Comments on: When Central Banks Tamper with Interest Rates http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/when-central-banks-tamper-with-interest-rates/ Whiskey and Gunpowder features articles on gold, oil, currencies, emerging markets, energy, and more. Sat, 26 May 2012 19:05:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Rancher Lady http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/when-central-banks-tamper-with-interest-rates/comment-page-1/#comment-1296 Rancher Lady Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:54:09 +0000 http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/?p=3710#comment-1296 Quit when they're so far ahead? Absurd! This is their baby, and they've gotten the shoulders delivered. The rest will pop out easily, leaving blood all over the floor and the operating table, which is very much to the taste of several interest groups. We Conservatives are usually such nice, sensible people that we have difficulty suspecting others of vile motives. Even when we see fingerlings in the milk we find it hard to believe that it has been watered, insisting there has to be some innocent reason for little fishies swimming in our glasses. Mayhap the cat dropped that goldfish in there...or the baby... We keep insisting that these people don't know what they are doing. They just don't understand, we wail, that the stock market is a barometer of how everything else is doing. They don't understand, we fume, that fiat currency doesn't tell us what gold is worth, metal tells us what the currency is worth. What if...just possibly if...they understand quite well? What if they aren't ham-handed but deft-fingered? Obama told the people what they wanted to hear, got elected, and raced madly for the finish line doing just about everything calculated to depress the market, the currency, job prospects, and further entrepreneurial activity, and to start the plates wobbling more frantically. He won. He can give Hamas nine hundred million dollars and adopt a hundred thousand pet terrorists if he wants to. He can raise cigarette taxes $6.10/carton if he likes--and the seething in Houston can be heard over a hundred miles away when the price hit $60/carton, today. (Our fellow men saw fit to hit us here with a ten dollar a carton tax slightly over a year ago.) He can run the deficit up $1.3BN in less than two months, raise taxes, cut deductions, introduce ruinous cap & trade, destroy the secret ballot for unions, say flatly that he's going to bankrupt the coal industry and raise our electrical rates, and smack agribusiness briskly across the snoot...and at some point it really might occur to us that in this game we're the targets. They aren't going to stop "fixing" things for twenty-two months because they don't HAVE to. They have the votes. They have the White House, both Houses of Congress, the judiciary, the media, academe, the unions, the military, the police, and a brand new Praetorian Guard which will go from one brigade to two this year. Part of it was seen on the sleepy streets of a small town in Alabama night before last, soldiers in full battle dress with hastily-donned yellow tape that said they were "police." That photograph is well worth looking at. Will Mr. Obama's popularity ratings be in the ditch by the end of the summer? In all probability. Will he care? (Well, he, personally, might because he seems to have more than his fair share of narcissistic tendencies.) No, no more than Bill Clinton did. No matter how high the scandal was piled, Bill ignored it and did his duty, which was to veto any piece of legislation the Republicans managed to pass. Would that Dubya and Pa Bush had understood THEIR duty as well. No, this is going to run its gory course for the better part of two years or until some group rebels and either the Praetorian Guard guns them down ruthlessly, in our very own version of Tienaman Square, or there is spontaneous combustion from enough other groups to plunge this country into a maelstrom of "civil unrest." What a bland phrase to cover death, destruction, dictatorial acts, and the criminal elements having a high old time. Pun intended. It is too early to say what the outcome will be, but it ranges from dictatorship to the country splitting into several new nations along geographical and religious lines to a devastating terrorist event--real or feigned--to some miracle of sanity that lets us get over this five hundred foot high bump in the road. It is always wise to remember that the winners write history and hang the losers...and that sedition is whatever the government says it is. Could be we'll meet in Gitmo, Don. Quit when they’re so far ahead? Absurd! This is their baby, and they’ve gotten the shoulders delivered. The rest will pop out easily, leaving blood all over the floor and the operating table, which is very much to the taste of several interest groups.

We Conservatives are usually such nice, sensible people that we have difficulty suspecting others of vile motives. Even when we see fingerlings in the milk we find it hard to believe that it has been watered, insisting there has to be some innocent reason for little fishies swimming in our glasses. Mayhap the cat dropped that goldfish in there…or the baby…

We keep insisting that these people don’t know what they are doing. They just don’t understand, we wail, that the stock market is a barometer of how everything else is doing. They don’t understand, we fume, that fiat currency doesn’t tell us what gold is worth, metal tells us what the currency is worth.

What if…just possibly if…they understand quite well? What if they aren’t ham-handed but deft-fingered? Obama told the people what they wanted to hear, got elected, and raced madly for the finish line doing just about everything calculated to depress the market, the currency, job prospects, and further entrepreneurial activity, and to start the plates wobbling more frantically. He won. He can give Hamas nine hundred million dollars and adopt a hundred thousand pet terrorists if he wants to. He can raise cigarette taxes $6.10/carton if he likes–and the seething in Houston can be heard over a hundred miles away when the price hit $60/carton, today. (Our fellow men saw fit to hit us here with a ten dollar a carton tax slightly over a year ago.) He can run the deficit up $1.3BN in less than two months, raise taxes, cut deductions, introduce ruinous cap & trade, destroy the secret ballot for unions, say flatly that he’s going to bankrupt the coal industry and raise our electrical rates, and smack agribusiness briskly across the snoot…and at some point it really might occur to us that in this game we’re the targets.

They aren’t going to stop “fixing” things for twenty-two months because they don’t HAVE to. They have the votes. They have the White House, both Houses of Congress, the judiciary, the media, academe, the unions, the military, the police, and a brand new Praetorian Guard which will go from one brigade to two this year. Part of it was seen on the sleepy streets of a small town in Alabama night before last, soldiers in full battle dress with hastily-donned yellow tape that said they were “police.” That photograph is well worth looking at.

Will Mr. Obama’s popularity ratings be in the ditch by the end of the summer? In all probability. Will he care? (Well, he, personally, might because he seems to have more than his fair share of narcissistic tendencies.) No, no more than Bill Clinton did. No matter how high the scandal was piled, Bill ignored it and did his duty, which was to veto any piece of legislation the Republicans managed to pass. Would that Dubya and Pa Bush had understood THEIR duty as well.

No, this is going to run its gory course for the better part of two years or until some group rebels and either the Praetorian Guard guns them down ruthlessly, in our very own version of Tienaman Square, or there is spontaneous combustion from enough other groups to plunge this country into a maelstrom of “civil unrest.” What a bland phrase to cover death, destruction, dictatorial acts, and the criminal elements having a high old time. Pun intended.

It is too early to say what the outcome will be, but it ranges from dictatorship to the country splitting into several new nations along geographical and religious lines to a devastating terrorist event–real or feigned–to some miracle of sanity that lets us get over this five hundred foot high bump in the road.

It is always wise to remember that the winners write history and hang the losers…and that sedition is whatever the government says it is. Could be we’ll meet in Gitmo, Don.

]]> By: Jerry Citti http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/when-central-banks-tamper-with-interest-rates/comment-page-1/#comment-1294 Jerry Citti Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:44:44 +0000 http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/?p=3710#comment-1294 Great article on interest rates and government tampering with them. Of course the liberals will never accept that interest rate manouvers caused the current financial crisis; they all claim that the crisis was caused by irresponsible, greedy banks. in order to blow that argument away, it is necessary in my opinion to discuss what the banks did to get themselves in such a pickle, and show that those actions were driven by government policy. In this article the banks are said to have tossed all the risk to Fannie and Freddie and therefore they, the banks, took no risks - so how did they get into so much trouble they scared the government into bailing them out? The liberal refusal to accept that interest rate manipulation is at the heart of the current financial crisis is fatal to any true corrective effort. People will not accept that the Federal Reserve has caused this mess and others until and unless the case against it gets explained in simple, convincing terms - over and over again. It is not enough to convince a rational minority; it is also crucially important to convince a majority of voters. Regards, Jerry Citti Great article on interest rates and government tampering with them. Of course the liberals will never accept that interest rate manouvers caused the current financial crisis; they all claim that the crisis was caused by irresponsible, greedy banks. in order to blow that argument away, it is necessary in my opinion to discuss what the banks did to get themselves in such a pickle, and show that those actions were driven by government policy. In this article the banks are said to have tossed all the risk to Fannie and Freddie and therefore they, the banks, took no risks – so how did they get into so much trouble they scared the government into bailing them out?

The liberal refusal to accept that interest rate manipulation is at the heart of the current financial crisis is fatal to any true corrective effort. People will not accept that the Federal Reserve has caused this mess and others until and unless the case against it gets explained in simple, convincing terms – over and over again. It is not enough to convince a rational minority; it is also crucially important to convince a majority of voters.

Regards,

Jerry Citti

]]>