'Bout Freakin' Time, Warren
In case you missed it yesterday, Warren Buffett finally jumped off cheerleader mode. He even let the great secret behind fiat money out of the bag: inflation is theft by the government.
Legislators will correctly perceive that either raising taxes or cutting expenditures will threaten their re-election. To avoid this fate, they can opt for high rates of inflation, which never require a recorded vote and cannot be attributed to a specific action that any elected official takes. In fact, John Maynard Keynes long ago laid out a road map for political survival amid an economic disaster of just this sort: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.... The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
I remember asking while growing up, "Why do prices always go up?" The answer I've learned as a middle-aged man: Because the government prints more money so it can spend it, which it does before the inflation kicks in. The rest of us slobs, then, watch our dollars decrease in value. It's a classic case of the "haves" and "have nots": those with political power and those without. Those who wield political influence share in the invisible theft. The rest of us are the victims.
Barney Beats Up the Mentally Halt
So a woman--who, by all appearances, needs mental help--makes some stupid statements at a town hall meeting. What does the magnanimous person do? He kindly deflects her and moves on. What does Barney Frank do? He tears into her like . . . flying monkeys into a scarecrow. Greg Gutfeld at Big Hollywood comments.
