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HE’S ALREADY THE GREATEST GUN SALESMAN IN HISTORY. WILL HE ALSO BE THE GREATEST PROMOTER OF LIBERTARIANISM IN HISTORY? CNN poll shows Obama’s case for big government is losing the public. Well, we can hope.

via Instapundit » Blog Archive » HE’S ALREADY THE GREATEST GUN SALESMAN IN HISTORY. WILL HE ALSO BE THE GREATEST PROMOTER OF LIBERTA….

It can take a while, but it is possible to ruin a prosperous place and people.

Blue power is in big trouble in Detroit, where the threat of bankruptcy has both public sector unions and municipal bondholders at the barrel of a gun. Mary Williams Walsh’s report in the NYT today makes it clear that unless unions can find a way to make other creditors take all the pain, they’re going to be faced with a serious crisis:

via Clash of the Blue Titans in Detroit | Via Meadia.

Is there irony that a story about Potemkin Villages in Ireland has the following?

Just a few weeks ago, Flanagan’s – a former butcher’s and vegetable shop in the neat village – was cleaned and repainted with bespoke images of a thriving business placed in the windows. Any G8 delegate passing on the way to discuss global capitalism would easily be fooled into thinking that all is well with the free-market system in Fermanagh. But, the facts are different.

My questions for the author of this screed, Mr. Dan Keenan, are:

(1) Mr. Keenan, please provide some evidence that there is anything resembling a “free-market system” in Fermanagh or anywhere else in that country.  I note that later in your article you discuss departments and councils making choices about spending other peoples’ money and deciding “authorisation for improvements.”  Notably, not the “free-market system” at work there.

(2)  Mr. Keenan, perceiving that you are opposed to the “free-market system” by your negative tone discussing it (in passing), shall we assume you would prefer to be compelled by government to produce some good and that I or another person be compelled to purchase it?  What does that make you?

via Recession out of the picture as Fermanagh puts on a brave face for G8 leaders – Irish News, World News & More | The Irish Times – Wed, May 29, 2013.

Turning majority rule on its head in Brussels.  Where else?

“Enforcement is strengthened by the expanded use of ‘reverse qualified majority’ voting. Under this voting system, a commission recommendation or proposal is considered adopted unless a qualified majority of member states votes against it,” EU legislation agreed last November has decreed.

via Deus Ex Machina | Things That Make You Go Hmmm… Investment Newsletter | Mauldin Economics.

“Certainly, since the events of 2008, the “audience” has been only too happy to accept as perfectly normal many situations that previously would have had them stalking out of the theatre in droves.

I have covered many of these improbable situations in the pages of Things That Make You Go Hmmm… as well as in my various presentations, but the key point bears reinforcement: we are living in the midst of a gigantic laboratory experiment with all the attendant possibilities of something going BANG!

The more I ponder the situation in which the world finds itself as we approach the fifth anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy, the more it is apparent to me that the deus ex machinae being dropped into each and every market around the world right now by our central banks, are dangling from a very rickety crane indeed.”

via Deus Ex Machina | Things That Make You Go Hmmm… Investment Newsletter | Mauldin Economics.

Why do people listen to economists anymore? Scott Armstrong, an expert on forecasting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has developed a “seer-sucker” theory: “No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, suckers will pay for the existence of seers.” Even if experts fail repeatedly in their predictions, most people prefer to have seers, prophets, and gurus tell them something – anything at all – about the future.

So, we have cataloged the incredible failures of economists to predict the future or even to understand the present. Now think of the vast powers Fed economists have to print money and move interest rates. When you contemplate the consummate skill that would actually be required to manage post-Great Recession policies, you realize they’re really just flying blind. If that reality doesn’t scare the living daylights out of you, you’re not paying attention.

via MAULDIN: Economists Are Still Clueless – Business Insider.

Chart: Economists Rarely Forecast Recessions – Business Insider.

17 Reasons the $17 Trillion Debt Is Still a Big Deal.

“Six weeks before his imprisonment and deportation Vallandigham made some remarks at a March 21, 1863 meeting in Hamilton, Ohio, that must have been he last straw for the Lincoln dictatorship. The dictatorship had issued yet another military “general order” (General Order Number 15) – this time one that condemned the private ownership of firearms as “unnecessary, impolitic, and dangerous” and “a violation of civil law” as defined by the military authorites then occupying Ohio. “Are we a conquered province governed by a military proconsul?”, Vallandigham asked, “And has it come to this, that the Constitution is now suspended by a military General Order? “Yes” would have been the appropriate and obvious answer.”

via Copperhead: Words That Got a U.S. Congressman Deported by Thomas DiLorenzo.

“Richard Ebeling: What is “austerity”? I think most ordinary people, when they hear the word, think that it means that someone has been spending too much, has gotten themselves into unsustainable debt and now has to significantly get their personal finances in order so as not to “go under” – that is, lose their home, be delinquent on their credit cards and face bankruptcy.

The individual has to “trim” his current spending out of income: find ways to cut corners and reduce buying those things that he decides are of a lower priority and which he can get by without. At the same time, he might see if there are any avenues to try to earn some extra income to help take the pressure off their budgetary problems.

But in the United States and especially in Europe, government “austerity” means merely temporarily reducing the rate of increase in government spending, slowing down the rate at which new debt is accumulating and significantly raising taxes in an attempt to close the deficit gap.”

via Richard Ebeling on Higher Interest Rates, Collectivism and the Coming Collapse by Anthony Wile.