"This above all, to thine own self be true"
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PollWhat should the government do about ailing financial institutions? Nothing, except to back off and get out—as any Objectivist knows, intervention is treating the disease with the disease 85% Intervene judiciously—enough to avert a catastrophe that is otherwise imminent 4% Intervene massively—as it's doing 2% Nationalize the whole economy and be done with it. Bring on the USSA! 2% Something else (specify) 7% Total votes: 54
 Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
 Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
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We have to give support to the unproductive... Submitted by Elijah on Fri, 2008-07-11 06:57.
Now is the winter of our discontent.... The New Zealand Herald says that "property prices keep falling", a story which is equally true of Australia, Britain and America (and elsewhere) at the moment. This is portrayed as a great national crisis which, by implication, must somehow be dealt with to ensure that prices do not fall any further. Oh how pathetic. What the NZ Herald, and other newspapers around the World, does not say is something like this...."over the last few years a lot of middle class dullards, with no balls to be self employed, have been buying properties to rent out to solo mothers, students and poor people. You clowns have done rather well due to irrational speculation and sought to borrow, borrow and borrow not for investment but for consumption. You had seen businessmen, rich people and other productive people around town having a great time on the fruits of their labour and sought to emulate them. Therefore you borrowed the money to do so (rather than earning it, as the productive people have) and now the chickens are coming home to roost. After spending years poncing about on borrowed money things have gone tits up. Prices are dropping like a stone, you are going to be royally rooted from here to next Friday and both your anus and the streets will be flowing with your blood when it all reaches its depth. This is your punishment for thinking you could defy gravity, that some fairly basic axioms...(such as earning money productively before spending it is a wise idea)...did not apply to you.
So, yes, gosh, Boo jolly hoo....you paid your money, you took your chances, you thought you were so clever, you thought you were cleverer than everyone else and it (predictably) did not work....you will therefore learn a brutally harsh lesson. You will endure the ridicule and amusement of your friends and acquaintances and after a decade or so blaming a conspiracy of Jewish bankers, governments, speculators (!), and everyone else you can think of ...you will secretly accept responsibility for your own actions, not that you are big enough to admit that to anyone else..oh no..you have neither the breeding, dignity or balls for that....your children and grandchildren will be bored to tears with stories about how you were shafted by bankers, Jews, speculators, governments, the reserve bank and everyone else....but you and I know the truth..." No, such an article is a little too truthful, too accurate, too un-PC....and much better to suggest that people have a God given right to expect a bailout when things go wrong. This is in contrast to the 'Productive' people....who have to take risks, who occasionally get it wrong, who have to take a loss and shrug their shoulders and come back tomorrow. In the words of the immortal Peter Cresswell..."Who, ever, speaks out for the productive? Who, ever, speaks out in support of what productive people are trying to produce? Hardly at all, not in this culture. Too many snivelling mediocrities who like to see tall poppies trampled, and too many vultures who see no value in human production, or human fecundity. Too many who care nothing about what the unholy process does to the producers, and that which they're trying to produce"
Oh so true!
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User loginFeatured BookNavigationSyndicate  The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
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The New Zealand Government
The New Zealand Government has hung out its "Open For Business" sign....
It appears the State has something called "the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology", and this Foundation has something called the "Low Carbon Energy Technologies fund", which is some sort of gravy train.
This Low Carbon Energy Technology Fund has 'given' $12 million to a company called LanzaTech.
These chaps want to make biofuel out of fluegas in commercially viable quantities.
Whatever your views on biofuels, and biofuels as a business activity..(I must confess to having commissioned a feasibility study on it a couple of years back)...the fact remains these chaps should not be subsidised by the NZ Government.
If biofuels made out of fluegas (whatever that is) is commercially viable, and there is a willing market to purchase such products, it should be a simple matter to raise $12 million in financing...(and I should add that to be commercially viable they will require nearer $50 million).
They could go to a bank...or a Merchant Bank...or simply compile a prospectus and issue bonds or shares to the public, and if their project has merit they will be able to raise the money.
One word of caution
..when a company has an odd name, such as 'LanzaTech', ViaLactia BioSciences (!), Botry-Zen, (or Enron) 
..it is usually a sign that things are an enormous risk and likely to fail.
Whereas a company with a straightforward name, particularly those named after its founder, tend to be more successful.
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
Now, here is the sort of
Now, here is the sort of 'Man of Action' I like and admire...Paul Tudor Jones...risk taker, creator of wealth and low profile.
There is splendid profile of him in the Sunday Times [today] which details his success and his speciality of profiting from bad news.
"..he is shown losing $6 million in a day..." (and did not expect others to bail him out like all the girlie-men do) "...and making almost as much another.."
With his track record of wealth creation, his Manor house in Surrey, his mansion in Connecticut, his 346,000 acre Safari park in Africa, his private jet and other necessities of life...yes...a splendid chap
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
I found this amusing
I found this amusing article on Fox News.
It is headed up "A Nation Without Fannie or Freddie? What Would Happen" ...and proceeds to detail a list of fire and brimstone disasters which would befall the World without these Socialist institutions...
"...In a worst case scenario, it would severely hamper the U.S. government’s ability to do business, and have far wider ramifications than if the government had allowed damaged investment bank Bear Stearns to implode -- not to mention making the costs for people to buy homes go through the roof.."
Ummmm..?!??! ...so what?
and what about this gem of Worship at the Altar of Looters and Moochers....“We need Fannie and Freddie to operate, otherwise people can’t buy homes."
Once again...so what?
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
South African Free Market Foundation leader gets it right
News Article : “Market Fundamentalists” – who are they?
Category:
Economy & Global : Local Economy
Author:
Leon Louw
Email:
editor@itinews.co.za
Posted:
12 Jul 2008
Email this article
Comment on this Article
Free lunch fantasies and truth in fiction
Churchill said that people occasionally stumble upon truth, but pick themselves up and press on.
Ayn Rand stumbled upon something everyone knows that just ain’t so, but picked herself up and pressed on.
The counter-intuitive truth she stumbled upon in her monumental novel, Atlas Shrugged, is that the world’s real “market fundamentalists” are anti-capitalists. They have more faith in capitalism than capitalists.
Rand
calls entrepreneurs, “people of the mind”. Through efficient
competitive enterprises these “true” capitalists create wealth.
Their nemeses are “the looters”, wealth-consuming politicians,
bureaucrats and hangers-on, including “crony” capitalists,
beneficiaries of government patronage.
Atlas Shrugged
is such a significant book that people should not be considered
educated if they haven’t read it – over twenty million sold, with
several readers per copy; the world’s “best novel” according to a
Random House reader survey; after the Bible, the book that most
affected readers’ lives according to a Library of Congress survey.
Truth in fiction
In Atlas Shrugged, as in reality, virtually everything done by the state is characterised by incompetence, and real or suspected corruption.
As in South Africa, Atlas Shrugged’s “looters” call
on “the people of the mind” to help them fix their mess. They ask
Rand’s capitalist heroes to run the economy as successfully as they run
their businesses.
But Rand’s capitalists are more than entrepreneurs, they are
philosophical capitalists, so they decline and point out that the
endemic failure of government isn’t the absence of competence or good
faith, but the inevitable perverse incentives of interventionism.
Interventionists of all ilks regard capitalism as virtually indestructible.
For pro-market liberals it is fragile – interventions and taxes
subvert efficiency, bankrupt marginal business, inflict destitution and
unemployment on marginal labour, and turn consumers into victims of the
road to hell paved with consumer protection intentions.
In Atlas Shrugged and in reality, the anti-capitalistic mentality has an incredibly flattering conception of entrepreneurs.
They believe entrepreneurs will, as if by magic, produce an endless
flow of technology, products, wealth, taxes and jobs, regardless of
what regulators throw at them.
Instead of doing anything useful, entrepreneurs “exploit” society by way of ingenious, mysterious and nefarious stratagems.
The supposed liberty of consumers and employees in free markets to decline what entrepreneurs offer, is illusory.
Anti-capitalist faith in the ingenuity and indestructibility of
markets is more appropriately called “market fundamentalism” than the
anguished pro-market realism of free marketers.
They literally believe in miracles, that capitalists can produce benefits without costs.
Free lunch fantasies
Interventionism is a grand “free lunch” fantasy whereby confiscatory
taxes and incredibly costly controls, such as the Financial Advisory
and Intermediary Services Act (FAIS), the National Credit Act (NCA) and
a deluge of health care interventions, have no adverse impact on the
provision of services, credit and health care.
When economic liberals protest, interventionists have such
confidence in capitalists that they cannot imagine sceptics as anything
other than bad faith “fronts for big business”.
This curious confidence in capitalists explains why interventionists press on regardless of “unintended consequences”.
When the disappearance of financial services for all except the rich
follows FAIS, or no credit for people who need it most follows the NCA,
and when none of the predicted benefits materialise, and everyone is
reconciled to the characteristic incompetence of government, market
liberals lament that “we told you so”, and interventionists blame
“market failure”.
It never occurs to them that a deluge of regulatory imposts could
have negative effects, because they imagine capitalists to be God-like
miracle-makers.
“Looters” often pay capitalism the ultimate compliment by imitating it.
When they resort to charging for government-supplied water,
supplying electricity through a state-owned company, and throw billions
of Rands taxed from “people of the mind” at loss-making nationalised
airlines, they call it “privatisation”, “commercialisation”,
“corporatisation” “deregulation” and “PPPs”. Conversely, no one
suggests improving the market by imitating government.
Instead of discontinuing failed policies, “looters” espouse increasingly extreme interventions.
Failed “land reform” is what “true” capitalists expect from
anti-market land policies. “Looters”, as Rand’s apt name for them
predicts, not only ignore the stupendous potential for empowerment of
upgrading all black-held land to freehold and redistributing the
state’s superfluous land, they attribute their failure to being
insufficiently Mugabeesque.
Their “solution” is more of what’s failed: willing buyer-unwilling seller looting.
Gang rape
The fundamentalist faith of “looters” in capitalism explains why
they are so sanguine about increasingly extreme measures. “Organised
business” responds with costly lobbying for amelioration.
It achieves awkward compromises in smoke-free rooms. This gives the impression that business “supports” anti-business policies.
The process is like a gang intending to gang-rape a woman responding
to her pleading by deciding that she will be raped only by the gang
leader.
The view that business “supports” interventions amounts to saying she “agrees” to sex with her rapist.
Usually “crony” capitalists negotiate regulatory threats into
sufficient protection against competitors and innovators to off-set new
costs and risks.
People are entitled to their own opinions, not their own facts.
Whether capitalists are fearsome super-humans to be subjugated by
extreme measures, or vulnerable entrepreneurs easily subverted by
disincentives, is a matter of opinion.
That there are no “free lunches” is a fact, which means that,
notwithstanding compromises between “looters” raping markets and their
victims, all interventions have costs.
Whether benefits exceed costs is also a matter of fact, and the fact
is that freer markets out-perform less-free markets by every
objectively indexed criterion.
Leon Louw is the Executive Director of the Free Market Foundation.
I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.- - Robert Green Ingersoll
Yes and guess what?
Apparently, this whole "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" headache is the result of Roosevelt's new deal.
The US is still paying for that moment of socialist madness - hopefully they will now learn!
"..amid fears they will
"..amid fears they will have to be bailed out.."
Ha ha..yes, exactly. Proves what I was saying in my posts on this thread.
You will not, however, see the average productive businessman being bailed out if something goes wrong, and neither should financial companies or investors.
Just wait until this sort of thing starts being talked about here....
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
There was more grim news
"There was more grim news from across the Atlantic where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant companies that underpin much of the US mortgage market, saw their shares tumble amid fears that they will have to be bailed out."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article4313144...
"While no longer government owned, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government chartered, leading many to suggest that the Bush administration will be forced to step in."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7502184.stm
What a bureaucratic mess the US finance market is!
The US actually makes the UK finance market look like a free-market oasis!
umm....
The only agreement I see is that some of these people have made a bad investment decision. That's after the fact, so big deal.
"The ultimate result of shielding men from folly is to fill the world with fools."
-Herbert Spencer
Silly lad
I already work to my strengths, and I keep exploring new things all the time! I am chronically middle-class and the only thing I have complained about recently is the weather. Anyway, I must bid you a fond goodnight as I am about to turn into a pumpkin.
"..My strengths tend to lie
"..My strengths tend to lie in different areas, and I am well aware of it..."
Well, there you are! splendid! ...make a shortlist and pick one...and get started tomorrow!
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
I will put on my list of things to do
Although it is another thing to write a good symphony. My strengths tend to lie in different areas, and I am well aware of it. Since I am not writing a symphony at the moment, just a couple of arrangements of things, I will think of something to moan about shortly. Let me think about it for a while ...
Ha ha...I knew this was
Ha ha...I knew this was going to get me into trouble...*sigh* ...the key point is that the productive chaps are busy doing things and being...well...ummmmm...productive, whereas others moan when things go wrong.
I am sure your job is splendid, Grace...but...gosh...can't you write a symphony or something? ...(if Gordon Getty can do it, how difficult can it be?)
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
I was kind of okay with you
I was kind of okay with you until that last one, Elijah. Middle-class with a stupid job like me? Or like the brakeman whistling the beautiful Halley 5th Concerto?
So...you sort of agree with
So...you sort of agree with me, but just do not think I should 'say so'? ...ha ha..you are probably right, especially with the general election just around the corner
I just cannot stand grubby middle class types and their presumptiousness, stupid occupations, bizarre values and attitudes...*sigh* ...(why are there not more 'normal' people in the World?)
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
Elijah
I was responding to this: "over the last few years a lot of middle class dullards, with no balls to be self employed, have been buying properties to rent out to solo mothers, students and poor people. You clowns have done rather well due to irrational speculation and sought to borrow, borrow and borrow not for investment but for consumption.
It's contradictory- buying properties for consumption. Besides the vast majority of such purchases would be, at best, cash-flow neutral so flashing the cash at your Viaduct hang-outs is unlikely. Obviously I have no sympathy (or your interest) in those who have borrowed against the family home to support a lifestyle.
Let me be clear, Elijah. I find those businessmen doing the big deals inspiring and happily admit to having sympathy for the them should their grand plans go wrong. And, as I said I wont be staying awake at night over those small investors losing money now in the property market.
However, the main point to me is that many of these 'middle-class dullards' are exactly the people likely to be 'converted' to the Libz (I know, I know, middle-class Libz people, perish the thought); they are usually hard-working and are trying to have a go rather than sitting on their arse waiting for the government. The fact that have taken these risks, however ill-judged shows that. Spitting in their face seems both churlish and counter-productive.
"I am also pleased that "survival of the fittest" still applies, too, and you do not have a situation where any halfwit can sign here, here and here and become successful...that you require some sort of intelligence, imagination (and rat cunning)."
Seriously, you needed confirmation of that?
"The ultimate result of shielding men from folly is to fill the world with fools."
-Herbert Spencer
Not 'joy' in an amusement
Not 'joy' in an amusement sense....but joy in the sense of satisfaction that the "free market" works.
There has been an impression for about four years that "this time it is different" and basic laws of a free market no longer apply.
That is being shown to not be the case and various economic and investment cycles are coming into play, and that pleases me.
I am also pleased that "survival of the fittest" still applies, too, and you do not have a situation where any halfwit can sign here, here and here and become successful...that you require some sort of intelligence, imagination (and rat cunning).
That people will lose money is an unfortunate by-product of their own behaviour...(rather like catching the clap)..and no one else's fault.
As Lance mentioned, we used to hear how housing was unaffordable...and the Government came up with various absurd schemes to ensure that people could buy their own homes as of 'right'....and soon...housing will once again become affordable, due to a crash, and we will hear hand-wringing, and various talk about how 'as of right" we should bail people out of their greed and foolishness.
There is also the minor, minor (slightly cynical) view...(how unlike me)
...that a myriad of bargains will result from all of this! 
...not to be sneezed at.
Philip, I think the difference between successful people...like me...and unsuccessful people..(like 99% of the population)...is that I never expect or ask for (let alone receive) handouts, or am a 'special case', or consider something my 'right'.
I take risks everyday...mostly it works...sometimes it ends in disaster, and I am the first to admit it, and usually laugh.
I saw the malestrom coming at the beginning of last year....I sold everything not nailed down, paid off business loans, and am well prepared.
Others were too stupid, too blind, too foolish or too arrogant to do the same....and will pay the price. Rather than holding the likes of me up as a role model/guru...they will seek to blame everyone else for their own mistakes.
In short..."stay tuned folks" ..(to see everything I predict come true)
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
Elijah moves down a class (or two)
You mean you spend time at the Viaduct? Umm, how middle-class of you.
So why such joy about people losing money, though?
"The ultimate result of shielding men from folly is to fill the world with fools."
-Herbert Spencer
Oh Philip ...you should
Oh Philip
...you should spend a bit more time in NZ and you will see what I mean.
"..poncing about? I doubt it..." Oh gosh, ha ha, now I suggest you really should spend some time in New Zealand, in the Viaduct, or Newmarket, or Parnell and elsewhere in the last two or three years ha ha.
"..Elijah please point me in the direction of someone asking for or suggesting help for these 'unproductives' that you mention..." Just wait
...just you wait until the mortgagee sales start kicking in...
"...And borrowing for consumption- by buying a property- huh?..." ummmm...no, by borrowing for consumption. Using equity in a house to spend on living expenses, holidays, credit cards, dinners out, clothing ...etc...etc...has been very popular lately, and is all ending in tears.
http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/
Why such Joy, Elijah
Elijah please point me in the direction of someone asking for or suggesting help for these 'unproductives' that you mention.
"After spending years poncing about on borrowed money things have gone tits up." Poncing around? I doubt it. Most would be too busy working extra hours for property maintenance, etc. And borrowing for consumption- by buying a property- huh? And what are you saying? That businessmen don't take on debt?
"So, yes, gosh, Boo jolly hoo....' Oh for god sake Elijah- the risk they took may have been stupid but I for one am not going to condemn them for at least having a crack and taking that risk. Losing money can be painful- I am not going to lose any sleep over this but I don't intend to join in your revelry either.
"The ultimate result of shielding men from folly is to fill the world with fools."
-Herbert Spencer
This is portrayed as a great
This is portrayed as a great national crisis which, by implication, must somehow be dealt with to ensure that prices do not fall any further.
Wasn't the "national crisis", quite recently, rising property prices, and how middle New Zealand could no longer afford to buy their own homes?
Predictions for the next 12 months:
Property prices will continue to change, either up or down, and this will be a "crisis" either way.
Come spring, southern farmers will yet again be surprised by late snow and cold temperatures killing lambs, TV3 and TVNZ will feature two nights of shots of shivering sheep in the shnow.
Just prior to spring, hydro lake levels will be "drastically" low, everyone reporting on this issue will avoid referencing the imminent thaw that invariably solves the "crisis".
I climb a bell tower and start taking potshots at mainstream media hacks that keep reporting "olds" instead of news and pretending that last year never f@#king happened!
edit: I am making a really delicious beef madras at the moment. I burned the rice, ruining the third out of my 4 best pots in this week alone! I am not in a pleasant mood and having read this am ready to tear the throat out of anyone with a microphone or PDA that even looks like a "journalist", "reporter" or "newsman". God they're awful! Hacks, mediocre hacks all of them!