Gordon Brown as the next head of the IMF? What a splendid idea – at least as long as Charlie Sheen is not available.
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This will not surprise some of our regulars here, but I see that Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency has cut the debt rating and outlook for the US. (What kept you? Ed). I’ll be intrigued as to how cheerleaders for current administration policy, such as Paul Krugman try and spin this. “Those evil bond market vigilantes…” Time to start dusting off the “D” word. Update: Talking of defaults closer to home, in Europe, Tim Worstall has been writing that it would be better for countries to openly discuss, and then manage, the chances of default rather than bury their heads in the sand. Meanwhile, Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn argues that the demise of the euro can and could be handled much more smoothly than many people believe. I hope he is right. Another update: Dan Mitchell – of the Cato Institute, talks about lessons from Argentina. Oh great. April 18th, 2011 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The US Civil War, a bloody conflict in which more than half a million people perished, started earlier this month, 150 years ago. I have occasionally written before about how historians, given their regional or ideological opinions, have revised the accounts of what happened, and some of the revisionists – especially from the Confederacy -friendly side, have been counter-attacked themselves. A book that stands in the revisionist tradition but which avoids some of the sillier forms of name-calling against Lincoln, while not downplaying the centralisation of power that came after the war ended, is a very fine study by Jeffrey Rogers Hummell, which I have started to read. I see that Taki, the mega-rich columnist for the Spectator who is very much a part of the isolationist, paleocon Right, repeats the accusation that slavery, as an issue, never really emerged as a causus belli in the war until at least two years after the conflict started. That may well be true: the idea that the fight between the Union and the Confederacy was some sort of simple war between the forces of Northern good against Southern evil is wrong, or at least does not recognise the genuine grievances that some on the Southern side felt. Let’s not forget that war histories tend to get written by the victors. I can even see why some libertarians, for instance, look favourably upon the Confederacy in terms of the issues of states’ rights – if not the evil of slavery, obviously. But there are times when the enthusiasts for the Confederacy do make fools of themselves, and Taki does it with this little line in his Spectator column this week (behind a subscriber firewall)(page 55): “Lincoln did everything for effect, and his death even got him on the back of the five-dollar bill, whereas in my opinion he should have been tried in absensia for the crimes he committed during the war and the destruction he caused to one of the loveliest societies that ever existed, the antebellum south.” (Emphasis: mine). It is tempting to write Taki off as a bit of joke, a sort of ultra-conservative clown. Any man who can write of a society in which a large number of people were owned as slaves and subject to all the humiliations of slavery, as “one of the loveliest societies that ever existed”, deserves to be treated with the utmost contempt. The scars of the Civil War still exist, and the issue has also roiled the libertarian movement in recent years. A case in point being the observations about the Lew Rockwell crowd by Timothy Sandefur, for instance. Update: Sandefur has more thoughts. April 17th, 2011 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
“If any place should be concerned with a robot takeover, it is the red-light district.” – PW Singer, Wired For War, page 419. April 15th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ayn Rand’s classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957 and has sold vast copies, is released in a film version – or at least in a first instalment – this coming Friday in selected cinemas across the United States. I hope we can see it here in the UK. Interestingly enough, parts of the media are picking up on this. Here is an interview with an investment manager who is inspired by Rand’s “radicals for capitalism” philosophy and worldview. I am definitely going to make a point of seeing this film, whether it comes out at a UK cinema, or via DVD. The reaction to the Financial Panic of 2008, with its massive bailouts, calls for “unregulated capitalism” (!) to be regulated, banker-bashing, etc, has certainly given Rand’s novel new resonance. I often heard it said that her villains are more convincing than her heroes, although Hank Rearden has always struck me as a well-drawn character. As for the likes of Barack Obama, Rand would have recognised what he stands for, instantly. April 14th, 2011 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
Praveen Swami, diplomatic editor of the Daily Telegraph, has a good piece – although I might quibble on one or two points – concerning the problem of Somali piracy, about which I have written several times here at Samizdata. I am not going to add further comment to what I have already said, but I was impressed by this article and a longish comment attached to it by a person with the signature of “IgonikonJack”. It is pretty good. And another, by “itzman”, refers to the issue of “letters of marque”. A related point is that I have been reading Wired for War, by PW Singer, and it has fascinating things to say about some remarkable new technologies as apply not just in areas such as robotics and pilotless aircraft – those “drones” – also in the innovations now under way in the nautical world. They will surely play a part in any move to suppress piracy, but as Singer points out, the bad guys can increasingly get their hands on technology as well, and often by entirely legitimate means. This is all the more reason why libertarians, who are sometimes at the cutting edge of thinking about alternatives to government-imposed laws, as in the case of legal writer Bruce Benson, should get involved in how to address issues such as piracy. In the Daily Telegraph article I link to, is the fact that, at the time of writing, more than 1,000 people are being held hostage by Somali pirates. If the same amount of people had been taken hostage on civil airliners, say, I think the major powers of the world might have adopted a more robust view by now. April 13th, 2011 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“If the Victorians turned up off our shores and threatened me with a gold standard, 7% taxes, property rights, free trade, the right to bear arms, the restitution of double jeopardy, free association, and the right to remain silent, while at the same time guaranteeing the repeal of civil forfeiture and detention without trial, etc., etc., etc., I would welcome them with open arms.” – Samizdata commenter, John W responding to a point about the supposed evils wrought by the UK on other parts of the world. April 12th, 2011 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
In response to Fraser Nelson’s article about a recent book and TV series by Niall Ferguson, I came across this classic comment, from “Daniel Maris”. It blends self-loathing, bigotry, “fixed wealth” fallacies, Greenery, and other pathologies in a magnificent, take-it-with-ice, blend:
But China has embraced elements of the free market, hence its current prosperity. Duh.
I think Fergon’s meaning is pretty damn obvious.
Oh yes, all those evil foreigners causing trouble again.
It is all the fault of those evil Jocks! (In fact, quite the opposite).
Oh god, never mind the division of labour (Adam Smith was another Evil Scot!), we can make it all ourselves with recycled vegetables. Have a good week. April 11th, 2011 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Daily Mash site has overtaken Private Eye or even The Onion as one of the funniest satire sites out there, in my view. And some of its items are remarkably believable. I can just imagine some crusty, America-hating “young fogey”, or far leftist type, saying some of the things in the article I link to here. April 8th, 2011 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“So far, George Osborne has taken the comfortable line that the eurozone meltdown is nothing much to do with Britain. As a result, he has chosen not to question the shoddy compromises, the straight lies and the probable illegality that have characterised Europe’s response to its greatest financial and political crisis since the 1930s. But the disaster will hit us, too. Britain is a shareholder in the ECB, and Britain is a core part of the bail-out mechanism. It is time that we started to poke our nose in, to demand honesty and transparency, and to stop sending good money after bad. Above all, George Osborne has an urgent duty as Chancellor to construct a firewall that protects Britain as much as is possible from the catastrophe that now looms over Europe.” For many months and years, commentators – many of them at the Daily Telegraph – have predicted the eventual collapse of the single European currency. So far, it has failed to happen, if only due to the fanaticism of the European political class. But maybe, just maybe, the endgame is upon us. This is going to be nasty; some big banks could have to write off a huge amount in the way of bad loans. And to think that a few years ago, it was claimed that the euro could rival, or even overtake, the dollar as a reserve currency. I am still a dollar bear, but who would want to bet on the euro? I remember reading this book, The Rotten Heart of Europe, when it came out, and its author has that dubious pleasure of being able to say, “I told you so”. April 8th, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
David Friedman, the academic, libertarian and enthusiast for things such as Medieval cooking, has a nice post up about the way in which parts of the left try to claim that Adam Smith said things that support their ideas, such as progressive tax. Friedman shows what a misleading thing this is to say. I suppose it can be seen as a sort of backhanded compliment that socialists, or Big Government types generally, should feel a need to try and claim that Smith was “one of them”, despite his being renowned for support for free trade and limited government. Here is something I wrote by way of a critique of an article on Smith in the American Conservative; here is also something I wrote a while back on some books on the great man, such as by James Buchan and PJ O’Rourke. April 7th, 2011 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Antitrust Religion, Edwin S. Rockefeller, page 103. Well, as we can see in the case of Google, the antitrust movement still has legs today. April 5th, 2011 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
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