Potpourri
==> My latest Mises CA post uses Jared Bernstein to confirm that Austrians haven’t been paranoid about the USD losing its reserve currency status.
==> The farewell conference for FEE at its Irvington mansion.
==> Jeremy Mack is a libertarian and evangelical pastor who came to the Night of Clarity. He has a blog that covers social issues from this perspective.
==> I am too bogged down with “day job” stuff to do much, but a recent discussion by Nick Rowe, Brad DeLong, and Scott Sumner was very interesting. As you can guess, I didn’t agree with any of them fully, but it was informative to see how each person in turn pointed out problems with the preceding analysis. Don’t bother clicking unless you are really an econ nerd.
==> Attention gold bugs! I think you will like the Fed’s recent interview with Richard Timberlake, some of the highlights of which David R. Henderson discusses.
==> Another example of how the problem with police is NOT “just a few bad apples.” Look at how badly these officers lied about what happened, and how screwed this guy would have been had the video not surfaced. Again, the point here isn’t that once in a while somebody in a job ends up doing something nutty. No, the point is that the higher-ups cover this kind of thing up, and only take action when the evidence is incontrovertible and the public is outraged.
That still doesn’t answer the question of what other currency is to become the world’s next reserve currency. The Swiss Franc and Turkish lira are overvalued as well, the former to a much greater degree than the U.S. dollar.
The problem with the police is lack of accountability, lack of internal review, and lack of a spirit of self-criticism. All police officers should have cameras and microphones on their bodies on during working hours and as much video and audio captured by these cameras and microphones as reasonably acceptable should be released to the public to help foster a spirit of self-criticism among police officers.
It’s weird how a monopoly police force lacks accountability. I’m sure they’ll get on that real soon.
Eh, no surprise. They’re so isolated from most of the people they’re supposed to protect.
It’s not their duty to “protect”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
Oh Enopoletus, you are dead wrong. They are not isolated from government officials and themselves. I can’t think of anyone else they are supposed to protect.
Biting wit. 🙂
Wait, you mean the police are ultimately there to protect people other than the citizens?
That can’t be right, because of how kind and courteous they treat the citizens.
I had a very nice police officer demand of me not to spit blood on the pavement after I had just been in a fatal car accident because he couldn’t have blood on the bottom of his boots.
NOTE FOR KEN B: There was another car involved. I was not the one fatally wounded.
Rabies is spittle-borne, so he had a point.
The only conclusion to reach is that you simply cannot shame a statist.
I am glad that in Mr Henderson’s comment section someone immediatly asked the question that also came to my mind first when reading this post:
“How does the gold standard get us a constant 4-5% annual increase in NGDP? ”
I mean that is the only important thing right?
Maybe with perfect knowledge… but failing that, expectations do matter. If a lot of people out there happen to think they can buy unobtanium, they will start making preparations toward this end, and reduce their purchase of other things. Eventually they might figure out there’s a problem, but this requires time, and communication… not just a front page news report either (because no one believes those any more) it requires effective communication.