Your video, Peter Schiff predicts economic collapse and gets laughed at, has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

If the only thing between the USA and disaster is Glen Beck, we really are heading for FUBAR. watch the argentina video

http://www.videosift.com/video/Argentina-s-2001-Economic-Collapse

I think one of the modern success stories of free markets and interesting self regulatory bodies that emerge are the labor unions. They were able to strike out their claims more effectively and nimbly than any government regulation.

Labour unions are given power through Federal and State government. In both cases business claim that minimum wages, safety standards, and work agreements pushed through by labor unions stifle business growth. Labor is seen as an input factor in economic thinking, not as a group of people. Mises always argued for the elimination of minimum wage for example. Furthermore if you remember the when the Detroit bailout was being discussed it was the Union workers that were blamed for over inflating their wages.

If labor mobility is taken as presented in Austrian economics then all trade restrictions must be done away with, there is efficiency reached when US manufacturing jobs are taken to less regulated non union parts of the world such as China.

The business has great power then its workers to dictate the terms of employment, dissatisfaction with labor conditions would mean mass firings and replacements, the exact reason why China has no labor problems with regards to unions there are so many people vying for the jobs as is.

Who are these "others" to which your refer? If a company charges a fair market price for its product, it can pay its workers well, and his family can prosper as well, the consumer also gets his product at a reasonable price. It is the happy medium.

Fair price is never set in the capitalist market, its is the abnormal profits price that is set. With migration of manufacturing to Chinese nations there has been no price fall in basic commodities like clothes. Per unit production costs are in the pennies, however the price charged is inflated. So what you bought for 50$ made in the US is still $50 when made in China, even though production costs are reduced. This applies to almost every industry. Even though market competitiveness is supposed to drive down price we do not see that as there is unspoken collusion of where to set the price. Or rather how much can you set such that demand is stable but with the highest profit creation possible. There is an entire course on profit maximization at the expense of the consumer.

It is when the government interferes with this that the unfairness is introduced.

What about Government intervention on child labour laws? Social externalities and pollution? In the last 8 years the argument has always been that firms in a free market system can account for externalization given the chance because they are hurting their own market in the long run.

However firms operate on short term profit maximization, and do the best they can in socializing their losses, and privatizing their gains. See Banking bailout.

It is only government regulation that allows or rather forces through economic incentives such as carbon trading to make firms pollute less or increase the welfare with regards to its work force.

Trying to merge two opposites is not wisdom. This is the idea of having your cake and eating it too. You can not have the powers of the market work if they are stifled in other areas. There ends up with a bubble of something eventually, and the market will always find that and exploit it until it bursts.

Really? Explain how socialistic and free market governments flourish in places like Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Finland and shit even China? Mixed economy systems are the most prevalent in the world yet somehow you claim they are all made to internally fail because there is government intervention. That flies in the face of historical fact.

China is the perfect example because you have centralized government which allows free market activity in the economy but nowhere else basically proving Mises belief that the free market leads to democracy in a populace is not altogether sound.

The resent housing bubble is the greatest explained of poor government regulation. the The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the housing bubble by not alowing banks to use their normal risk evaluation models when considering blacks and other minorities for loans.

Utter right wing spin rubbish, I mean do you even think about it? A 1977 act results in a market meltdown some 32 years later. Be serious. The banks knew the risks, they just hoped the bubble wouldn't burst before making out, further increased exposure by repacking toxic debt and then selling that off as investment packages.

There clear causality found in the 1994 to 2004 time of Fed debates regarding regulating sub prime and derivatives markets, remember junk bonds of the 1980s? Same shit different name but far more severe effects.
For more http://www.videosift.com/video/Klein-Blames-Greenspan-Deregulation-for-Economic-Crisis

Greenspan believed that banks would self regulate themselves.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7687101.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html

Committee chairman Henry Waxman, a Democrat, suggested that Mr Greenspan had added to the problem by rejecting calls for the Fed to regulate the sub-prime sector and some complex, risky financial products.

"The list of regulatory mistakes and misjudgements is long," Mr Waxman said.

"Our regulators became enablers rather than enforcers. Their trust in the wisdom of the markets was infinite," he added, saying that the mantra became "government regulation is wrong".

Central planning nearly always results in tyranny of the most extreme kind. Once the power is centralized, the ability to abuse that power becomes irrefutable as far as history is concerned.

Of course it does, but that makes my comment sound like an endorsement of communism and central planning, its not, its rather a clarificaition in that there is no idealized free market system that enables all citizens to be free in the vein of Rand and Friedman. One extreme is a mirror of the other.

Goverment intervention is needed to regulate markets through laws, laws that protect from monopolies from emerging and allow free market competitiveness to occur. To state that a free market system would simply regulate and account for all external costs that it imposes is ridculous.

At the end of the day the onus of proof lies at the feet of Free marketers to prove it can, well the derivatives and sub prime market was a free market entirely with no regulation and see how much profit maximazation and risky behavior that developed, primarily because each firm was acting as an independent actor working towards its own profit maximization.

What did it create? A huge social externality that they were bailout out for, so we continuously social the costs and risks through government and privatize the profits and benefits because that is capitalism.

If we allow free market thinking to take over all these banks should have been allowed to fail for their risky behavior in the market, but that would mean socio-economic collapse, though I think it would have been better since it would clarify to any one else that risky business behavior has its costs. But the people running the banks are tied closely to those running the economy, and you can't have a major change in the Wall Street it would create a huge loss of investor confidence that would create even worse effects. Business confidence is a frighteningly fickle beast.

Argentina anyone?

http://www.videosift.com/video/Argentina-s-2001-Economic-Collapse

My GF and I lived in San Francisco in a house with five other people which we all collectively rented. We both worked 50+ hrs a week, and rarely got out to do anything fun. We had put about 90k away, and thought about buying a house with it. If we had done that four years ago we would have negative equity, and owe over $0.5M, instead we got out.

We moved to Pittsburgh PA, where we bought two houses for < $20k each. We rent one and live in the other, we do web work and print design when they come our way.

The cash flow about breaks even, but we have no debt, and we have everything we need, and loads of free time.

I have a cyclical habit of downsizing my life. After I dropped out of UCSB in the late '90s I went to live off the grid in Canada for a few years, the catalyst being the existential arrest caused by my job as a university IT manager.

After I resettled in SF I was sqatting, and dumpsering myself a generally punk-rock existence (minus musical preference). As tends to happen I ended up living with my GF and living a somewhat "normal" life, until we decided to buy a house, and realized we would not be able to do it in SF, and so we downsized to Pittsburgh, and became landlords (gasp squatter -> landlord in 4 years flat).

I'm kinda hoping for total economic collapse, so that I can massively simplify my life again. I'll be planting a garden this year, to make sure we can keep veggies on the table if California has trouble shipping them out in their current low-water-reserves condition, that's going to be my bad economy "side business".

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Katrina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8az4CfEDpw
Prison abuse: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1875191
Economic downturn: http://ca.news.finance.yah
oo.com/s/01122008/2/biz-finance-bush-apologizes-financial-crisis-says-economy-recover.html
To a certain extent even the Iraq War: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/story?id=6354012&page=1


I'm going to respond a little out of order.

On the economic collapse (downturn?!), you'll note that what he said was, "I'm sorry it's happening...." That's like saying, "I'm sorry your dog died." Of course he's sorry, but that is not the same as taking responsibility or apologizing.

I saw neither an apology nor any acceptance of responsibility for the failures in intelligence gathering about Iraq and WMDs (in the link you provide or anywhere else). In particular, much of the intelligence that was fed to the public and Congress before the war was cherry picked and outright manipulated from within the White House. AFAIK, he's never even acknowledged this, much less taken responsibility for it.

The utter incompetence of the federal (and local) response to the devastation in New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita makes me almost too angry to respond. Suffice it to say that to this day, people are still fighting to get help that was promised. Completely insincere, and as such, not a real apology. (Even the words he uses in that clip are kind of weasely.)

On the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib. I might actually grant you this one. And I only asked for one verifiable quote. I was unaware that he had ever actually apologized to the people of Iraq, or specifically to the people that were abused and their families.
But again, it's somewhat insincere, because the very same practices were continued at Guantanamo for years after that. Another analogy - it's like saying to your neighbor, "I'm sorry my son beat up your son at school today," and then raping your other neighbor's wife later that night.

I can think of only one time when Bush ever came close to an admitting he was wrong and/or apologizing - the spy plane incident in China. Initially, he whipped out his dick for a pissing contest, risking an escalation of tensions to an unthinkable outcome. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed (Rice and Powell), and we got our people and plane back. But generally speaking, despite any expressions of remorse, Bush never publicly admitted when he was wrong. And he essentially never changed his policies, no matter how wrong they were shown to be.

Don't get me wrong - I won't apologize for Obama. The appointment of Geitner to Treasury and Lynn to Defense are inexcusable. That Killefer and Daschle have been forced to step aside, though, shows a willingness to admit when he's wrong. That gives me some hope that when he does make more serious mistakes in the future (which he surely will), he will be willing to change direction if it's warranted. And if I read them right, I think that's the basic sentiment of many of the preceding comments.

Peter was also recently talking about the U.S. Ponzi scheme and impending economic collapse.

>> ^CaptainPlanet420:
Well he is magical, cause he swindled millions of Americans into voting for socialism and economic collapse.


Economic collapse? Yeah, that all began as soon as he was elected. Good point.

Well he is magical, cause he swindled millions of Americans into voting for socialism and economic collapse.

On the other hand, I think they were just wishing him well.

^ Im not sure what you are actually getting at there. Some jobs just don't have a place in the market. They are providing a good or service that people don't want (or want enough to justify the cost). What we have now is companies that people voted with their dollar should die being bailed out by tax dollars. More over, the tax revenue isn't coming from taxes itself, but being printed. It no longer represents the value of total goods and services in the market place like a fiat currency should. The result isn't something new, it's hyper-inflation. It has happened many times around the world and either results in massive reform or economic collapse.

Peter is just pointing out what is already historically the case, printing money you don't have causes massive inflation. Printing what will soon be 1/5 the GDP (about 4-5 trillion in bail outs and climbing) will cause hyper inflation, about 20-30% if the trend continues. The people this will hurt the most are the poor and elderly; basically those who's wages are fixed or slowly adjusted with the inflation rate.

@ Nordich Reitler - http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=759b5f2b-920d-4ca5-ad97-b922c60266f1&p=1

Read it and tell me how well the Minute Men are doing.

@ QuantumMushroom - where to begin? Because someone is a liberal it doesn't make them a "socialist" anymore than it makes you a nazi skinhead. Are you a nazi skinhead?

WTF does language have to do with militias? Unless you
racist, that is.

Illegal immigration brought California to the brink of economic collapse? Funny, I thought the entire country was on the brink of economic collapse. I guess it's easy to blame all the illegal spics in Michigan and Ohio for those States' economic troubles.

The "Lawful Right to Bear Arms" - ah yes, the fall back. I have a lawful right to drink my own urine, tattoo images of Napoleon Dynamite all over my body, or eat nothing but grits my entire life. If I did those things, even though legal, wouldn't you think I was a fucken loon? Because you have a right to do something, that doesn't make it any less stoopid.

@ Constitutional Patriot - See previous paragraph.

Also - "Militias comprise Americans of all walks of life, race, religion, creed." Funny thing...I think if you see Christian Americans doing this kind of thing, it's fine. See Muslims Americans doing the same thing, and you would flip out like a bunch of pansy school girls.

Am I wrong?

Am I wrong?

It's never a good idea to do any campaigning (or explaining) in CAMO.

That said, Feinstein is one of the bigger turds in the toilet that is Congress and an enemy of the Constitution she swore to uphold.

That this socialist idiot would be "concerned" about English-speaking American citizens and their lawful right to bear arms but not about open borders and 9 million Spanish-speaking invaders, speaks volumes about the priorities of leftists who have brought California to the brink of economic collapse.

Refutations posted on ThinkProgress:

"Unions do not deserve the blame placed on them by the right wing. In fact, unions have repeatedly made concessions to auto executives over recent years. Contrary to Kyl’s claim, new auto employees earn $25.65 an hour.

Big Three automaker CEOs and executives based their business model on a future of cheap oil, fighting fuel efficiency standards despite warnings against such a strategy. Detroit manufactured, as Tom Friedman pointed out, oversized gas-guzzling SUVs that reduced their competitive edge.

Financial firms AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns did not have unionized workers but still suffered economic collapses. Frozen credit markets and a spiraling recession were major contributors to Detroit’s current state. Today, the Center for American Progress urged Congress “to support legislation to grant a $25 billion bridge loan to the U.S. auto companies to ensure that they avoid bankruptcy” provided the automakers provide health and retirement security and invest in clean technology."

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/17/unions-auto-bailout/

Epic fail of Capitalism.
We had to Nationalize the banking system to prevent global economic collapse.

Yet, like a dog to it's vomit, the laissez-faire free market trickle downers continue to embrace their failed philosophy.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner

Unless you're holding back a PhD degree in economics, I'm not sure we know enough to say anything more definitive than that there are multiple schools of thought on economics, and the consensus of those who run our economy is closer to Krugman than it is to Ron Paul.

The four competing economic schools of thought in the United States, historically, have been:
1. Keynesian
2. Austrian school
3. Chicago school
4. Marxian
There are several dozen other schools. Modern economics was invented in 1776 when Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations", the principles therein, which survive and are accepted to this day. Ron Paul is a member of the Austrian school--this is the same school as the economists at www.mises.org. Paul Kruger, like the majority of US economists in the last 80 years, belongs to the Keynesian school of thought.

The Keynesian school of thought has been the dominant school in the United States in the last 80 years. Keynesian economics claims that the state can stimulate economic growth through interest rates, taxation, and public projects. You can see how this thought meshes really well with the government we have today. For a Keynesian, this is the economic basis for the Federal Reserve.

In the last 80 years, Keynesian economics has been so thoroughly disproved, I myself do not understand how anyone considers it viable. Keynesian policy was single handled responsible for the great depression (see Murray Rothbard's "America's Depression") and there is no doubt that bubbles, such as the latest housing bubble was caused by state manipulation of interest rates (http://mises.org/story/3130). The idea that we can spend ourselves out of a recession has been thoroughly disproven (http://jim.com/econ/chap04p1.html). The reality is that during a recession, excess credit only causes a depression. This is because artificial credit impedes production (http://jim.com/econ/chap06p1.html). Artificial credit conceals the information that producers use to know how much to produce, and consumers use to know how much to spend. This is why Paul Kruger thinks that we can spend $700 billion to save this economy, and that he and Paulson (another Keynesian) believe the economy can be cured simply be lowering interest rates. Their ideas have been historically proven to be false, but the reason they remain popular is that an economic policy which sanctions government control over interest rates, and increased taxes, and large spending projects is politically desirable for obvious reasons. Even if these ideas seemed viable at one point, that is clearly no longer the case--the fallacies of Keynesian economics have caused ever major recession, shortage, and depression in the last 100 years. The Keynesian policies enacted by Germany, which lead to hyperinflation and the economic collapse are what allowed you-know-who to come to power. There is an argument to be made that Keynesian economics is partially responsible for WWII. Beyond that, the evidence that it is a failed school of economics is overwhelming. This is why you shouldn't trust any Keynesian economist who claims to have a solution to this mess--because it was their policy who got us into it.