the mistake in translation...  so no, this Pope is not like me.  Probably a good thing...

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Swedish Deflation & Socialism vs Capitalism

You cannot have an economic recovery without prices falling.  The proof we will not have a recovery is all policies in USA are designed to keep prices from falling.  So this will go on until our system crashes completely, and then war, etc.  But that is for later.

Sweden is, and has been, on the right track.  Sweden had a economic breakdown like our 2008 back in 1992.  Sweden handled it exactly right, for a state:

Sweden didn't just bail out its banks by simply having the government take over the "bad" debt; instead, it required banks to count their losses and issue warrants to the Swedish government before it received recapitalization.

All money and assets were to be accounted for to make sure all of the "fat" was trimmed.

The government also formed two new agencies. The first was an agency that supervised institutions that needed recapitalization and the second agency sold the assets the banks held as collateral.

The government then "bled" shareholders and allowed for "no sacred cows," according the article.

In a short time, the government had seized a large part of the Swedish banking industry and the new agencies drained most of the banks' share capital before it decided to put cash into the economy.

Now, as an aside, under anarchy, they would never have had the problem to begin with.  But notice here, this article is from 2008 when Bush was still president.  A clear path was already known, but the capitalists went their own way, and we are still paying too much for gas, getting too little for our money and in economic doldrums, five years into the Obama administration.  Clearly socialism is superior to capitalism in handling these problems.

Of course Sweden is a small homogenous country, and have a completely different idea of the role of government.  Hear this Swedish official:

Urban Backstrom, a senior Swedish finance ministry official at the time, told The New York Times that putting taxpayers on the hook without anything in return could be a mistake because "the public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything."

How mistaken can one be? To this day billions are shoveled daily to the malefactors in the last break down, assuring the next one coming will be far worse, and the bills laid onto the children unto the third and fourth generation.   Maybe Swedes would not support such a plan, but Americans have their Fritos and Superbowl and simply cannot be bothered with the effects of fascism.

But wait, the very best thing is happening, Sweden now has deflation.  With victories mounting, what do Swedish politicians do?  Try to wreck it!

The Riksbank's target is to maintain inflation at a rate of 2 per cent when measured by CPI.

Targeting inflation at 2% is to steal from the people, passing the money onto the bankers.  This is why I do not like socialism either.  Both ism's pick winners and losers, when that is the work of customers, not states.

Sweden needs to let deflation happen so Sweden can lead the world with the least bad -ism.  Or go all the way and become the next Hong Kong.

Go Sweden!

***

And this just in from a child studying Sanskrit at the Sorbonne:  The root of Maharaja is the same as mega and reign.  See, the H sound in maha turned into a hard G in Europe in mega, but it goes silent in reign, where is goes to the J sound in Hindi.

Oh.

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A Design Source?

This has to be one of the funniest serious websites...  it has a listing of things people will do for $5...  check out some of the services.

http://fiverr.com/

I could see using some of the services but I could not help but keep thinking what could I offer for $5 that would be worth my time, or in the eternal words of Joe Girard, what could I offer that is worth more to them than their money?

I would have to be something I could deliver in less than 3 minutes... since there is 20 of those in an hour and I need at least $100 an hour...  what would be fun?

I suppose I could do a 60 second business plan review.  I would not read anyone's plan, I'd just say "who are your customers" and then push that they test their assumption.  Five bucks.

So there, you just got my five dollar consulting for free.

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Catholic Theocons Keep Talking War

With a new pro-peace Pope elected, Catholic theocons waste no time in insisting the Church needs to worry about Moslems...  Here from Michael Novak's website, in an interview with George Weigel.

Michael: On your side is that Catholics now number 1.2 billion human beings on earth — one out of six — and are growing rapidly, faster than Muslims.The atheist part of the earth is shrinking, as more and more persons lose meaning, purpose, and even the heart to defend themselves — and fewer couples have children. But your central point is how Evangelical Catholicism will change the people in the pews, say, in America.

I used to like these two, but they both sold out for a place at the table.  They are both excellent examples of getting a reward here and now but their pro-war and blood libels on Islam will cost them at some point.

America is hated for the influence of the theocons and neocons.  Both have been useful idiots to the powers that be.  Both delight in pretty shiny awards and time in front of a podium.  Generally CIA funded.  Neither will take responsibility for their role in the decimation of Christian communities in the Middle East.  Arrrggghhh!

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New Pope Francis

As in pro-peace... very good..

And an Italian...  Argentines are Italians who speak Spanish and think they are English.

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Detroit - The Promised Land

When I read about Detroit's problems I get all starry-eyed.  As Chairman Mao would say after every woeful report: "The situation is excellent!"

The state review team found in recent months that the city’s main courthouse had $280 million worth of uncollected fines and fees. No one could tell the team how many police officers were patrolling the streets, even though public safety accounted for a little more than half the budget. The city was borrowing from restricted funds and keeping unclaimed property that it was required to turn over to the state. In some city departments, records were “basically stuff written on index cards,” as one City Council member put it.

And

Under Michigan law, the emergency manager would ultimately have the authority to remove local elected officials from most financial decision making, change labor contracts, close or privatize departments, and even recommend that Detroit enter bankruptcy proceedings, a possibility that experts say raises the prospect of the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history, at $14 billion worth of long-term obligations.

None of the decisions, experts here say, will be simple, and some wonder whether Detroit can be saved at all. Some 700,000 residents now live in this vast 139-square-mile city that once was home to nearly two million people. That number may fall to close to 600,000 by 2030 before the population begins to rise again, one regional planning group projects. By pushing costs into the future while its population is shrinking, Detroit has left the people least able to pay with the biggest share of its bills.

“Detroit is a microcosm of what’s going on in America, except America can still print money and borrow,” Mr. Boyle said.

The problem in Detroit is too much government.  This always bring financial chaos and terrible management.  With Detroit people can quietly assure themselves it's the fact that Detroit is run by people of some African heritage, but that would ignore all the other white-run bankrupt cities and other larger cities that will go bankrupt in time.

Detroit grew because it was prime everything.  It died for top-down social engineering.  The American that built Detroit is gone.  There is no America that can revive Detroit.  But there is freedom, something to which all people in all times and places respond.

If the peninsula upon which Detroit sits were to be made into a autonomous region, with roughly the legal system of Hong Kong, then there would be a true renaissance.  People willing to try would find their welfare checks inadequate, and those who irredeemably depended on welfare checks would find moving into USA proper economically advantageous.

Their Newspaper is the Detroit Free Press.  How about the Detroit Free Autonomous Region?

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How The Fed Helps the Rich, Hurts the Poor

Rothbard wrote an easy book with an awkward title, but makes a point everyone should know:  with inflation, the first in line (bankers) benefit most and the last in line are hurt the most (Patty Paycheck.)



Since inflation properly defined is the RESULT of printing too much currency, there is also a process before the result, a process that takes time.  It's time that does the trick for the rich, that harms the poor.   The process of too much currency spreading out through the economy, introduced at the bank level and finally paid out to a wage earner begins with the banker extinguishing old bank debts with newly conjured currency.  The old bank debt was denominated in units of the currency before the new currency was introduced.

If the entire economy was $20 and ten loaves of bread, then each loaf would be worth $2.

If I were to introduce another creditable (but unwarranted) $5, then (20 + 5 = 25) the economy would be $25 and ten loaves of bread, or each loaf is now worth (or costs) $2.50.

Here is the trick, as the banker, I quietly print another $5, use $2 to pay off my debt on (or just buy) a loaf of bread.  Now, I have no debt, I own a loaf of bread.  I then release the remaining $3 into the economy. Now we have (20 + 3 = 23)/10 loaves = $2.33 each loaf.  The banker pays $2, you pay $2.33.  Heck, you hardly even notice.  It hardly seems worth it.

Until you understand it happens in a trillion dollar economy.  And when you have to buy things, and you find the price is higher in the case of gas, and the same price as before but for a smaller loaf in the case of bread, you experience what the bankers call "cooking the frog slowly."  You hardly notice the warming of the water.

(Wait..wait...  if this is so, then why don't people just watch the printing presses and figure out what is going on, and then front-run for personal benefit.  They did, so the banks stopped telling us they were printing.)

Now this is such a good racket that banks create this credit to lend to businesses, especially big ones who make what we must buy: food clothing shelter gas etc - General Motors General Foods General Electric Shell. The problem is these big businesses no longer make what anyone wants to buy, but they have starved out competitors with their regulations against competition and relatively cheap money.

Frank Shostak covers this well...

Contrary to popular thinking, loose monetary policy, which leads to a misallocation of resources, weakens the economy’s ability to generate final goods and services, i.e. real wealth.

Here is the problem... what is your alternative?

And the state knows this will end badly, so the state is at once arming itself and trying to disarm the citizens.  Civil war ahead, if for no other reason that what goes around comes around.  If we foment civil wars world wide we should expect it to come here.

Which suits those who foment civil wars.  The best way to resist all of this is to get customer-employed (I no longer say "self-employed") and resist the big bad companies by competing.  It would be a terrible struggle to make cheese, or whatever, today.  But it can be done, and it would be crazy to join in on the coming violence.

But two things will happen.  The price of Big Cheese will shoot up far higher than craft cheese, making yours profitable for you, and available.  And when the craziness has past, we'll still know how to make cheese.

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Import Export Seminar at CalPoly

For those in Southern California I am teaching an all-day seminar at CalPoly SLO on Saturday, May 18, 2013 from 9-5pm.  San Luis Obispo is a beautiful town which has outlawed fast food drive ups to good effect I hear.  I stick around after class and answer specific questions, so it is a great opportunity get in-depth direction.

Enroll early, this does fill up.  I hope to see you there!



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Finding Buyers And Sellers Of Competitors

If you want names of Buyers and Sellers and more in international trade, check out the wealth of info available in customs rulings.

You might know of a pasta importer names Molino so you could enter that and up comes...

Or you might be interested in wool carpets and enter that and up comes...

You could spend hours getting info far superior that you can get from panjiva, importgenius, etc...

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The Test For Jack Andraka

Here is a phenomenal video....



Except, it is not about science.  I wish it were true.

1. If it is a valid test, show us how.

2.  If it is a valid test, is it reliable?  Let 10,000 others try and see if it is reliable.

If it is not valid and reliable, then it is not science.  Says Jack:

The teen wants to mass market his invention so that it's available to everyone. He's already in talks with major corporations to make sure it hits shelves as soon as possible.

"I’ve gotten these Facebook messages asking, 'Can I have the test?'" Andraka tells Smithsonianmagazine. "I am heartbroken to say no."

Well, if you want it out and available to everyone, then open source it now.  If you are holding back so you can profit on your invention, then you've already sold out to Pfizer, et al.

How did you shift from small. creative to "major corporation?"  Open source it and it will be at most weeks before it is everywhere.

I can't find anything that demonstrates we have science here.  Correct me if I am wrong.

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