Potpourri
* Tom Singleton sends along this troubling article about the way the feds might came after 401(k) assets. Incidentally, this is one of the “real world”-type reasons that made me more receptive to Nelson Nash’s Infinite Banking Concept. Nash argues that it’s silly to take the returns in your 401(k) at face value, because even setting aside the volatility, it will be much easier for the feds to tap into a tax-created asset class when the budget hole becomes unbearable. In contrast, the government would obviously remove the tax exemption from whole life insurance policies at some point, but it would be a lot harder politically for them to simply seize the accumulated assets.
* Joe Sobran explains his path from government-loving patriot to Rothbardian anarchist. For those of you (e.g. my relatives) who check in here occasionally for financial advice but not for “Bob’s nutjob political views,” I highly recommend this article. It’s not in this particular piece, but I’m pretty sure it was Sobran one time who wrote something like, “At a certain point in my life I realized that I was a Big Government conservative. The liberal Democrats cared about getting more money for social programs, whereas I always looked favorably upon bigger budgets for the military, without really concerning myself with whether the money was well spent.”
* Sorry I can’t remember who sent this to me, but someone said that here the Fed explains that the Fed didn’t cause the housing bubble. Phew!
* From LRC, a Justin Raimondo article on the “weird factor” surrounding the underwear bomber incident. I had never heard some of these details. For example, did you know that there was apparently a passenger on board the plane who videotaped the incident? You could say that the government confiscated the tape for security purposes, but why hasn’t anybody been talking about it?! (By the way, I’m not referring to it as the “underwear bomber incident” to make light of it, it’s just that I’m too lazy to go copy and paste the guy’s name. When Joe Smith lights his underwear on fire, I’ll refer to it as, “Joe Smith’s attempted attack.”)
* I might ask my wife to buy me Glenn Greenwald for my birthday. We all know he’s great on civil liberties, but here he does a good job explaining the distinction between capitalism and what’s been happening on Wall Street.
* Tributes to Rothbard in The Freeman.
* Dick Clark the Younger has some thoughts on “Obama the People’s War President,” and his acquaintance who was in the military and became a conscientious objector.
