Non of them can see how people are manipulating markets around them because they just don’t see the new steps. For example, the headline in my local paper reports that gas prices rise despite high supply, low demand. Wake up, futures players are manipulating oil prices in the short run by playing the media.

Why have we not heard of Nigeria for over a year? It is because the players were working the short side of oil. Now the price of oil is going up, Nigerian rebels have hit again and CNBC is running a special report from Nigeria. Were the rebels on vacation over the past year? I don’t think so!

There are examples of this type of manipulation in the markets everyday. The the one tie they all have in common is their ability to control and use media for their PR. All the advertising in the world does not have the same effect as one good PR spot on Oprah.

Bottom line, all the economist see the players dancing, they just don’t know the steps.

Non of them can see how people are manipulating markets around them because they just don’t see the new steps. For example, the headline in my local paper reports that gas prices rise despite high supply, low demand. Wake up, futures players are manipulating oil prices in the short run by playing the media.

Why have we not heard of Nigeria for over a year? It is because the players were working the short side of oil. Now the price of oil is going up, Nigerian rebels have hit again and CNBC is running a special report from Nigeria. Were the rebels on vacation over the past year? I don’t think so!

There are examples of this type of manipulation in the markets everyday. The the one tie they all have in common is their ability to control and use media for their PR. All the advertising in the world does not have the same effect as one good PR spot on Oprah.

Bottom line, all the economist see the players dancing, they just don’t know the steps.

Thank You

Aubie Baltin

We must expect economists to advise governments to adopt such measures for as long as the government selects its advisors and provides the bulk of the funding that the academic profession receives. And, of course, we must expect governments to adopt the measures recommended in the advice for which it pays so well.

It will never adopt Austrian insights because doing so must reduce the scope and power of government and the class that commands and benefits from it.

Ascribing “good intentions” to government actors is seriously mistaken. Bastiat explained all this long ago very succinctly.

How can you tell? Both Reagan and Bush talked about getting the government out of the government, and both increased the size and reach of government.

Bush actually employed the government as a tool of private industry. Anarchy is vastly superior to to that.

A call for some watchers, perhaps. Yet who watches the watchers?
Would you have dismissed Jefferson following his quotes concerning the “best” kind of government, or Thoreau’s which were even more pointed?

Obama would be as open to the Austrian perspective as much as Arlen Specter is open to term limits.

This is very good point. Mainstream economics has become dominated by one school of thought for too long. Keynesian applications have blanketed the landscape. What we have now is a classic situation; finally a President who is open and self confident enough to listen to experts but experts that are part of the problem, not the solution.

I really do not think the President cares how big the government is, as long as he is the one is charge. And this could also be achieved via the Austrian method. Therefore, I believe that he would have been open to all options, had they been presented to him properly. However, he was surrounded by the dominant form of thinking and thus made a decision in good faith from within a bubble.

A question for Austrian thinkers is “how to pop that bubble”, to get Austrian solutions to play a consultant role in the decision making process of the executive branch?

The answer starts at home. The Austrian school needs to be on the lookout for those that are more bent on being anti-government than they are at applying proper Austrian solutions to current economic problems and promptly dismiss their behavior. Austrian methodology is about limited government, not an absence of government and certainly not anarchy. But when a first time reader that enters this site comes across many of its posts, the reader would surely think the opposite.

I won’t go into details here with my blood pressure meds horror story, except to say that after a year of suffering and getting tests for all sorts of unlikely problems, I found by using the internet that my health problems were actually being caused by the meds my doctors prescribed. I changed them, went on a diet, and now all my previous problems are gone.

But the doctor with the degree (which he got back in the dark ages of the 60′s) never figured out that I didn’t have all the diseases he suspected but was instead being poisened by HIS prescriptions.

As in medicine, politicians should adhere to “First do no harm”. But then they’d probably have very little to do.

If it was true that spending more government cash would heal the countries economics then it would be true of Chrysler and GM. So if they would expand their dealerships, build more cars and pay larger salaries the company would grow exponentially. However we know that isn’t true as does Obama.

Since the Obama administration is cutting dealerships, salaries and production we now know they actually do know how economics works in the real world so the question needing to be asked is why the government is choosing the current path of debt increasing frivolous spending.

My conjecture would be they are building a bigger government despite the economic conditions and will say anything in hopes America will work itself into socialism and its crushing debt to those that toil while building a power base through programs built around coercion and political favor.

Reich has always been a preacher of enthusiastic government growth and devoid of any economic aptitude other than more taxation. He fits well with Obamanomics.

These people can’t be brilliant on one end of the spectrum and naive on the other. They know what they are doing and it takes being dishonesty on their part to continue the charade.

If they had any courage or pride in what they were trying to do they would just say that they think socialism is the cure for what they believe ails America and start the debate on a basis of honest opinion.

So, the solution, Mr. President, is to what — print more paper?

As for “His intentions are good,” this is possible only if he’s a complete idiot, which he is not. His intentions, as the intentions of all who seek power, are to increase and consolidate power.

We need to stop pandering to those who are destroying us. Resistance may be futile, but acquiescence is fatal.

What “history” is Obama’s teleprompter referring to here?

A throw-away line. Why pander? Everyone’s intentions are good. We’re all nice guys. So what.

Which road was paved with good intentions?

we really can only conclude that his rhetoric rings well-intentioned.