Meshawn Maddock organizes protest of government shutdowns in Michigan

Quarantine is when you restrict movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people. Every person has learned a harsh lesson about social distancing. We don’t need a nanny state to tell people how to be careful.

~ Meshawn Maddock, an organizer of “Operation Gridlock” with the Michigan Conservative Coalition as quoted in early April, "Michigan Gov. Whitmer wins court order over coronavirus stay-home order," Fox News, April 30, 2020

Friedrich Hayek on how uniqueness allows for specialization and "a more successful use of the earth's resources"

It is... not simply more men, but more different men, which brings an increase in productivity.  Men have become powerful because they have become so different: new possibilities or specialisation - depending not so much on any increase in individual intelligence but on growing differentiation of individuals - provide the basis for a more successful use of the earth's resources.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Chapter 8: "The Extended Order and Population Growth"

Michael Belkin compares the Black Death to the coronavirus

In the 14th century when the Black Death swept over Europe, a strange cult emerged: The Flagellants. They blamed themselves for the plague and sought forgiveness for their sins by whipping themselves in public displays of penance. They also blamed Jews, who they massacred.

Flagellants have been resurrected in the 21st century in the form of epidemiologists and politicians who have shut down the global economy, put 26 million Americans out of work and bankrupted entire industries in the name of preventing an epidemic which is hardly worse than a bad flu season. Modern-day Flagellants are just as crazy as were the 14th century version.

~ Michael Belkin, Belkin Report, April 27, 2020

Friedrich Hayek on the appropriation of the term "liberal" by socialists

[T]here was the deliberate deception practiced by American socialists in their appropriation of the term 'liberalism.'  As Joseph A. Schumpeter rightly put it" 'As a supreme if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label.'  The same applies increasingly to European political parties of the middle, which either, as in Britain, carry the name liberal or, as in West Germany, claim to be liberal but do not hesitate to form coalitions with openly socialist parties.  It has, as I complained over twenty-five years ago (1960, Postscript), become almost impossible for a Gladstonian liberal to describe himself as a liberal without giving the impression that he believes in socialism.  Nor is this a new development: as long ago as 1911, L.T. Hobhouse published a book under the title Liberalism that would more correctly have been called Socialism, promptly followed by a book entitled The Elements of Social Justice (1922).

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Chapter 6

Bethany McLean on intellectual curiosity

The biggest requirement to be a journalist is that you're really curious.  You have to be interested in things.  You have to want to figure things out, and care and be curious.  And you can cultivate your curiosity.  But curious is something we all are.  You just have to open your mind to it and just let yourself be curious.

~ Bethany McLean, "Investigative Journalism with Bethany McLean," YouTube, 4:55 mark, April 21, 2020

Kevin Duffy on the value of Covid-19 death statistics

Q: Why aren't the media and state stressing contextual data for individuals to make informed decisions?

A: Because they want to make those decisions for them. To the media and state, data is simply a tool to scare the people into submission.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, April 26, 2020

Confucious on language

When words lose their meaning people will lose their liberty.

~ Confucious

Nassim Taleb on bailing out individuals vs. corporations

I think that it is a shame that companies that invested - buy their stocks rather than preparedness - that they benefit from my taxpayer money.  That's very shameful.  And that CEOs who got a lot of bonuses would get bailout money without having to claw back.  On the other hand, I think we should bail out individuals.  Not companies, individuals.  Taxpayers.

~ Nassim Taleb, CNBC interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, April 24, 2020

Friedrich Hayek on equality

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

~ Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek on government management of money

The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.  In this respect, governments have proved far more immoral than any private agency supplying distinct kinds of money in competition possibly could have been.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Chapter 6

Larry Fink on monetary stimulus and inflation

I do believe some inflation would be really good at this time.

~ Larry Fink, CNBC interview with Beck Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin, 18:00 mark, April 16, 2020

Larry Fink on fiscal and monetary stimulus in response to the coronavirus

We are triaging a sick economy.  We're doing everything we can to stabilize this economy, to make it healthy again.  And in doing so, yes, we are accumulating large amounts of debt.  To me it's like in an operating room.  You're doing everything you can to keep the patient strong.  And I think that's what our government is doing and I applaud our government for all the actions they're doing.

~ Larry Fink, CNBC interview with Beck Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin, 18:00 mark, April 16, 2020

Dr. Johan Giesecke on what led to the global shutdown over the coronavirus

Q: You've been a leading epidemiologist for you whole career.  You've dealt with influenzas, SARS, and you advised the World Health Organization.  What was it about this pandemic that was so different that has led to this global shutdown?

Dr. Giesecke: New disease, a lot of people dying, we don't know what will really happen, and this fear of contagion I think is almost genetic in people.  And showing political strength.  Decisiveness, force.  Very important for politicians.

~ Dr. Johan Giesecke, "Why lockdowns are the wrong policy - Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke," 22:30 mark, April 17, 2020

Dan Ferris on the government protection racket

The government couldn't protect an ice cube from melting at the North Pole.

~ Dan Ferris, tweet, April 23, 2020

Doug Casey on democracy

Democracy is a bad idea. It's a fine idea for a few friends deciding what to have for dinner or what movie to see, although it's hard enough even just with a few friends with common values to decide those things. But when you have a democracy, it really just becomes mob rule dressed up in a coat and tie.

~ Doug Casey, "The Start of the Greater Depression," Stansberry Investor Hour, March 20, 2020

Friedrich Hayek on how trade requires diversity

Exchange is productive; it does increase the satisfaction of human needs from available resources.  Civilisation is so complex - and trade so productive - because the subjective worlds of the individuals living in the civilised world differ so much.  Apparently paradoxically, diversity of individual purposes leads to a greater power to satisfy needs generally than does homogeneity, unanimity and control - and, also paradoxically, this is so because diversity enables men to master and dispose of more information.  Only a clear analysis of the market process can resolve these apparent paradoxes.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Chapter 6: "The Mysterious World of Trade and Money"

Guido Hülsmann on trusting experts

The typical expert is no expert, at all. How many laureates of the Nobel Prize in economics have earned any significant money by investing their savings? How many virologists or epidemiologists have established and operated a privately-run clinic or laboratory? I would never trust a colleague who had the folly to volunteer to direct a central planning board. I do not trust an epidemiologist who has the temerity to parade as a Covid19 czar. I do not believe a government that tells me it somehow knows "the experts" who know best how to protect and run an entire country.

~ Jörg Guido Hülsmann, "A Protest From France," LewRockwell.com, April 23, 2020

Friedrich Hayek on the task of economics

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Jeffrey Tucker on the adaptability of the market

We should never shut down social/market mechanisms; they are adaptive, competent, intelligent, and capable of learning and improving in light of evidence. The state is none of those things.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, tweet, April 22, 2020

Paul Krugman on the growth of the Internet (1998)

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.

~ Paul Krugman, 1998

Jim Cramer on solving the coronavirus problem

I think the free market can solve this.  I just wish the government would do everything in its power to expedite the process.

~ Jim Cramer

Friedrich Hayek on intellectuals and their hostility towards the free market

This reluctance [to integrate themselves into the marketplace] helps further to explain the hostility intellectuals bear towards the market order, and something of their susceptibility to socialism.  Perhaps this hostility and susceptibility would diminish if such persons understood better the role that abstract and spontaneous ordering patterns play in all of life, as they no doubt would do if better informed of evolution, biology, and economics.  But when confronted by information in these fields, they are often reluctant to listen, or even to consider conceding the existence of complex entities of whose working our minds can have only abstract knowledge.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Chapter 5: "The Fatal Conceit"

Murray Rothbard on the early career of Henry Kissinger

In 1954, the 31-year-old Kissinger, a Harvard political scientist and admirer of Metternich, was plucked out of his academic obscurity to become lifelong foreign policy advisor to New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Doctor K continued in that august role until he assumed the mastery of foreign policy throughout the Nixon and Ford administrations. In that role, Kissinger played a major part in prolonging and extending the Vietnam War, and in the mass murder of civilians entailed by the terror bombings of Vietnam, the secret bombing of Cambodia, and the invasion of Laos.

Since leaving office in 1977, Dr. Kissinger has continued to play a highly influential role in U.S. politics, in the U.S. media, and in the Rockefeller world empire. It was Kissinger, along with David Rockefeller, who was decisive in the disastrous decision of President Carter to admit the recently toppled Shah of Iran, old friend and ally of the Rockefellers, into the United States, a decision that led directly to the Iranian hostage crisis and to Carter’s downfall.

~ Murray Rothbard, "Why the War? The Kuwait Connection," The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, May 1991

Friedrich Hayek on the dispersion of knowledge, variety and the division of labor

The knowledge that plays probably the chief role in this differentiation [Wilhelm von Humboldt's "human development in its richest form"] - far from being the knowledge of any one human being, let alone that of a directing superbrain - arises in a process of experimental interaction of widely dispersed, different and even conflicting beliefs of millions of communicating individuals.  The increasing intelligence shown by man, accordingly, due not so much to increases in the several knowledge of individuals but to procedures for combining different and scattered information which, in turn, generate order and enhance productivity.

Thus the development of variety is an important part of cultural evolution, and a great part of an individual's value to others is due to his differences from them.  The importance and value of order will grow with the variety of the elements, while greater order in turn enhances the value of variety, and thus the order of human cooperation becomes indefinitely extensible.  If things were otherwise, if for example all men were alike and could not make themselves different from one another, there would be little point in division of labour..., little advantage from coordinating efforts, and little prospect of creating order of any power or magnitude.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Chapter 5: "The Fatal Conceit"

Friedrich Hayek on how knowledge is dispersed

To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralising decisions, and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order.  Yet that decentralisation actually leads to more information being taken into account.  This is the main reason for rejecting the requirements of constructivist rationalism [socialism].  For the same reason, only the alterable division of the power of disposal over particular resources among many individuals actually able to decide on their use - a division attained through individual freedom and several property - makes the fullest exploitation of dispersed knowledge possible.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, p. 76

Jeffrey Tucker on the natural order and liberty

People who can't imagine order over imposition always end up preferring power over liberty.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Rick Rule on investing, patience, and time arbitrage

The old guys..., those few who have been really, really, really successful, always seem to invest for the 5 to 6 year time frame.  My suspicion is that time arbitrage, that is aligning your preferences with the reality of the investments that you are making, is one of the most important determinants of success.  Some people believe that because they want something to happen in the near term, that their wants are germane.  And they're not.

~ Rick Rule, "The Time for Value Stocks is Here," Stansberry Investor Hour, 30:15 mark, April 16, 2020

Charlie Munger: Great Depression will be prevented by active government

Of course we’re having a recession. The only question is how big it’s going to be and how long it’s going to last. I think we do know that this will pass. But how much damage, and how much recession, and how long it will last, nobody knows.

I don’t think we’ll have a long-lasting Great Depression. I think government will be so active that we won’t have one like that. But we may have a different kind of a mess. All this money-printing may start bothering us.

~ Charlie Munger, "Charlie Munger: The Phone Is Not Ringing Off the Hook'," WSJ, April 17, 2020

Alex Berenson on the economic damage from the coronavirus shutdowns

In February I was worried about the virus.  By mid-March I was more scared about the economy.  This isn’t complicated.  The models don’t work.  The hospitals are empty.  WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT INDEFINITE LOCKDOWNS?"

~ Alex Berenson, "Meet the former NYT reporter who is challenging the coronavirus narrative," Fox News, April 11, 2020

JPMorgan research note on record retail sales decline in March

All the toilet paper in the world can't clean up this report.

~ title of a research note from JPMorgan, April 15, 2020

(As reported by CNBC.  Retail sales fell 8.7% in March, the biggest decline since 1992 when the Commerce Department first started issuing the report.)

Larry Kudlow proposes "war bonds" to Trump for coronavirus

[Larry] Kudlow says he proposed 'war bonds' for coronavirus to Trump.

The U.S. has used special war bonds in the past, drawing on patriotism to fund military and counter-terrorism operations. Americans lent their government money through purchases of Liberty Bonds in World War I and War Bonds in World War II. In 2001, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill introduced “Patriot Bonds” to help finance the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

~ "Larry Kudlow's War Bonds Are Coming But in a Plain Vanilla Rapper," Bloomberg, April 15, 2020

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects a $3.8 trillion budget deficit

The fiscal 2020 deficit that needs to be funded will be four times as large as last year’s at $3.8 trillion, or almost 19% of gross domestic product, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan group. While few in Washington see a need to prioritize fiscal prudence right now, given the economic damage being done by the virus, the CRFB warns that an unsustainable situation is brewing and corrective actions will be needed one day.

~ "Larry Kudlow's War Bonds Are Coming But in a Plain Vanilla Rapper," Bloomberg, April 15, 2020

Tavi Costa on the importance of the Treasury bond market

I think the Treasury [bond] market is the most important market.  The U.S. and the whole world can not sustain these debt levels with higher interest rates...  When that happens, there's no bailout anymore.  I think that's the most important message here.

~ Tavi Costa, Interview on Real Investment Show with Lance Roberts Show, 18:45 mark

Friedrich Hayek on and profit and loss

As we now know, in the evolution of the structure of human activities, profitability works as a signal that guides selection towards what makes man more fruitful; only what is more profitable will, as a rule, nourish more people, for it sacrifices less than it adds.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988), Chapter 3: "The Evolution of the Market", p. 46

Jim Chanos: "The fraud cycle follows the business and financial cycle with a lag"

The fraud cycle follows the business and financial cycle with a lag.  The longer an economic expansion goes on and the longer a bull market goes on, peoples' sense of disbelief is reduced.  And they begin to believe more things that are too good to be true.  Inevitably when the cycle turns down and people get stingier with their capital, since most frauds today are by and large Ponzi schemes or Ponzi schemes once or twice removed, it gets harder to keep the game going because cheap capital's not available and the business models collapse.

Jim Chanos, CNBC interview, April 2, 2020