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Egyptian Economist Arrested for Criticizing Government
The Egyptian Economist, Abdel Khalik Farouk, is the author of more than 20 books on corruption in the Egyptian economy. His latest book, Is Egypt really poor? was confiscated by Egyptian authorities last week on the day of publication. The owner of the printing house, Ibrahim El Khatib, was also arrested. Farouk has set out that the corruption inside the Egyptian government is what keeps the nation poor. He is correct on that score for corruption in governments, in general, are always the greatest redistribution of wealth ever created.
Then there is the Greek Chief statistician Andreas Georgiou who is now under the charge of having harmed the national interest! He was the one who corrected the faked Greek deficit number of -3,9 to the real number of -15.4%. On August 2nd, 2010, he was appointed as President of the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT). Then on August 2nd, 2015, he surprisingly resigned from office with immediate effect. This in July 2016, the Greek Supreme Court upheld charges against Georgiou for having harmed the “national interest” for effectively telling the truth.
Of course, our media is part of the corruption in general. They preach the government line and spit out propaganda and they could care less what they are doing to the United States or the world. Hillary, for example, was perhaps the peak of corruption. Here we had a politician with the audacity to pretend she stands against the “rich” and then all the super rich stand in line to buy favors. Goldman Sachswent as far as to ban its staff from even donating to the Trump campaign.
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Economist on Gold – A Dissection
Economist on Gold – A Dissection
A Proven Contrary Indicator
In early May, the Economist has published an editorial on gold, ominously entitled “Buried”. We wanted to comment on it earlier already, but never seemed to get around to it. It is still worth doing so for a number of reasons.
The Economist is a quintessential establishment publication. It occasionally gives lip service to supporting the free market, but anyone who has ever read it with his eyes open must have noticed that 70% of the content is all about how governments should best centrally plan the economy, while most of the rest is concerned with dispensing advice as to how to expand and preserve Anglo-American imperialism. We are exaggerating a bit for effect here, but in essence we think this describes the magazine well. In other words, its economic stance is essentially indistinguishable from that of the Financial Times or most of the rest of the mainstream financial press.
Image credit: Bloomberg
Keynesian shibboleths about “market failure” and the need to prevent it, as well as the alleged need for governments to provide “public goods” and to steer the economy in directions desired by the ruling elite with a variety of taxation and spending schemes as well as monetary interventionism, are dripping from its pages in generous dollops. It never strays beyond the “acceptable” degree of support for free markets, which is essentially book-ended by Milton Friedman (a supporter of central banking, fiat money and positivism in economic science, who comes from an economic school of thought that was regarded as part of the “leftist fringe” in the 1940s as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has pointed out). Needless to say, the default expectation should therefore be that the magazine will be dissing gold – and indeed, it didn’t disappoint.
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Why We’re Drifting Towards World War 3
Why We’re Drifting Towards World War 3
The Economist argues that there are ominous parallels between the conditions which led to the first world war and today:
The United States is Britain, the superpower on the wane, unable to guarantee global security. Its main trading partner, China, plays the part of Germany, a new economic power bristling with nationalist indignation and building up its armed forces rapidly. Modern Japan is France, an ally of the retreating hegemon and a declining regional power. The parallels are not exact—China lacks the Kaiser’s territorial ambitions and America’s defence budget is far more impressive than imperial Britain’s—but they are close enough for the world to be on its guard.
Which, by and large, it is not. The most troubling similarity between 1914 and now is complacency. Businesspeople today are like businesspeople then: too busy making money to notice the serpents flickering at the bottom of their trading screens. Politicians are playing with nationalism just as they did 100 years ago. China’s leaders whip up Japanophobia, using it as cover for economic reforms, while Shinzo Abe stirs Japanese nationalism for similar reasons.
The New Republic points out that global downturns can lead to war:
As the experience of the 1930s testified, a prolonged global downturn can have profound political and geopolitical repercussions. In the U.S. and Europe, the downturn has already inspired unsavory, right-wing populist movements. It could also bring abouttrade wars and intense competition over natural resources, and the eventual breakdown of important institutions like European Union and the World Trade Organization. Even a shooting war is possible.
The Telegraph notes that the economic crisis in Europe is increasing tensions:
Tensions between European countries unseen in decades are emerging.
(Indeed, Europe is stuck in a downturn worse than the Great Depression.)
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