The Brothers Austrian

This mission is for Obama guys!

In case you missed it, there was some hulla balloo in downtown New York City Monday when the federal government sent Air Force One (along with its paparazzi) on a secret mission.  It seems like the secret mission included a photo op flyby of the Statue of Liberty.  The planes logically took a path most similar to the ones taken on 9/11.  Genius.

Like any good Austro-libertarian I asked myself if a private company, say XYZ Company, would have the hubris to complete such a mission.  In all honesty you know what, perhaps it would.  It’s impossible to know for sure.  One thing that we do know is that there would be immediate backlash from potential consumers of XYZ Company.  In other words, they would be accountable.  In this case, however, other than some trumped up anger from the president (and likely a fired employee), the government will go unscathed.  After all. what can we really do?

To top all of this off, the government spent $328k on this folly.  That should sicken each and every one of you.  As Federal Reserve inflates our money supply by the trillion, the same government still has the pretense to send Airforce One on this special mission.  Can’t say I’m surprised.

Teacherman General, Government Spending 9/11, airforce one, Federal Reserve, government, money supply, obama

Jobs, Jobs, jobs politicians say. We must put the people back to work, however this is only temporary they say. Merely to fill the “gap” left by the private sector, but I would put this question to President Obama, whats your exit strategy? What jobs will the government provide that can be seamlessly absorbed by the public sector when the crisis is over?

Does the government have the foresight to train employees in area’s of business that the private sector will deem to be viable and productive in the future? Once the government builds their bridges and railroads where do the employees go from there? If the government can figure this all out maybe they can give me some stock tips while they are at it. I mean we all know how the government is a viable, efficient, and profitable entity that can balance a budget, so we will be ok, right?

Again, I don’t think that the government has an exit strategy for this mess. Once they start putting people to work it will be awfully hard (politically) to lay them off and let the private sector try to absorb them. These former government employees will not be trained in the skills they need to be useful in the private sector and they will continue to demand unsustainable wages. The government will succumb because ultimately these employees vote. This in turn will in turn increase the velocity of our country’s downward productivity spiral.

If the government wants to stimulate, I say pour money into mathmatics, science and law enforcment. Perhaps upgrade our rail system but thats it. Let prices come down, let banks fail, and watch productivity go up.

Wendall Wilkie Government Spending, Interventionism, Politics employment, government, jobs, obama, private sector, stimulus

A recent Time article quoted an Iranian as saying the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is like the difference between Pepsi and Coke. When it comes to economic policy I could not agree more.

CHANGE is here right? Wrong! Since 1896 the Keynesian viewpoints began to overwhelm capitalism.

(I know some of you are chomping at the bits to say that such an assumption cannot possibly be true being that Keynes would have been 13 in 1896. What I am referring to is the emergence of interventionist policy that started to take hold in during the banking crisis in the late 19th century.  To me Keynes merely gets credit for the wave interventionist monetary policy which came to a perverse apex during the great depression).

FDR, Obama and Kennedy all attended Harvard. H.W Bush, Clinton, G.W Bush all attended Yale. The same schools produce the MBA students that litter the ranks of Goldman Sachs. Under Bush the there was Paulson (Goldman Sachs). Under Obama there was/is Rubin (Citi), and Larry Summers who head Obama’s economic council. Current Treasury Secretary Geithner (Dartmouth) worked under Rubin and Summers from 1999 to 2000. Change?

Whats my point? All of these people come from the Keynesian school of thought. We can spend you way out of this thing.  We can do it if we try, we can do it. Hey, it worked in Great Depression…right? It worked for the Japanese, right?

Former Treasury Secretary O’Neill made the following comments to the LA Times.

“Doesn’t this seem like lunacy to you?” said O’Neill, who was President Bush’s first Treasury chief, from 2001 to 2002, in a telephone interview today. “The consequences of it are unbelievably bad in terms of public intrusion into the private sector.”

… “Is anybody thinking there?” asked O’Neill, who also served as deputy budget director in the Ford administration. “It’s too late, it’s not going to make any difference and it’s aggravating as hell when there’s a better idea and you can’t even get it in play,” he said, recognizing little success so far in pitching his own proposal.

I suppose it come down to what was repeatedly preached by Mises. Governments pick the winners and the losers. In the modern era the history books were written by FDR’s Keynsians that graduated from Ivy league schools. They are the ones picking the winners. They are a best and our brightest, right? My gripe is that they all tend to come from the same school of the thought. They leave no room for the entrepreneur to pave his own way.

Obama Pepsi, Bush Coke…when can we have a little Sprite?

Wendall Wilkie Interventionism, Politics Change, dartmouth, Economics, government, harvard, Keynes, keynesian, mises, obama, yale