Curt Doolittle

Theme: Crisis

  • FEAR IN UKRAINE Ok. Well. Gotta say. I don’t feel safe here now. I knew it would

    FEAR IN UKRAINE

    Ok. Well. Gotta say. I don’t feel safe here now.

    I knew it would escalate to molotovs. I didn’t count on fake ‘protesters’ (soldiers dressed as civilians) trying to set up the real protesters. I didn’t count on Russian sponsorship of the regime. I didn’t count on the administration outlawing every possible means of resistance under the sun. And now that the police have graduated to shooting protesters dead, it’s kind of getting out of hand.

    The country is financially unstable, and can MAYBE hold out another year before collapsing economically again.

    We are moving further away from the center in the morning.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-22 13:19:00 UTC

  • (Sounds like a full scale war is going on in Maydan)

    (Sounds like a full scale war is going on in Maydan)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-20 20:05:00 UTC

  • When they guy pumping your gas asks you how what stocks he should invest in, it’

    When they guy pumping your gas asks you how what stocks he should invest in, it’s time to cash out of the market.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-15 08:03:00 UTC

  • “Ukraine is a lawless place where world-class programmers often earn U.S. povert

    “Ukraine is a lawless place where world-class programmers often earn U.S. poverty level salaries and are therefore willing to take risks.” — Leonid Bershidsky

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-15 06:35:00 UTC

  • “Since the early 1980s, the American extreme right has evolved from a movement c

    “Since the early 1980s, the American extreme right has evolved from a movement characterized by ultra patriotism, to one increasingly characterized by nihilism.”

    Well. That’s true. I was there. We knew we couldn’t win. We chose to bankrupt the state by all means possible, before it destroyed us. And, had immigration not been so extensive, the strategy would have worked. But between minorities, immigrants and single mothers conservatives couldn’t to it. Not possible. By 92 it was impossible. That was probably the end.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-08 16:41:00 UTC

  • “WHY ARE 6M UKRAINIANS LESS IMPORTANT THAN 6M JEWS?” (from peter meyers) Alexand

    “WHY ARE 6M UKRAINIANS LESS IMPORTANT THAN 6M JEWS?”

    (from peter meyers)

    Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the 6 million Ukranians:

    {p. 15} This was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine causing six million persons to die in the Ukraine between 1932 and 1933. They died on the very threshold of Europe.

    {p. 16} And Europe didn’t even notice it. The world didn’t even notice it. Six million persons!”

    – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, speech delivered in Washington on 30 June 1975. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn Speaks to the West (London: Bodley Head, 1978), pp. 15-16.

    Here are some scans of that book:

    1. the cover: http://mailstar.net/Solz-Speaks-cover.JPG

    2. p. 15 (gives 6 million figure): http://mailstar.net/Solz-Speaks-6m-Ukra-p15.JPG

    3. p. 16 (repeats 6 million figure): http://mailstar.net/Solz-Speaks-6m-Ukra-p16.JPG

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-04 02:08:00 UTC

  • WELL, THAT WAS THE WORST YEAR OF THE REPUBLIC Yep. We have a president that sele

    WELL, THAT WAS THE WORST YEAR OF THE REPUBLIC

    Yep. We have a president that selectively enforces the law, arbitrarily issues dictates without congress, and a majority leader who destroyed 200 years of precedence.

    WE HAVE NO RULE OF LAW. AS SUCH WE ARE NOT BOUND BY LAW.

    We are bound by the state’s willingness to apply violence and our willingness to apply violence.

    There is no rule of law. We have brute majority rule on the one hand and an autonomous executive.

    THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY.

    Nixon was nothing compared to Obama. Carter’s ideological incompetence and wearing ‘jeans’ at the white house was nothing compared to this man’s incompetence. Lincoln was wrong to conquer the south, but that he was not incompetent. Bush was wrong to buy into the neocon vision of an american Rome, but he was not an out and out liar.

    New congress. Impeachment. Repeal.

    But what will we get?

    Further slide into civil war.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-31 13:24:00 UTC

  • THE LEFT: “FOOD SHORTAGES, MOB VIOLENCE, ARBITRARY EXECUTIONS” “The French Revol

    THE LEFT: “FOOD SHORTAGES, MOB VIOLENCE, ARBITRARY EXECUTIONS”

    “The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.

    In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.” – Sowell

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-21 06:25:00 UTC

  • QUALITATIVE EASING : INSURING ARTIFICIAL PRICE LEVELS CAUSED BY STATE MONETARY P

    http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/12/19/how-to-stop-financial-panics-say-hello-to-qualitative-easingCONTRA QUALITATIVE EASING : INSURING ARTIFICIAL PRICE LEVELS CAUSED BY STATE MONETARY POLICY

    (un-libertarian) (recession insurance) (PSST) (insuring against busts)

    This solution in the paper that is referred to in the article is weaker than simply buying down debt on real property from consumers and SMB’s that do not have access to capital markets,in sectors of the economy undergoing crashes. Further, buying down debt by fiat allows the state to penalize lenders by paying them off at a discount, by fiat. This is a better incentive than regulation of inputs. Because consumers are protected by the state and lenders are harmed in terms profits but not balance sheets.

    Reasons are multiple, but mostly, that the preservation of false price levels is distortionary, while the redistribution of discounted debt restores balance sheets. And specific sectors can be addressed quickly, which reduces downward pressure on prices.

    In effect, by this method, the state insures large asset prices against booms and busts.

    I recommended this solution in 2008, and Galbraith did as well, before he died.

    And the longer I have worked on the problem the more certain I am that it is a MUCH MORE effective policy than either government spending or lowering interest rates. Neither of which help the PSST (pattern of sustainable specialization and trade) within a given sector.

    Prices are information. We can insure the quality of information. And this method insures that bottom end of the asset price even if all profit is wiped from the transaction.

    This puts cash in people’s pockets within a collapsing sector without allowing the repricing in that sector to easily spread to the broader economy.

    Imagine if every home owner had received a formulaic payment against his or her home’s debt, and contributions to 401K’s for any balance over their debt amount. This would rapidly have put cash in everyone’s hands, while adjusting balance sheets, and would have stopped the fear of prices falling.

    I’ve written enough about this. But the point is, libertarian or not, just or not, insuring state induced prices is the most effective technique for controlling the spread of relative price changes as they percolate through the economy and cause disruptions in additional patterns of sustainable specialization and trade.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-20 03:09:00 UTC

  • THERE IS NO ‘WE’. AMERICANS ARE UNITED ONLY BY HOLLYWOOD, EMPIRE AND TAXES. (ins

    THERE IS NO ‘WE’. AMERICANS ARE UNITED ONLY BY HOLLYWOOD, EMPIRE AND TAXES.

    (insightful)

    The reasons to stay together can be expressed most accurately as a difference in costs. The costs of being together are not yet sufficient to pay the cost of not being together. Now, this argument can be fallacious under assumptions of equality of interest. So the correct statement is, that 5% of males are not yet willing to employ violence to alter the circumstances.

    (And I am trying to give them moral, rational, and scientific arguments to support that 5%.)

    America will survive as long as new waves of immigrants can leave behind family structures and obtain property and property rights in america FASTER than the existing people seek rents and free riding on the political system that makes those new people arrive.

    As such, the american continent, has been, and always will be, either a gold rush where statists profit, or the best and largest and longest running PONZI scheme in human history.

    I think it’s both.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-17 04:35:00 UTC