Jim Grant on inflation and war

If there's one sure, history-validated cause of inflation, it's war.  It's the activity, which, if carried on at scale, activates the money-printing presses, propels government spending and up-ends public expectations, all to the end of destroying life, property and, not infrequently, currencies.  Abstracting from a particular casus belli, war is malinvestment on a GDP-level scale, an economic calamity for the loser and no certain boon for the winner.  Yet war is what humanity wages.  We the people (through the agency of our tribes and governments) have fought since time immemorial, and the United Nations won't stop us now.

~ Jim Grant, "Where inflation comes from," Grant's Interest Rate Observer, September 27, 2024

Javier Milei on the end of collectivism

We are facing an end of a cycle.  Collectivism and the moral posturing of the UOC Agenda have collided with reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer for the real problems of the world.  In fact, they never did.  If the 2030 Agenda has failed, as its own promoters acknowledge, the response should be to ask ourselves if it was not a poorly conceived program from the start, accept reality and change course.  One cannot insist on persisting in error, doubling down on an agenda that has always failed.

The same happens with ideas that come from the Left.  They design a model according to what they believe humans should do and when individuals freely act otherwise, they have no better solution than to restrict, repress and curtail their freedom.  We in Argentina have already seen with our own eyes what lies at the end of this path of envy and passions: poverty, ignorance, anarchy and the fatal absence of freedom.

~ Javier Milei, speech before United Nations General Assembly, September 25, 2024

WSJ: "The entire art market is reeling"

The crisis at Sotheby’s comes at a time when the entire art market is reeling.  Over the past year, collectors who see art as a financial asset have winced as higher interest rates and inflation made it more expensive to trade art.  Contemporary art buyers have also suffered sticker shock after years of paying ever-higher prices for emerging artists—who may never pay off. Some smaller galleries, who rely on collectors to vouch for unknown artists, have shuttered, while dealers have reported lackluster sales at art fairs. 

Those factors have hurt collectors’ overall confidence.  “I don’t feel like there’s a bunch of collectors waiting out there to save the day this time,” said Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky. 

~ The Wall Street Journal, "The Art Market Is Tanking. Sotheby’s Has Even Bigger Problems.," September 25, 2024

Caitlin Johnstone on uncomfortable truths

To be an authentic person is to constantly plunge headlong into the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unknown and the unpredictable, even when doing so feels like a kind of death, for no other reason than because that’s where the truth is. 

It’s to always welcome the truth with open arms, even when it is unpleasant, embarrassing, inconvenient or downright terrifying, come what may. 

~ Caitlin Johnstone, "To Be an Authentic Person Is To Stare Deeply Into the Face of Uncomfortable Truths," LewRockwell.com, September 24, 2024

Office of the Historian on the Smoot-Hawley tariff

Scholars disagree over the extent of protection actually afforded by the Smoot-Hawley tariff; they also differ over the issue of whether the tariff provoked a wave of foreign retaliation that plunged the world deeper into the Great Depression.  What is certain, however, is that Smoot-Hawley did nothing to foster cooperation among nations in either the economic or political realm during a perilous era in international relations.  It quickly became a symbol of the “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies of the 1930s.  Such policies, which were adopted by many countries during this time, contributed to a drastic contraction of international trade.  For example, U.S. imports from Europe declined from a 1929 high of $1,334 million to just $390 million in 1932, while U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in 1929 to $784 million in 1932.  Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and 1934. 

Smoot-Hawley marked the end of the line for high tariffs in 20th century American trade policy.  Thereafter, beginning with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, the United States generally sought trade liberalization through bilateral or multilateral tariff reductions.  To this day, the phrase “Smoot-Hawley” remains a watchword for the perils of protectionism. 

~ Office of the Historian, "Protectionism in the Interwar Period"

Lew Rockwell on the economics of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

Trump is unsound on some economic issues, most notably tariffs and deficit spending, but he is no communist.  Harris is.  Her father is a leading Marxist theoretician, and she gives every indication that she follows in his footsteps.

~ Lew Rockwell, "'Lone Nuts' and Political Reality," LewRockwell.com, September 23, 2024

Jeffrey Anderson on rising crime rates in the U.S.

The NCVS [National Crime Victimization Survey] report for 2023 finds no statistically significant evidence that violent crime or property crime is dropping in America.  Excluding simple assault—the type of violent crime least likely to be charged as a felony—the violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019, the last year before the defund-the-police movement swept the country. 

But crime hasn’t risen equally across the nation.  America’s recent crime spike has been concentrated in urban areas.  These are the areas in which leftist prosecutors have gained the strongest footholds, where police have been the most heavily scrutinized, and where lax enforcement and prosecution have become common. 

The results aren’t pretty.  According to the NCVS, the urban violent-crime rate increased 40% from 2019 to 2023.  Excluding simple assault, the urban violent-crime rate rose 54% over that span.  From 2022 to 2023, the urban violent-crime rate didn’t change to a statistically significant degree, so these higher crime rates appear to be the new norm in America’s cities. 

The urban property-crime rate is also getting worse.  It rose from 176.1 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2022 to 192.3 in 2023.  That’s part of a 26% increase in the urban property-crime rate since 2019.  These numbers exclude rampant shoplifting, since the NCVS is a survey of households and not of businesses. 

In contrast, violent-crime rates in suburban and rural areas have been essentially unchanged since 2019.  In suburban areas in 2019, there were 22.3 violent victimizations per 1,000 persons 12 or older, compared with 23.3 in 2023—a statistically insignificant change.  In rural areas, the rate was 16.3 in 2019 and 15.3 in 2023—again, not a statistically significant change.  Our recent crime spike is essentially limited to cities.

~ Jeffrey H. Anderson, "Contrary to Media Myth, U.S. Urban Crime Rates Are Up," The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2024

Benjamin Graham on stock investing

Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.

~ Benjamin Graham

Ian Cassel on stock selection

Stock picking is personal.  It takes a decade or two to develop your temperament (views on risk, time horizon, volatility) and principles (the attributes of business/people you find attractive).  You start the journey as a sponge and end it as a filter.

~ Ian Cassel, editor, MicroCapClub, tweet, September 13, 2024

Tracy Thurman on why the Amish are a critical control group that must preserved

Fifty years ago, most Amish men were farmers.  Twenty-five years ago, it was down to about half.  Today, only a small minority continue to farm, and that number continues to shrink.  The rest become carpenters or tradesmen, and some are forced to adopt technology in order to survive.  Inevitably, their young men bring home influences from the modern world which impact their families.  The culture also depends on sons working alongside their fathers, learning work ethic and mastering manhood.  Because of child labor laws, carpenters and tradesmen cannot bring their sons to work with them the way farmers can – and it’s having a significant impact on the next generation. 

I’ve discussed this issue with hundreds of members of the Amish community, and there is a grave consensus: If they keep losing their farms, they will lose their way of life forever.  Their churches may still meet, the people will still exist, and the name may not change, but Amish culture as we know it will be a thing of the past, and the control group for Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, and Big Education and the welfare state will be gone, along with one of the best sources of real food in our nation. 

I believe there are powerful interests that would love such an outcome, because the Amish way of life is drawing far more attention now than it ever has, and is inspiring others to look for ways to escape the control grid.  Many Americans have begun to notice that by opting out of the Great Reset policies, the Amish are healthier, happier, and have stronger communities.  This social control group shows us that you don’t need 16 or 20 years of educational indoctrination from government schools in order to be a productive member of society. 

They demonstrate the benefits of choosing not to be slaves to our technology.  We see that children thrive without screen time, have superior mental health as a result, and fare better when they roam outdoors, get sun exposure, get dirty, and learn to work alongside their family.  Amish health outcomes indicate that kids who are not subjected to dozens of injections have far lower levels of ADHD and autism, and few allergies or autoimmune diseases either.  We can observe that nutrient-dense, farm-fresh foods can help prevent obesity, heal disease, and cut dependence on Big Pharma. 

The Amish show us all these truths, and the would-be controllers of our society don’t like this.  When one runs a society-wide experiment of technological addiction, of social fragmentation, of scaring people out of having children, of government school indoctrination, of universal vaccination, digital ID, digital wallets, and vaccine passports, it’s a problem if the human lab rats in the experiment can look outside the cage and see that another life is possible. 

~ Tracy Thurman, "The Amish: A Control Group for Technofeudalism," Brownstone Institute, September 16, 2024

Jacob Gershman on the sell-or-ban TikTok law

The litigants have asked the D.C. Circuit to rule by Dec. 6 so there is enough time for the Supreme Court to potentially review the case before the law takes effect. 

The law doesn’t make it a crime to use TikTok, but it does prohibit mobile app stores from letting users download or update it. 

The sell-or-ban law gained bipartisan support after lawmakers received warnings from the intelligence community about China’s ability to exploit the app used by some 170 million Americans, roughly half of the population. ByteDance has said it can’t and won’t sell its U.S. operations by the deadline. The Chinese government has also signaled that it won’t allow a forced sale of TikTok to go through. 

Much of the government’s evidence is classified and shielded not just from the public but from TikTok’s lawyers. They said in court papers that the U.S. government hasn’t shown them any evidence that China has manipulated the content that Americans see on TikTok or that China has accessed U.S. user data.

The U.S. government has shown the judges statements from senior intelligence officials about the dangers posed by TikTok and a transcript of a classified House committee hearing from March that fueled the legislation’s passage. Publicly viewable portions of the filings intimate that the government’s national-security concerns are more than hypothetical. 

Casey Blackburn, a senior U.S. intelligence official, wrote in a heavily redacted filing that TikTok’s parent company has a “demonstrated history of manipulating the content on their platforms, including at the direction of the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

TikTok says it has spent $2 billion walling off U.S. user data on Oracle-owned U.S.-based servers—measures that the U.S. government says fail to adequately insulate TikTok from Chinese influence or prevent user data from being accessed by ByteDance employees located in China. 

~ Jacob Gershman, "Court Appears Skeptical of TikTok’s Challenge to U.S. Ban: Judges are considering the validity of legislation that could shut down Chinese-backed app used by half of Americans," The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2024

Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, in Washington in March