Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

One Day Left Before the Class on Anarchy Private Law & Defense Begins!

Here’s the infomercial in case you missed it, or meant to come back to it and forgot. The first lecture is tomorrow night. We’ve got about 50 people signed up so far, and with Lew Rockwell’s mention, we expect a bunch of last-minute additions.

There’s plenty of room for you. The price for the 4-week class is only $150. You didn’t want those worthless fiat notes anyway, did you?

“Indymac Boys Get Sweetheart Deal”

Bill Butler passes along this interesting video. I am not endorsing the claims but it sounds plausible:

Let me make one observation: Generally speaking, it’s appropriate financially to count it as a “loss” if someone defaults on a note, even if the person had paid less for it. For example, if someone sells me a mortgage with a face value of $200,000, but I think the homeowner will default, I might pay $100,000 for it. Then if I get (in PDV terms computed the day I bought the mortgage) $105,000 out of it, and then the homeowner defaults, my accountants are still going to register the default as a “loss” on my balance sheet. That’s because at the moment of the default, there was still market value associated with the potential stream of remaining payments.

But the thing is, because I take into account that chance of future loss, I pay less for the mortgage upfront than its face value.

What’s going on here–if the details of this video are correct–is that the big boys were allowed to buy at a steep discount, and to be guaranteed full face value by the taxpayers. So they are getting it both ways: If they are guaranteed to be made whole in the case of default, then they shouldn’t be buying at a steep discount, since there’s no risk. So that’s why this whole thing is so shady; it’s not the mere fact that they are calling something a “loss” and using the face value as a benchmark, when they only paid a discounted price for it.

See Mishkin Squirm

I actually had a tough time watching this, I got so embarrassed for Frederic Mishkin. (HT2 von Pepe for the tip.) Lately I’ve begun to think the guys at ZeroHedge aren’t as clever and informed as they believe, but their scorn is definitely justified on this one.

The Mosque Controversy: I Am in Awe of Jon Stewart

Wow, look at what Jon Stewart and his writers did with this piece. Besides blowing up Fox News (and oh man the first clip is embarrassing), he actually admits his own participation in political tribalism in the past. Then he closes with an actually moving homage to Charlton Heston…and then a joke. Perfect.

Can Christians Lie to the State?

Robert Wenzel emailed to ask me my thoughts on this issue, in light of the Roger Clemens “controversy.” (I am putting that word in quotation marks, because I can only chuckle when people in Congress are outraged over lying.)

Specifically, Clemens is in trouble because he testified under oath that he didn’t use performance-enhancing drugs, but his former friend and teammate Andy Pettitte said in his own written testimony that Clemens had admitted in 1999 or 2000 that he (Clemens) had in fact done so. What complicates all this is that Pettitte was a vocal Christian, and so Wenzel wants to know what I think about all this. So here are my quick thoughts:

* Anytime a vocal Christian gets caught doing anything wrong, people will bite his or her head off. Check out this analysis (which Wenzel also supplied), especially the reader comments. Yes, it’s true that Pettitte was a bit squirrelly in his pseudo-apology, but give the guy a break. If the media’s running around saying he used steroids, when in reality he used human growth hormone for two days TOTAL in his entire career, while recovering from an injury, then yeah I think that’s relevant to point out to his fans. (I’m assuming he’s not lying about the details.)

To be clear, if a Christian is going around saying, “I live a better life than you do, I am a better person than you, you should feel guilty,” then that is not only objectively false but it’s not Christian. I grant you that many Christians do act like that, and it’s obnoxious as well as counterproductive. But on the other hand, a lot of non-Christians love to pounce on the obvious fact that Christians can’t live up to the perfect life of Jesus, as proof that it’s not really a model after all. (For example, remember when people went nuts when that beauty pageant contestant was discovered to have posed for racy pictures, after she had the audacity to say that in her upbringing, she learned that marriage was between man and a woman? The critics either implied or outright said, “Ha ha, there’s no problem with gay marriage after all, because the girl who repeated what the Bible seems to be saying upon a literal reading, was caught participating in bikini ads. QED.”)

* For sure, Christians don’t have an obligation to OBEY the State, if the rulers are commanding something that is contrary to God’s commands. For example, the “three wise men” didn’t go back to Herod and tell him where to find the baby Jesus, even though he told them to.

* Jesus Himself didn’t directly answer the questions put to Him by Herod and Pilate. But He didn’t actually lie to them. So if you want an analogy with your income taxes, it wouldn’t be underreporting, but rather writing in the line for your AGI, “Why don’t you tell me?”

* There are examples of Biblical figures lying all the time; e.g. Abram tells the Egyptians that his beautiful wife, Sarai, is his sister (so that they don’t kill him and take her). God then intervenes to extricate Sarai from the awkward situation. However, we have no report of God ordering Abraham to lie to Pharaoh et al.; in context it seems that was his own “bright idea.”

So in conclusion, I think Pettitte could have refused to speak of his knowledge of Clemens’ drug use, but I don’t think he could have lied in good conscience to Congress about it. (Side note: Some Christians think that it is blasphemous to take oaths, so when they testify in court they need a special wording etc.) Can anybody point to a Biblical episode where the Godly thing to do, was to lie to the authorities?

We talked about this one day in a Bible study class, and we got into the hypotheticals. This is surely apocryphal, but one guy said he had heard a story of Christians in Nazi Germany who were hiding Jews. The Nazis knocked on the door and asked if they were harboring Jews. The homeowner couldn’t lie, so he truthfully said, “Yes, two are hiding under the dining room floorboards.” But the Nazis assumed he was joking and moved on to the next house.

Economic Views in the Old Testament

Gene Callahan is making up a syllabus for his History of [Economic?] Thought class, and he asked me for the best passages representing “ancient Hebrew attitudes towards economic issues.”

At first I flatly refused to answer, saying he should email Gary North or try to hunt down Israel Kirzner (I’m guessing he’s not on Facebook). But Gene persisted, so I replied:

I’m still not really sure how to answer the OT question. Really, it’s not false modesty, I think you should ask someone else or just start googling.

The problem is that their Law was incredibly complex, and I don’t know enough of the nuances to say, “That’s how they thought about economics in general,” or if it was more like, “When you had to buy a goat to sacrifice to the Lord, you had to pay this much.”

That’s actually one of the interpretations I heard from (an admittedly right-wing) Christian pastor on Jesus and the moneychangers: The pastor said Jesus wasn’t mad about commerce per se, or even that money was happening near the Temple, but that the devout Jews were being taken advantage of. People had to travel from all over to go the Temple, and they weren’t going to take their sacrifices with them. So local merchants would sell them the required birds, calves, or whatever, and would charge huge markups because the people had to pay or violate their religion.

(Note that I’m not endorsing this interpretation, just repeating it.)

But OK, off the top of my head:

* Ten Commandments say don’t steal and don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff. Wikipedia has a nice comparison of the two different times they are listed.

* There is definitely a theme that you have to be less “cutthroat” (my term) in business dealings with people in your community, versus aliens. E.g. charging interest.

* There is also a theme that land is very special. In His original covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12 through 15), God promises descendants, land, and blessing to Abraham. In the book of Joshua the tribes of Israel start settling down in specific parts of the Promised Land (after they use non-Rothbardian means to evict the squatters). For example the start of chapter 18 says that 7 of the tribes had not yet received their inheritance.

* Come to think of it, there is a lot of emphasis on “birthright” and “inheritance.” In fact, the whole idea of the Jews being God’s chosen people fits in with this; they are getting a bunch of material blessings not because they did anything to deserve it, but because of who they are. (Just like a rich kid inheriting his daddy’s fortune.) A great example of this birthright idea–and how your own stupid actions can’t even squander it–is in the Year of Jubilee stuff. (And of course Jesus’ parable later on of the prodigal son.)

* There is also a lot of discussion that God abhors dishonest scales and measures. I.e. He doesn’t want merchants ripping people off. There are a bunch of good references (look at the right margin too) here.

Any other suggestions for Gene? One I had meant to include in my email was Malachi 3:9-10 where God says to the Israelites (who haven’t been tithing properly):

9[“]You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.[“]

My pastor several years ago remarked that this is the one passage in the Bible where God invites people to test His promises. (I can’t vouch for that; I’m just repeating what the pastor said.) In any event, I think this is a recurrent theme too, that if you are obedient to God first and foremost, then the other stuff takes care of itself. (Jesus also talks about this.)

Authorities Blow the Whistle on Wikileaks Founder

Hmmm. Bob Roddis sent me some stores on Lila Rajiva’s site, raising skepticism about the street cred of Wikileaks. (Try this one for example, and follow its links at the top if you want more.)

At first I thought, “Oh give me a break, so the government purposely allowed that helicopter video to leak out, in order to get progressives to trust Wikileaks, in order to justify its other stuff?” But actually, the stuff on Rajiva’s site makes a decent case.

However, I now see that Sweden is trying to arrest Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for rape “molestation”. [UPDATE: The charges were changed.] So there are a few possibilities:

(1) Assange did it.

(2) Assange is innocent, but the Swedish authorities genuinely believe he did it.

(3) The Swedish government is helping the U.S. government crack down on Wikileaks, which is truly a thorn in its side.

(4) This is yet another bold move by the global elite, to bolster Assange’s street cred with Justin Raimondo so that when Assange goes to prison he can yell out, “Iraq was a mistake, but 9/11 was an outside job!! Wait for me, Matilda!”

I rule out #4.

The Murphy Check-Deposit Index of the Economy

You know what I’ve noticed in the last month or so? Individuals and businesses are depositing my checks far more rapidly than they used to. For example, I pay my AmEx bill online, and in the past it typically took 2 full business days before the payment would actually hit my checking account. But the last one I made took a few hours.

And I’ve noticed it with a bunch of other businesses and individuals, too. When I send somebody a check, I calculate how long the Post Office will take, and then I assume it’s getting deposited the moment the person gets it. (Obviously that’s how you’re supposed to treat your outbound checks, so that nothing ever bounces. I’m just saying, I have definitely noticed that people aren’t sitting on my checks like they used to.)

Of course, I’m doing the same thing with the checks I receive. A year ago, I might have let a few of them accumulate before making a trip to the bank. But now–partly because everybody strings out the time before they actually send the payment in–I am running to the bank several times a week, because things are tight.