Month: January 2015

Varoufakis and Tzipras are on a Collision Course

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I love this guy, but I don’t understand him. He’s got some things so right, and others so wrong. Yanis Varoufakis was just interviewed on Bloomberg about what should be done in Greece. He’s a pleasure to listen to because unlike other smug econometrician academic weasels, you can tell Varoufakis is sincere and has some sort of moral drive. The problem is, he’s confused. He understands Greece is bankrupt. He doesn’t seem to understand that the politicians he is joining do not understand that that essentially means they can no longer spend money.

In his latest interview with Bloomberg, Varoufakis made some pretty frank comments. Among the most frank was his answer to the question “Do you know for sure if the bailout will be renegotiated, or if SYRIZA will make a U-turn?” meaning, will SYRIZA cave and just keep going with the bailout in order not to get kicked out of the Eurozone in a so-called Grexit.

His answer reminded me of what Ron Paul said to the question “Will the Federal Government default?”

“The government will default. It’s just a question of how, through outright default or inflation.”

Varoufakis answered this question the same way. The bailout will be renegotiated, simply because the current bailout makes no damn freaking sense. How can a bailout from debt put you more in debt? How is that even a bailout? That’s just doing CPR on a corpse. (My words, not his.)

Dealing with the issue of a Grexit, Varoufakis said that in “brushing off” a Grexit as containable, the sponsoring Eurozone countries were basically making up bullshit. They have no idea what the consequences will be, because nobody knows who holds how many bonds where, and what the systemic effects will be, whether other bond runs will ensue, it’s like trying to predict exact weather patterns 2 years in advance.

In short, there can be no Grexit without severe consequences for everyone, and those brushing it off have no idea what they’re talking about.

So much he gets. What he doesn’t get is that when Greece does default, which will absolutely happen in one form or another, his politician friends, the same nincompoops that have co-opted him as their voice of reason in SYRIZA, will want to ramp up the spending once again, because that’s all they know how to do.

He will be in the extremely uncomfortable position, likely as finance minister, of saying no. There is no money, there is nothing, stop trying to spend what doesn’t exist. If he can maintain his candor, he will end up resigning.

At the end of his interview with Bloomberg, he was asked what must be done. He said something very libertarian. Paraphrasing, entrepreneurs in Greece face one big enemy, and that is the State. The State does not let them put people back to work because it punishes them with taxes that make no sense. The economy is totally paralyzed by the State apparatus, and that is why the State is bankrupt.

In Rothbardian terms, the parasite overwhelmed the host, and now both have died.

Someone who can speak in such clear libertarian terms, I don’t know what he’s doing joining a radical left wing political movement expecting them to just sit back and relax as he recommends they shrink government. There’s going to be a big fight between him and Alexis Tzipras. They are on a collision course.

Once the bailout is renegotiated, Tzipras will want to spend more money on his projects. Varoufakis will tell him there is no money. Tzipras will then want to print Drachmas until they have no value, which will happen very quickly if he tries to print them.

There is nothing SYRIZA or New Democracy, or Pasok can do to get money. There just isn’t any. They will all come flying at a brick wall of bankruptcy, because there is no one left to steal from. It’s all gone. Only Varoufakis understands that. He won’t be able to explain it to the politicos. They don’t get it. They never will.

Somebody’s Mad I Didn’t Say the Prayer for the State of Israel

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

I have a hard time praying for something I don’t want. I have an even harder time praying for something I think is objectively a bad thing. I think that to ask God to protect and watch over something I don’t want and that I think is bad, makes a mockery of what prayer is.

In my shul they  say the prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel and its leaders and advisers. I know that to try to change that minhag and convert everyone in the shul to libertarianism is futile, so I just ignore it. My personal policy is that I don’t stand during the prayer, but I do stand during the prayer for Tzahal. I will pray for the safety of the slaves, but never the masters.

There’s very little that I dislike about the prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel, except for the first line. If ברך את מדינת ישראל were replaced with ברך את עם ישראל היושב בציון then I would gladly stand for the whole thing and even say it. But I know that the intent of the prayer is for the government, that group of people that takes money and labor by force, just like any other form of slavery. That is something I cannot and will not pray for, especially given the Torah reading, smack in the middle of the exodus from Egypt.

The fact that most people in my shul also hate the government of Israel and its prime minister, more or less, makes the prayer for the state and the prime minister’s welfare even more dissonant. Not that I don’t understand it. I do. The State is “holy” to them, so no matter how much evil it does, how many people it kills, how many homes it tears down, and how many people it expels and how much money it steals, it’s still “holy” so you pray for it. And its leader, even though you’re sick of him.

Well, last week I was called to daven from the amud, (lead the prayers), I did not volunteer but was asked, and I was supposed to say the prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel. I refused, and said to the gabbai that if he wanted it said, someone else would have to do it. So someone else came up and said it, and I stood on the side. I wasn’t going to outright skip it and go on because I knew that would cause a riot or something close to it.

This has happened before, but in a smaller minyan. This time it was in the main minyan.

One week passed, and yesterday after shul, I stopped at a kiddush with my two daughters at someone’s house who was celebrating the birth of a grandchild. On my way out, someone stops me and asks “Why didn’t you say the תפילה לשלום המדינה last week?”

“Because I don’t believe in the מדינה,” I answered.

“You are a disgrace, a disgrace to the shul,” he says.

“I didn’t ask to daven,” I say, “I was asked to.”

“Well I’m going to do everything I can so that you can never daven from the amud again, you’re an embarrassment,” he says.

“So do it,” I say, and I leave with my 4 and 2 year old.

It is especially…I won’t say “strange” because I understand the State Worship Avoda Zara thing…but I will say ironic, that it was davka this person to call me a disgrace for not saying the prayer for a gang of thieves writ large, because I remember this person. On the night that Ariel Sharon finally died, I was walking past this same person. I don’t recall exactly if he said it or someone else said it first, but somebody said “Sharon died!”

And he said, this same person that thinks I’m a disgrace for not saying the stupid prayer for the State and Prime Minister, and I quote exactly, “Good fucking riddance! It’s about fucking time!”

And I said to him, “Well I wouldn’t go that far.”

I, the anarcho-capitalist, who hates government and everything it stands for, wouldn’t go that far. I don’t celebrate death. But he, the guy who thinks I’m a disgrace for not praying for the State, says good fucking riddance to one of its leaders.

It’s interesting. I was at a meeting of Shomron activists last night with Feiglin, and he spoke about people calling him the “Israeli libertarian.” He said, not so surprisingly but it still hurt a bit, “But I’m not at all coming from that direction. I believe the State is holy, but it’s not holy above everything, and I know it’s very dangerous. The first commandment is ‘I am God,’ not ‘I am the State.'”

He also described how hard it was, even for him, to vote against the budget to prevent the release of terrorists. It’s like voting to tear down the government, he explained, and only he was able to do it, with difficulty, not even Orit Struck of Bayit Yehudi was able to. Because voting against the budget as part of the ruling coalition is voting against the State. Voting to tear it down. Even for Feiglin, who believes in the legitimacy, even the holiness, of the State, that’s hard to do.

But he was able to do it because despite believing the State is “holy”, he understands that it is not holy in and of itself. It is only holy as a tool, if it does the right thing. Nevermind the fact that it can never do the right thing, in his mind it theoretically can. So OK, it’s theoretically conceivable even if practically impossible. Even so, he can still vote against the State because it is not inherently holy for him.

For Orit Struck though, who is the perfect example of the State’s beaten wife who keeps returning to her abusive husband, the State is holy in and of itself. No matter what it does, she is incapable of voting against it. She is a survivor of the Yamit expulsion and lives in Hevron, the most hard core of hard core settlements.

I clearly remember hearing her speak that night that Jewish sovereignty on Har Habayit was being discussed in the Knesset for the first time in history. I was in the audience, and she comes up to speak. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember the introduction. She said something like this, “Every day I get up and I’m in awe of this State, its institutions, its symbols, the Knesset. I love it so much and it thrills me that I’m a part of it and that God gave us this gift…” etc. Sycophantic praise of the Ruling Class from A to Z. State worship. As a thing in itself. She then went on to blather about how much it hurts her that the Holy State she loves so much is preventing Jews from praying on Har Habayit. Like the perfectly obedient beaten wife.

Again, not that I don’t understand that. You go through 2000 years of exile being enslaved to goyim who systematically kill you and it can be a thrill to finally at least be only systematically enslaved, expelled, and robbed by your own people who at least won’t try to systematically kill you. So I get it. But it doesn’t make it any less State Idol Worship.

That’s why Orit Struck could not, I mean could not, vote against that budget, even if it meant saving lives and stopping a terrorist release. Because to her, the State is holy in and of itself. She loves it like a god. She worships it. It is her intermediary to God. Nothing less than that.

It’s the same with this guy who thinks I’m a disgrace. As much as he hates what the State does, and can wish “good fucking riddance” to Ariel Sharon, the State of Israel is a demigod to him. I can break Shabbos, stop keeping kosher, steal lie cheat and spread gossip and I wouldn’t be a disgrace to the shul as long as I say the prayer. But if I dare not pray for the State in public, I have disgraced God himself, ah…then I am a disgrace, because I have voted against the budget. I am an insult to the Father and His Son, The State of Israel.

The Jewish People do not need a State. The State is not holy. It is nothing more than a gang of thieves that conspire to rob you and hire intellectuals to convince you that your slavery is necessary. To see why no State is needed, read my Zero State Solution.

LIKUD DOWN to 20, The Fall Begins!

rafifarber Israeli Politics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

One poll one poll. I know. If you’ve been following Feiglin’s posts since he left Likud, he’s now unhinged, and it’s beautiful. I love it. He can now directly attack Netanyahu, and it’s a big relief.

On my side of things, I can now unleash all the nausea of being part of the Likud Party, which I loathed from the very beginning. Those who don’t know me can say I’m just a turncoat who signed up a bunch of people but when things didn’t go my way I soured. But those who know me know how gross politics makes me feel and the burden on my shoulders being part of this political game.

So now I can root for all the Likud politicians, from the less nauseous Hotobeli and Levin to all the way to Dichter and HaNegbi, to all go down with the ship. Hotobeli and Levin were never with us, they only used us. Levin was actually part of the deal to push Moshe out of the Knesset.

But anyway, the point is, Likud is starting to fall in the polls. It is now down to 20 seats, compared with Labor’s 24. Bayit Yehudi is up to 16. Bennett, since he’s basically the exact same thing as Netanyahu but worse because he wears a kippah and that disarms people into thinking he’s good, could actually end up beating Bibi. That would be the best case scenario, because then Likud would pretty much be a dead man walking and nobody can bring it back.

Here’s the paragraph:

מנתוני הסקר, שהוצגו הערב בערוץ 10, עולה כי העבודה-התנועה מקבלת 24 מנדטים, מנדט אחד יותר מהסקר שנערך בסוף דצמבר. הליכוד, כך על-פי אותו סקר, מקבל 20 מנדטים – אחד פחות מאשר הסקר שפורסם לפני כשבועיים. המפלגה השלישית בגודלה היא הבית היהודי עם 16 מנדטים ואחריה יש עתיד וכולנו עם 10 מנדטים כל אחד. מרצ מקבלת 6 מנדטים וישראל ביתנו 5.

The poll, shown on channel 10 this evening, shows that Labor-Tnua gets 24 seats, one more than it got last December. The Likud gets 20 seats – one less than two weeks ago. The third largest party is Bayit Yehudi with 16 seats, and after that Yesh Atid and Kulanu with 10 each. Meretz has 6, and Yisrael Beteinu 5.

The only strength Likud has now that Moshe is out is Bibi. And the only thing that makes Bibi strong is his familiarity. If Bibi loses, nobody will regain that for the party, forget it. It’s gone. Likud as a political force is finished.

So far one poll at 20, with two whole months to go. You’ll see the trend start to go down by the week. If polls say by March that Likud gets 17-18 seats, it will end up with 15-16 or less. It always underperforms at election time. Perhaps equally satisfying is that Lieberman is dead, too. 5 seats is even less than Meretz.

Netanyahu is out. Meanwhile, we’re building our Medina Yehudit party. We’ll be ready by the time this spit-glued government, if it even forms, disintegrates within months.

WOW Swiss National Bank Ends Euro Peg, Gold Skyrockets

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

This makes absolutely no sense, which is why the Swiss Franc (CHF) just had the most insane trading day in its history. It was up by as much as 30% against the Euro this morning, and is now up something like 15%. Currencies don’t move that way unless something really strange is up.

This makes no sense because the Swiss National Bank (SNB), just a few months ago, came out hard against the Swiss Gold Initiative, saying it was crazy and dangerous precisely because it would cause the CHF to skyrocket. The purpose of the Gold Initiative was to muzzle the SNB at a 20% gold reserve so they couldn’t keep printing CHF in order to support the Euro. This robs purchasing power from Swiss consumers, and is basically stealing.

So now that they have basically said they will stop printing CHF to support the Euro, they seem a bit schizophrenic. They have basically just done exactly what the Swiss Gold Initiative was going to force them to do, so everyone is really confused.

Gold, by the way, is up about 2.5% on the news.

My guess is that the SNB is fearing a Eurozone collapse in the next few weeks/months when SYRIZA is elected in Greece and goes sour on the bailout, forcing a Grexit. Just a Grexit does not pose existential danger to the Eurozone, but if it causes a bond run on Portugal or Italy, the whole pair of dirty underwear that is the Eurozone is going to unravel at the seems and Europe will be exposed in all its monetary nakedness.

The SNB, back in November when it railed against the Swiss Gold Initiative, was assuming the Euro would float back up eventually. But it just keeps falling. And they want out. That’s what I think happened here.

The Government Won’t Stop Giving me Money!

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

I checked my bank account today to find that some government entity, which it turns out is Mas Hachnasa (the income tax authority) has for some reason given me, or my wife, I’m not sure which, a “negative income tax” or a “work grant” of 2,970 NIS.

I have no idea why. I didn’t ask for it, I nobody applied for it, and we don’t want it. I found out you get it if you hav e a low enough income. Since technically I don’t even have a job in Israel, I guess I fit that profile. On the website of this group of loot-divvying bureaucrats is a fairly stupid slogan.

Negative Income Tax

It says: Work Grant – Starting Today It Is More Worthwhile to Work

Orwellian up the wazoo and farther.

A “Work Grant” I would assume would be a GRANT FOR WORKING. This is more like a NOT WORKING grant. And the slogan “Starting Today It Is More Worthwhile to Work” – is totally the opposite of what negative income taxes do. They pay you NOT to work, so I don’t know what the hell this is talking about.

I find in Israel that bureaucrats really want to give you money. The whole maternity leave thing they said they wouldn’t give it to my wife until she confirmed her name is on the bank account. We never confirmed, and they sent it anyway. They say you have to apply for a Not Work Grant, nobody applied, and it suddenly shows up in my account today.

It’s going out of my account as soon as I confirm with the little twits that this wasn’t a mistake. Problem is, I can’t get them to answer the freaking phone.

Here’s Hazlitt on the Negative Income Tax and its destructiveness.

CHUTZPAH Osem Says Heinz Isn’t Ketchup, Should be Removed from Israel

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

Struggling with what to write about this. This is just such plain chutzpah that it’s hard to believe. Osem, the crony government food company in Israel, has had enough of the fact that it has to compete with better tasting ketchup. So they had “lab tests” done on it and they claim it “isn’t ketchup” and then its CEO Nizan Whatever sent a letter to retailers demanding they remove Heinz from the shelves because it “isn’t ketchup״.

As they say, you can’t make this shit up.

The letter states:

The incorrect indication of tomato concentrate in the products severely misleads the Israeli consumer public and is a violation of the provisions of the law to protect consumers. This information has also been sent to the Diplomat company and the authorities. Moreover, under Israeli law, the presence of lower quantities of fortified tomato concentrate prevents the product from being called ketchup and it cannot be sold as such.

I’ve had Osem “ketchup” before and to me it tastes like strawberry sugar paste with a hint of barf. I hate it. I have Heinz in my fridge, and if some government fattened crony has it removed from the shelves in order to “protect me” I’m going to be really pissed off.

It’s because of schmucks like Nizan Goldberg who writes threats like these against the company that INVENTED Ketchup, that I understand why there are anti Semites in the world.

Heinz The Only Ketchup

Yanis Varoufakis Running on the SYRIZA Ticket in Greece Elections

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I’ve written about Yanis Varoufakis a few times. I check him out whenever there’s a flare up in Greece. There’s one now, so I headed over to his blog and found that he’ll be running on the SYRIZA ticket. He seems a genuine guy, with some really whacked out ideas on centralizing the entire European banking system with a bunch of bonds he made up in his head.

If I remember correctly, he wants Greece to default on the debt, liquidate it, and stay in the Eurozone nonetheless. If this is what he really wants, he won’t be able to accomplish it in SYRIZA. SYRIZA wants an end to the bailout scheme, which is doing nothing but putting Greece into even more debt (it’s debt to GDP has not fallen contrary to popular perception) and at least that aspiration is a good one. But what SYRIZA wants instead is an end to austerity and a free ride to keep spending.

If Varoufakis actually wins a seat, which seems likely, he will likely start to butt heads with his pretty-boy party leader Tzipras, a far leftist who thinks prosperity is invented out of nothing by the good graces of politicians like himself.

End the bailout Varoufakis and Tzipras will agree on. What happens after that, and they’ll start fighting. Tzipras will want more spending, which if he pushes it, will end up pushing Greece out of the Euro by force because Europeans (by which I mean Germans) are not going to finance it anymore. This, Varoufakis doesn’t want. And if they do get pushed out, there will almost certainly be hyperinflation in its drachmas within weeks.

So let’s see what Yanis does. He writes:

My greatest fear, now that I have tossed my hat in the ring, is that I may turn into a politician. As an antidote to that virus I intend to write my resignation letter and keep it in my inside pocket, ready to submit it the moment I sense signs of losing the commitment to speak truth to power.

Keep that letter handy Yanis. You’re going to need it once you see that your fellow politicians are not going to want to cut their spending.

Housing Crash vs Oil Crash, One Systemic One Sectoral

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

Zerohedge reporting today through Reuters that a UK bank called Standard Chartered is reporting a $4.4B loss on bad oil industry loans. You may remember Standard Chartered as the one that paid that $600 something million fine for doing business with Iran. Will this cause another systemic financial collapse? Probably not.

Systemic financial collapses usually start with one big whale going down, but for systemic monetary reasons. In 2008 it was Lehman Brothers, when the money supply was contracting after expanding fast in the 8 years prior. In 1931 it was the CreditAnstalt bank in Austria, which collapsed after the Fed could no longer inflate the money supply fast enough. Standard Chartered may be a big whale, but it’s losses do not have to do with a systemic monetary phenomenon.

The housing collapse was also a result of monetary phenomenon. The oil collapse is, however, the result of a price war between OPEC and the US, possible aided and abetted by the Obama Administration in order to punish Putin for whatever it is he supposedly did in Ukraine. Depending on how many bad oil debt is out there, which depends on how many loans were made by banks to shale companies on the assumption that oil would not collapse to $45, there could be a chain reaction of failures going down the links of oil industry loans, but in order to have a complete economic collapse, the entire money supply needs to contract.

That is not happening right now.

So we’ll see how far these bank failures go, but don’t expect it to be the trigger that lights the final meltdown just yet.

Everyone Donate a Shekel to Sheli Yechimovich

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Just came across this on Facebook. Apparently, Sheli Yechimovich, who in a past life was probably one of Joseph Stalin’s mistresses, though I have no proof of this in addition to the fact that I don’t believe in reincarnation, is apparently asking people to stop donating to her campaign because she has raised the legal maximum and every donation above that will have to be returned, which “involves a lot of bureaucratic headaches.”

So someone donated her a shekel just to piss her off.

I call on everyone to donate 1 shekel to the Bolshevik Bimbo.

One at a time, so she has to file nonsense for each one. Due to some campaign finance law she probably helped create.

A friend comments, “I asked Sheli Yechimovich to stop her political career because it’s causing me “a lot of bureaucratic headaches” and I didn’t even get a shekel.