Year: 2012

I REALLY Don’t Like Eli Yishai of Shas

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Every time Eli Yishai, the head of the Shas party, does something, he exhibits the perfect combination of cowardice, ignorance, pompousness, and something so way beyond chutzpah it’s hard to describe. He has done more to embarrass Judaism and God than any other Jew on the planet.

When anything bad happens, he blames it on gay people. Like the big Carmel fire last Chanukkah when 40 policemen were burned alive in a bus. Gay people did that. Well, thanks for making such a great name for the Jews, because you were the one in charge of the national fire department, which you neglected, probably worried about gay people, while we had to beg for equipment from abroad while the country burned. And you still don’t accept responsibility.

But he just keeps getting worse. The man just does not stop being an ass. Today, I was reading the Israel Hayom newspaper, quoting Yishai as saying we have to go into debt in order to “cheapen living costs” because as a “leader” he has to “take care” of the people by spending borrowed and/or printed money.

He added, “If we go a little off budget, it’s not a big deal.”

The reason living costs are so damn high is that the government taxes the crap out of everything that moves and Ehud Barak and Eli Yishai spend it on first class trips to France and Netanyahu spends it on elaborate anti-missile defense systems that shoot down $10 rockets with million dollar precision guided missiles and everyone cheers him on. Well, at least Netanyahu doesn’t want to put us in debt – he just wants to raise taxes some more. As much as that sucks, at least it’s honest.

But Yishai, ecchh, he wants to put us all into debt because he “cares” about “the people”.

The truth is he actually cares about buying some VOTES before elections next year. He’s a “leader”. He has to look out for the “little guy” by “bribing him with welfare” so he’ll “vote” for the guy that didn’t “take care of the fire department” and 40 people were “burned alive” and he blamed it on “gay people”.

Yishai – I’m sure that when non observant Jews look at you, they say, “Wow, Judaism is a great religion. Maybe I’ll take Tefillin today and strangle Eli Yishai with the shel yad.”

You want to endanger everyone’s shekels because you want to buy some votes? Have a happy Pesach. Thank God Netanyahu doesn’t have to listen to you. As bad as he is, at least he’s fiscally responsible, and when he wants to buy a vote, at least he keeps the budget balanced.

You know what? Maybe Yishai isn’t as bad as Bernanke. At least Yishai isn’t saying that breaking the budget will stimulate the economy and make us all rich.

 

When the new Federal Reserve money starts churning…

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I’ve been pondering different scenarios as to how the whole house of cards will fall. I read an article recently that seems to be the simplest explanation yet. Here it is in a few paragraphs.

The Fed buys bonds so the government can borrow at low rates. This enables it to have multi trillion dollar deficits annually with no immediate consequences. In order to buy the bonds, the fed conjures up money out of nothing. The money ends up on the balance sheet of some big bank. That big bank doesn’t touch the money, because the economy is fragile and they want to keep the cash reserves for rainy days. So interest rates get low and inflation is delayed, since the money isn’t moving.

Then, the economy starts picking up a bit. GDP goes up. People start borrowing money and spending money. The big banks start to unlock some of those cash reserves. Problem is, there’s such a staggering amount of them that it overwhelms the system and prices start flying out of control. So the Fed has to suck some of that cash back in its black hole by selling bonds, taking the money and burying it.

The Fed is like the Big Bang of fiat money. The monetary universe expands and contracts and the fed is at the center of the universe.

So anyway, as the Fed tries to control the hyper inflation it itself created, interest rates go up. People finally stop buying bonds. Banks, who were relying on the Fed feeding them with money, are no longer fed. Their leverage – the amount of money they lend out over the amount they actually hold – is now about 33 to one and gets called in by people looking for their cash. Banks fall like dominoes, and the Fed either has to agree to hyperinflation, or a depression. It will pick one or the other. Those that own real assets will be fine.

Stop hiring people to dig holes and refill them

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

It was a few months ago when I heard some guy, I think it was Jessie Jackson’s son actually, say that he supported the “outright hiring of 10 million people” or however many unemployed there were at the time. Hiring them to do what, exactly? To all go dig holes and refill them? And then I heard this interview with Congresswoman Maxine Waters (or is it Senatress) that Obama has to be “bold” and “stimulate” the economy with “1 trillion dollars”.

So I suppose that with the magic trillion bucks he’s going to hire the 10 million unemployed to go dig him some holes and refill them thereby stimulating the economy and making us a fully employed country.

What’s a trillion divided by 10 million? 10 thousand bucks a hole-digger? That’s not enough. They’ll be poor. They won’t be able to buy enough food with the holes they dig and refill. Maybe we should make them dig twice as many holes and refill them so they’ll be more productive, and then we can double the “stimulus” to $2 trillion and they’ll be at minimum wage. (Which itself is a government mandate.)

This is obviously the more ludicrous side of the whole issue. The more mundane is that whenever people ask Ron Paul what will happen to the economy when all those government workers he wants to fire go unemployed and the jobless rate spikes and where does the trillion dollar spending cut go, they’re asking as if by the very act of spending one trillion dollars, the government is creating wealth. No, they’re not digging holes and refilling them. They’re just stamping forms and filing them. But that’s

PRETTY

DAMN

CLOSE.

When you cut them away, the trillion dollars used to pay them to stamp those forms gets freed for people who use the money to create things that people actually need.

But the journalists can’t stomach that fact. They think that if you shrink the government, unemployment goes up, and that’s all that matters.

The truth is, every overpaid and useless government employee is on welfare. He’s wasting his time and the country’s time, and eating up your money. So we may as well stop the nonsense, stop hiring them to dig their holes and just tell them they’re on welfare. Stop the Orwellian nonsense.

The point of a job is not to influence the unemployment rate. The point of a job is to produce wealth that people need – emotional wealth, psychological wealth, spiritual wealth, or physical wealth. If you’re not doing that, you’re on welfare.

The Philistines are bombing Ashdod. We’ll do nothing.

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

See the video of Ashdod getting bombed 6 times in a minute.

I’ve long since given up on the Israeli government doing the only thing it’s actually supposed to do: Defend its citizens. Everything else it will do – force me to buy their healthcare, force me to buy their insurance, force me to educate my child in its institutions, but it won’t defend us from being bombed.

I don’t expect it to. There is no leadership, and I won’t protest, because it’s not that they CHOOSE to do nothing. They CAN’T actually do anything, so they can’t be blamed.

According to the Israeli government, we are occupiers. So they are justified in bombing us. We can only respond in self defense, since even an evil aggressor has the right to self defense, and as long as we have our Iron Dome, we will keep shooting multimillion dollar missiles at pieces of explosive junk as millions of Jews suffer shock and eventually leave the country.

The only solution is to install Jewish leadership that understands that Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Jerusalem, Shechem, and Hevron are ours, and get the ones that are bombing us out of here. Eventually we’ll do it. For now we’ll have to take the missiles.

 

Celebrate the Message of Purim by Bombing Iran without America’s Go Ahead

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

The reason I want Ron Paul to be president is that I want to be left alone to develop independently and for Israel to make her own sovereign decisions and accept the consequences. One of those decisions is to take out our own garbage and get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat on our own. Now…

The essential problem of Purim is that the situation didn’t really change from beginning to end. At the beginning, Haman drew lots to determine which date the Persians were going to kill the Jews. On the day he drew lots, there were x Persians and y Jews. 11 months later when the day actually happened, there were still x Persians and there were still y Jews, give or take a few. The Persians still had the numerical advantage to slaughter us. The only thing that changed during those 11 months was that the King of Persia, Xerxes, or Achashverosh, decided to give us the right to fight back.

But what were we going to do if he didn’t? Just sit there and die? We were only going to defend ourselves with his permission? Apparently so. This is why Purim is not a holiday of full redemption. This is why the Megillah ends on such a sad note, with Esther still stuck as a sexual prisoner in Achashverosh’s disgusting hedonistic drunken palace of debauchery. Because we had no self confidence that we could fight on our own.

Back in Persia, this is what got us in trouble in the first place. We joined in the drunken feasts and Haman came to wake us up not to rely on our hosts so much.

The present day is not much different. We have Haman in Persia threatening to annihilate us. We have Achashverosh in the White House pigging out on debt, and we’re waiting for his decree that we are allowed to fight back.

But just as nothing really changed in the Purim story except our self confidence, nothing is going to change here when America says “OK” except our self confidence.

It’s not America we need, but self confidence. So let’s, sit down, fast and pray, just like Esther did, and then get up and get rid of this stupid little Iranian threat already without waiting for Achashverosh to do something.

Government debt, the consumer promising production

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Government doesn’t produce anything. It always consumes more than it produces. When it attempts to produce something, it always has to consume more in tax revenue than it produces in order to produce whatever it is it’s trying to produce. So you always end up with a black hole. This is because if the government needs more money, they can ask the Fed or tax you for it. A constant source of revenue at the point of a gun or the flick of a switch.

We are all taught that money doesn’t grow on trees. But for the government it does.

What does it mean exactly that “the global economy is broken”? How can that actually be quantified? Well, we discussed previously that money is not wealth. Money is merely the means with which one can either produce or consume wealth. So theoretically, we could have a world with money everywhere but no wealth. This would be the world of maximum inflation and minimum prosperity.

A broken global economy means that too much money has been spent on consuming wealth and not enough has been spent producing it. An undrugged economy would be able to balance that out when investors spot a need for more production and supply it. But that can’t happen in this economy because the main consumer, the government, forbids market entrepreneurs from entering the market and rebalancing the production side of the equation with regulation, taxes, forms, and the like.

So the government, just like the Keynesians want, becomes the spender of last resort. Spreading money around and getting less efficient in every spending round. Whereas in the first round, say they had to spend $10 for every unit of wealth, now they have to spend $50. But the amount doesn’t matter to them because they can always print it.

And then you have “government debt”. Debt meaning money is owed. Money, again, can either represent newly produced wealth (in the best case) or preexisting wealth. The former is when a business succeeds. The latter is when you are taxed or your money inflated.

Any normal business pays back its debt by either producing or going bankrupt. The government though can just steal it from you and pay back its debts, making you poorer.

Solving the conundrum of posthumous Mormon baptism

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Ynet published an op ed by Rabbi Levi Brackman where he says that Jews should stop freaking out about the Mormon practice of baptizing long dead Jews so they can call them Mormon and they can pass the big Mormon gatekeeper at heaven after having waited at the Mormon gates of Heaven for 70 years or so.

Well, the Mormons are pretty damn late if it took them so long to finally think of us that maybe we need a little holy water sprinkled on something so we can get past the Mormon Heaven bouncer. But Rabbi Brackman is right, and I support any pundit who goes all out on Abe Foxman and the ADL, which is arguably the most useless and even damaging Jewish organization in existence today that actively encourages the very anti Semitism it is trying to quash by whining about everything and making every Jew on the planet look like a giant wuss.

The conundrum here though is that posthumous baptism on dead holocaust victims enrages us because it shows that not even death can stop the inquisition anymore. And Christian love can turn to hate at any moment as we all know. A hypocritical sick twist of love and hate, a passive-aggressive act of contempt of Judaism that  makes us nauseous. But then again, we don’t want to take it too seriously as if to imply that it actually works and all the Jewish Holocaust victims are all “Mormon” now, partying away with Brigham Young in the sky and doing ecstasy.

So the best thing to do, in my opinion, is make the ADL useful and have them publicly mock the practice by inventing a “special Jewish spell” taken right out of something like Harry Potter or whatever and announce that the Jews have made a special baptism repellent powder we had our best Rabbis sprinkle through all the Mormon air vents to prevent the baptism from working. Or something stupider. The more asinine the better.

The dumber you can make this thing, the more respect we’ll get rather than screaming that the Mormons are sprinkling water on our dead and Mormonizing them as if that actually had some metaphysical effect.

No amount of Jesus fairy dust is going to do squat, so my top childish idea is to pour some sewage in their baptism water. I suggested this to the friend who sent me the Rabbi Brackman article, and she responded with an ingenious line:

Quick! Last one to take a %#$^ in the baptism water’s a Mormon!

Can Ron Paul really win this thing?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

It has always been my opinion that Ron Paul will not have any sort of surge. Those who think he will do not understand that the anti Paul vote is much stronger than the anti Romney vote.

Let’s take someone like Santorum for instance. You have your average voter that’s looking for someone on his team, the “Republicans,” but he’s looking for the best player, the one who can go the most yards and beat the “Democrats” and their quarterback Obama. To the average voter, this whole election is just a game. It’s not about issues and who you think will be best for the country. It’s who can win the game for your team so you feel like you’re a winner if you’re on that team. That’s pretty much it.

Surges can only happen for candidates who are pretty much the same as other candidates, because any real difference in issues will force a voter to think that maybe something he votes for will ACTUALLY change the country in a real fundamental way, something he’s not willing to do. So the mob will turn from one candidate to another, so long as they’re pretty much the same.

If you’re waiting for Ron Paul to surge, keep waiting. He won’t. There are only two ways he can win the Republican nomination. The first and most obvious is that everything he has been saying for the last 40 years comes true and the dollar falls and chaos ensues. That would take voters out of their cheerleading stupor and start to think about real issues.

But the other way is a la the story of Gideon in the book of Judges, chapters 6-8. He’s the guy that led the Jews against Midian with 300 people, a group that God purposely whittled out to prove that victory is His and not an army’s.

The Republican nomination process is just so convoluted in a way that Ron Paul could actually win without getting a significant percentage of the popular vote. If Paul supporters stack the delegate deck and we end up with a brokered convention, for example, and after being released if they are pledged to another candidate, they vote for Paul in a second or third round.

This could theoretically happen.

As regards a face-off between Obama and Paul, that would just be electrifying. Seriously, I would crave every debate, every face-off, it would be absolutely fantastic. You’d have two people that really, essentially, stand for absolute opposite things. Obama for state power, Paul for individual freedom, and of course in the end Paul would win easily, because the difference would be so stark it would wake up droves.

Then why not wake up now? Because with the possibility of having just a cheerleading game, the team players won’t go for something real. But when it’s right in front of them, then the whole game changes into one that’s for keeps.

Jews control the economic world…as always

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

Anti Semites and other lunatics love spreading the canard that Jews control everything and run the world like a puppet show. This is obviously stupid, but it does, like all lies, have a smidgen of truth in it. (See Rashi on Joseph’s dreams.)

We don’t intend to, but the world always divides on Jewish schisms. Like the claim that Israel causes all the world’s wars, it sort of does inspire them if not intentionally. There’s nothing we can do about the fact that we are the core of Western Civilization other than to accept it and assume the role in order to lead the world, finally, to peace. Until we accept the role that the anti Semites insist that we have, the world will continue to be at war.

The most obvious example right now is Iran’s intention to destroy Israel, and the fact that America is now threatening to enter the scene and start yet another war. We, the Jews, didn’t want anything to do with this, but once again, we are forced to take center stage. That is our role after all.

But this post was initially going to be about the economy and economic philosophy. So here it is. The two schools at war now are the Keynesians and the Austrians. Besides Keynes himself, virtually everyone else in this war is Jewish.

On one hand, you have Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, and Ben Bernanke, all Jews. They like the idea of price stability, because they think price stability is essential to keeping an economy stable. So when prices go down, they buy bonds and print money so the prices go back up. And when prices go too high, they sell bonds and suck up money so they go back down when they should be higher.

The opposite of course is true. Price stability only destabilizes an economy. As supply and demand changes, prices MUST change. Otherwise, malinvestment occurs when people buy things that aren’t worth what the real market price should be and vice versa. This gives you booms and busts.

On the other side of this war are Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Peter Schiff, and Murray Rothbard. All Jews. They think we shouldn’t do anything to fix prices. As Mises puts it in his book “The Theory of Money and Credit”: (Page 102 in the Liberty Fund edition for those interested)

The loss of a consumption good or production good results in a loss of human satisfaction; it makes mankind poorer. The gain of such a good results in an improvement of the human economic position; it makes mankind richer. The same cannot be said of the loss or gain of money. Both changes in the available quantity of production goods or consumption goods and changes in the available quantity of money involve changes in values; but whereas the changes in the value of the production goods and consumption goods do not mitigate the loss or reduce the gain of satisfaction resulting from the changes in their quantity, the changes in the value of money (prices) are accommodated in such a way to the demand for it that, despite increases or decreases in its quantity, the economic position of mankind remains the same. An increase in the quantity of money can no more increase the welfare of the members of a community, than a diminution of it can decrease their welfare.

Ludwig Von Mises. A Jew.

And as the Keynesian Jews and the Austrian Jews duke it out, the global economy hangs in the balance. Consider me one more Jew on the Austrian side of the equation.

The Jews control the economic world…as always.

Military interventionism and Keynesian interventionism are two sides of the same coin

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

The bedrock of Keynesian economics is that depressions and recessions can be avoided by the government printing and spending a bunch of paper. We can all live in a quasi-economic boom forever by the blessed gift of government intervention.

The key mistake made here as we have discussed in this blog before is hubris. Keynesians believe they have finally found the cure to economic downturns in government power. A “new economy” they spoke of before the dot com bubble burst. The “your house will never lose value” mantra of 2002-2006.  They always think they found the key to everyone being rich forever…until all the paper wealth evaporates and the fed has to find another sector to stick it in and tell everyone to go look over there and invest.

Imagine if sleeping were considered “recession”. Then a Keynesian would suggest downing caffeine pills at 3 am and celebrate the fact that you are still awake, though drooling, zombified, and shaking. But you’ve been “stimulated” and the recession of sleep has been countered!

Until of course you run out of caffeine pills and you collapse at high noon in your factory on the assembly line and get tenderized into a car part. That’s when the bubble bursts. So they suggest more caffeine pills and slap themselves on the back with a good raise in printed money salary.

But this post was about military interventionism. Just like economic interventionism, the military kind is based on spending insane amounts of paper money and assuming, with much hubris, that the government can keep the entire world balanced by handing out varying amounts of paper to different dictators and sending in the army all the way to Borneo as needed.

Just as government spending keeps economies in a quasi state of caffeinated zombishness, government spending on the military also keeps the entire world in a piss-offish caffeinated ready-to-strangle-each-other grip until the caffeine runs out and somebody starts WWIII.

Take my country, Israel. American government intervention here has brought us the Oslo Peace Process, which has kept both sides at each other’s throats for 17 years. Or more than that. If we weren’t pressured in ’67 to stop the war, there would be no conflict now. And every time there’s a flare up it just gets worse and everyone intervenes so nobody can win.

How about you just let us go at it until somebody wins and decides what to do with the loser?

There’s some Austrian Economic Foreign Policy for ya.

Ron Paul 2012.