lewrockwell--2020-07-13--What the Supreme Court Got Right In Its Indian Tribe Ruling

The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Jimcy McGirt was wrongfully convicted in an Oklahoma state court of three serious sexual offenses .
McGirt had argued that his trial should have taken place in federal court because McGirt is a member of the Seminole Nation , and the crimes in question took place on Indian tribal lands , which are not subject to state law in certain cases .
The court agreed with McGirt and the court recognized these tribal lands as potentially constituting much of the eastern half of Oklahoma , including parts of Tulsa .
The implications @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not as sizable as the media is making them out to be .
The media is now filled with headlines like “ Court Rules That About Half Of Oklahoma Is Native American Land ” or “ Court rules that large swath of Oklahoma belongs to Indian reservation.
” Headlines like these are likely to conjure up images of non-Indians being rounded up and kicked off reservation lands , homes expropriated , and worse .
Nations Remembered : An ... Perdue , Theda Best Price : $ 5.00 Buy New $ 13.95 But Thursday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come close to handing over control of private property in eastern Oklahoma to a tribal council .
In fact , the court ’ s ruling explicitly states up front that the decision is narrowly applied to matters of jurisdiction in criminal law .
The origins of the controversy addressed in McGirt v. Oklahoma stem largely from the “ Major Crimes Act , ” ( MCA ) passed in 1885 .
The MCA was designed to restrict Indian tribal sovereignty , and limited the jurisdiction of tribal councils over major crimes such as murder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the federal government .
Congress passed the law in response to the US Supreme Court ’ s ruling in Ex parte Crow Dog ( 1883 ) which had defended tribal jurisdictions and stated federal legal authorities were not authorized to overrule tribal criminal justice proceedings on tribal lands .
The case involved the killing of Spotted Tail , a Lakota man , by another Lakota man named Crow Dog .
In response to the killing , a tribal council ruled Crow Dog must pay restitution to the dead man ’ s family .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crow Dog with murder , and sentenced him to death .
Crow Dog appealed to the Supreme Court , and the Court ruled the federal prosecution had in fact been illegal , and no treaty or federal law allowed for Indians to be tried according to “ white man ’ s ” law for crimes that take place on tribal lands .
As Justice Matthews wrote at the time , to try tribal members in federal court means Indians will be judged “ not by their peers , nor by the customs of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their land , but by superiors of a different race.
” PHNAM Throw Blanket wi ... Best Price : $ 32.12 Buy New $ 35.99 Opponents of tribal sovereignty demanded Congress intervene and make it clear that federal officials could in fact intervene to prosecute tribal members on tribal land — at least for certain serious crimes .
Thus , the MCA was born .
This continues to be the situation on many Indian reservations today .
Even when tribal members are involved , tribal police are only empowered to prosecute minor crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FBI ) head up investigations against perpetrators of major crimes on tribal lands .
Prosecutions take place in federal court .
Thursday ’ s court decision actually expands the jurisdiction of the MCA in Oklahoma , limiting state jurisdiction in the matter and stating , “ For MCA purposes , land reserved for the Creek Nation since the 19th century remains ‘ Indian country . '
” That is , on various tribal lands throughout eastern Oklahoma , criminal prosecution of tribal members falls under the federal government , and are outside the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ State of Oklahoma .
Why Tribes Are Celebrating the Decision But if the Major Crimes Act was designed to limit tribal sovereignty , why have many tribal organizations lauded its extension ?
There are at least three reasons for this .
One is that the court ’ s new decision clarifies that McGirt ’ s crimes took place on tribal land , which the court also concluded never ceased to be an Indian reservation , in spite of what the State of Oklahoma has claimed .
Thus , in response to the court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stated Indian Tribes of Oklah ... Clark , Blue Best Price : $ 12.97 Buy New $ 16.40 Second , the new ruling states that the State of Oklahoma does not have jurisdiction over tribal members in these areas in respect to the MCA .
For some , this may be seen as a victory in itself , as conflicts between the tribes of eastern Oklahoma and the state government have long been acrimonious .
The ruling provides some level of vindication to the tribes which have long sought to distance themselves from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Third , the ruling increases the potential for tribes to increase real tribal sovereignty in one fell swoop by overturning the Major Crimes Act .
While McGirt may seem to many to be just a matter of transferring prosecutions from state court to federal court , the ruling possibly paves the way for a true reclamation of tribal sovereignty in this regard .
Now that the tribes have been freed from state control of criminal prosecutions of tribal members , the next step lies in ending federal control through repeal or modification @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be done , then tribal members would be guaranteed their day in tribal court , rather that in a state or federal court .
The ruling of Ex parte Crow Dog would again be recognized in spirit : namely that tribal members should be tried by their tribal peers .
Instant Indian Head Ce ...
Check Amazon for Pricing .
No , Eastern Oklahoma Is Not Now “ Owned ” by the Tribes Claims that the the Court ’ s new ruling means the Court “ gave away ” half of Oklahoma ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , or that eastern Oklahoma now “ belongs to ” the tribes rather overstate the matter .
Although many non-Indians imagine all property on Indian reservations is communally owned or directly controlled by a tribal council , this is not at all necessarily the case .
Some tribes do this .
Most do not .
Indian reservations commonly include “ fee simple land ” owned by non-tribal members and which is “ owned outright without a restriction on alienation ” and “ subject to state regulatory authority.
” For now , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on criminal prosecutions .
Non-tribal members who commit crimes on tribal lands — and if no tribal member is involved — are still subject to the laws of the states in which tribal lands are located .
On the other hand , McGirt v. Oklahoma opens to door to potential future changes in how taxes are collected in Oklahoma .
It may be in the medium and long term , tax revenue collected by the state of Oklahoma will decline as tax revenue to tribal entities increases .
In fact , this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his dissent : HGOD DESIGNS Vintage S ... Buy New $ 9.99 These issues , however , were not sufficient to convince the court ’ s majority , lead by Neil Gorsuch , to agree with Oklahoma and the State Department whose arguments , Gorsuch concluded , were little more than a “ wish ” that “ an inconvenient reservation would simply disappear.
” That is , the fact tribal sovereignty is inconvenient for Oklahoma ’ s tax collectors is not reason enough to pretend tribal lands don ’ t exist .
Implications @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in all , McGirt v. Oklahoma may prove to be a good thing for those who favor greater decentralization of state power in the United States .
Tribal sovereignty has long been a neglected tool in the battle to limit federal power .
In terms of truly protecting tribal sovereignty , however , this week ’ s ruling is really quite limited .
It still sanctions far too much power for Congress in unilaterally abrogating and changing treaties with tribes .
Tribal lands should be treated as at least as sovereign as US @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not be abolished or their borders changed by Congress without state permission , tribal entities ought to enjoy similar protections .
Nonetheless , the ruling does strengthen the current legal environment in which tribal lands , laws , and boundaries are not something that state legislatures can change whenever they feel like it .
One can hope that Congress too will eventually be similarly limited .
Now that it has been established the Creek tribe of eastern Oklahoma actually has sizable reservations , the next important step is in affirming what should have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members ought to be able to administer criminal justice for their own members on their own lands in accordance with their own laws and customs .
Note : The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute .
The Best of Ryan McMaken

The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Jimcy McGirt was wrongfully convicted in an Oklahoma state court of three serious sexual offenses. McGirt had argued that his trial should have taken place in federal court because McGirt is a member of the Seminole Nation, and the crimes in question took place on Indian tribal lands, which are not subject to state law in certain cases.
The court agreed with McGirt and the court recognized these tribal lands as potentially constituting much of the eastern half of Oklahoma, including parts of Tulsa. The implications of the ruling are sizable, although not as sizable as the media is making them out to be.
The media is now filled with headlines like “Court Rules That About Half Of Oklahoma Is Native American Land” or “Court rules that large swath of Oklahoma belongs to Indian reservation.”
Headlines like these are likely to conjure up images of non-Indians being rounded up and kicked off reservation lands, homes expropriated, and worse. Nations Remembered: An... Perdue, Theda Best Price: $5.00 Buy New $13.95 (as of 05:57 UTC - Details)
But Thursday’s ruling doesn’t even come close to handing over control of private property in eastern Oklahoma to a tribal council. In fact, the court’s ruling explicitly states up front that the decision is narrowly applied to matters of jurisdiction in criminal law.
Indian Tribes and the “Major Crimes Act”
The origins of the controversy addressed in McGirt v. Oklahoma stem largely from the “Major Crimes Act,” (MCA) passed in 1885.
The MCA was designed to restrict Indian tribal sovereignty, and limited the jurisdiction of tribal councils over major crimes such as murder and rape, handing this jurisdiction over the federal government. Congress passed the law in response to the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Ex parte Crow Dog (1883) which had defended tribal jurisdictions and stated federal legal authorities were not authorized to overrule tribal criminal justice proceedings on tribal lands.
The case involved the killing of Spotted Tail, a Lakota man, by another Lakota man named Crow Dog. In response to the killing, a tribal council ruled Crow Dog must pay restitution to the dead man’s family. But then federal authorities intervened, charged Crow Dog with murder, and sentenced him to death.
Crow Dog appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Court ruled the federal prosecution had in fact been illegal, and no treaty or federal law allowed for Indians to be tried according to “white man’s” law for crimes that take place on tribal lands. As Justice Matthews wrote at the time, to try tribal members in federal court means Indians will be judged “not by their peers, nor by the customs of their people, nor the law of their land, but by superiors of a different race.” PHNAM Throw Blanket wi... Best Price: $32.12 Buy New $35.99 (as of 05:57 UTC - Details)
Opponents of tribal sovereignty demanded Congress intervene and make it clear that federal officials could in fact intervene to prosecute tribal members on tribal land — at least for certain serious crimes. Thus, the MCA was born.
This continues to be the situation on many Indian reservations today. Even when tribal members are involved, tribal police are only empowered to prosecute minor crimes, and federal authorities (usually the FBI) head up investigations against perpetrators of major crimes on tribal lands. Prosecutions take place in federal court.
Thursday’s court decision actually expands the jurisdiction of the MCA in Oklahoma, limiting state jurisdiction in the matter and stating, “For MCA purposes, land reserved for the Creek Nation since the 19th century remains ‘Indian country.'” That is, on various tribal lands throughout eastern Oklahoma, criminal prosecution of tribal members falls under the federal government, and are outside the jurisdiction of both tribal councils and the State of Oklahoma.
Why Tribes Are Celebrating the Decision
But if the Major Crimes Act was designed to limit tribal sovereignty, why have many tribal organizations lauded its extension?
There are at least three reasons for this.
One is that the court’s new decision clarifies that McGirt’s crimes took place on tribal land, which the court also concluded never ceased to be an Indian reservation, in spite of what the State of Oklahoma has claimed. Thus, in response to the court’s decision, the Creek Nation stated Indian Tribes of Oklah... Clark, Blue Best Price: $12.97 Buy New $16.40 (as of 05:57 UTC - Details)
The Supreme Court today kept the United States’ sacred promise to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of a protected reservation.
Second, the new ruling states that the State of Oklahoma does not have jurisdiction over tribal members in these areas in respect to the MCA. For some, this may be seen as a victory in itself, as conflicts between the tribes of eastern Oklahoma and the state government have long been acrimonious. The ruling provides some level of vindication to the tribes which have long sought to distance themselves from encroachments by the state government. Now,
[G]oing forward, certain major crimes committed within the boundaries of reservations must be prosecuted in federal court rather than state court, if a Native American is involved. So if a Native American is accused of a major crime in downtown Tulsa, the federal government rather than the state government will prosecute it.
Third, the ruling increases the potential for tribes to increase real tribal sovereignty in one fell swoop by overturning the Major Crimes Act. While McGirt may seem to many to be just a matter of transferring prosecutions from state court to federal court, the ruling possibly paves the way for a true reclamation of tribal sovereignty in this regard. Now that the tribes have been freed from state control of criminal prosecutions of tribal members, the next step lies in ending federal control through repeal or modification of the MCA.
If this can be done, then tribal members would be guaranteed their day in tribal court, rather that in a state or federal court. The ruling of Ex parte Crow Dog would again be recognized in spirit: namely that tribal members should be tried by their tribal peers. Instant Indian Head Ce... Check Amazon for Pricing.
No, Eastern Oklahoma Is Not Now “Owned” by the Tribes
Claims that the the Court’s new ruling means the Court “gave away” half of Oklahoma (as US Senator Ted Cruz now claims ), or that eastern Oklahoma now “belongs to” the tribes rather overstate the matter.
Although many non-Indians imagine all property on Indian reservations is communally owned or directly controlled by a tribal council, this is not at all necessarily the case. Some tribes do this. Most do not. Indian reservations commonly include “fee simple land” owned by non-tribal members and which is “owned outright without a restriction on alienation” and “subject to state regulatory authority.”
For now, at least, the change remains centered only on criminal prosecutions. Non-tribal members who commit crimes on tribal lands — and if no tribal member is involved — are still subject to the laws of the states in which tribal lands are located.
On the other hand, McGirt v. Oklahoma opens to door to potential future changes in how taxes are collected in Oklahoma. It may be in the medium and long term, tax revenue collected by the state of Oklahoma will decline as tax revenue to tribal entities increases. In fact, this is one reason given by Justice Roberts in his dissent:
The decision today creates significant uncertainty for the State’s continuing authority over any area that touches Indian affairs, ranging from zoning and taxation to family and environmental law.
HGOD DESIGNS Vintage S... Buy New $9.99 (as of 05:57 UTC - Details) These issues, however, were not sufficient to convince the court’s majority, lead by Neil Gorsuch, to agree with Oklahoma and the State Department whose arguments, Gorsuch concluded, were little more than a “wish” that “an inconvenient reservation would simply disappear.” That is, the fact tribal sovereignty is inconvenient for Oklahoma’s tax collectors is not reason enough to pretend tribal lands don’t exist.
Implications for Decentralization in the United States
All in all, McGirt v. Oklahoma may prove to be a good thing for those who favor greater decentralization of state power in the United States. Tribal sovereignty has long been a neglected tool in the battle to limit federal power.
In terms of truly protecting tribal sovereignty, however, this week’s ruling is really quite limited. It still sanctions far too much power for Congress in unilaterally abrogating and changing treaties with tribes. Tribal lands should be treated as at least as sovereign as US states. Just as US states cannot be abolished or their borders changed by Congress without state permission, tribal entities ought to enjoy similar protections. Nonetheless, the ruling does strengthen the current legal environment in which tribal lands, laws, and boundaries are not something that state legislatures can change whenever they feel like it. One can hope that Congress too will eventually be similarly limited.
Now that it has been established the Creek tribe of eastern Oklahoma actually has sizable reservations, the next important step is in affirming what should have been recognized long ago: that tribal members ought to be able to administer criminal justice for their own members on their own lands in accordance with their own laws and customs.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
The Best of Ryan McMaken


lewrockwell--2020-07-13--The New Deal Is a Bad Old Deal

The New Deal Is a Bad Old Deal

So far , the current economic situation , together with the response by major governments , compares with the run-in to the depression of the 1930s .
Yet to come in the repetitious credit cycle is the collapse in financial asset values and a banking crisis .
When the scale of the banking crisis is known the scale of monetary inflation involved will become more obvious .
But in the politics of it , Trump is being set up as the equivalent of Herbert Hoover , and presumably Joe Biden , if he is well advised , will soon campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Boris Johnson has already called for a modern “ new deal ” , and in his “ Hundred Days ” his Chancellor is delivering it .
In the thirties , prices fell , only offset by the dollar ’ s devaluation in January 1934 .
This time , monetary inflation knows no limit .
The wealth destruction through monetary inflation will be an added burden to contend with compared with the situation ninety years ago .
The Great Depression David A. Shannon Best Price : $ 4.95 Buy New $ 20.00 Boris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Franklin D Roosevelt ’ s New Deal .
Such is the myth of FDR and his new deal that even libertarian Boris now invokes them .
Unless he is just being political , he shows he knows little about the economic situation that led to the depression .
It would not be unusual , even for a libertarian politician .
FDR is immensely popular with the inflationists who overwhelmingly wrote the economic history of the depression era .
In fact , FDR was not the first “ something must be done ” American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his predecessor , Herbert Hoover .
But the story told is that FDR took over from heartless Hoover who had failed to step in and rescue the economy from a free-market catastrophe , by standing back and letting events take their course instead .
Nothing is further from the truth : Hoover was an interventionist to his fingertips .
The last of the laissez-faire presidents was Calvin Coolidge , Hoover ’ s predecessor .
A few years ago , the BBC broadcast a programme extolling the virtues of FDR and his new deal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the BBC ’ s economics correspondent , reiterated the myth about Hoover being a non-interventionist and FDR having all the correct reflationary policies .
In a piece to camera at the Hoover Dam , no less , she recounted how it was an example of FDR ’ s new deal stimulus .
While it wasn ’ t completed until 1936 , building started in 1931 as a project by the eponymous Hoover , pursuing the same interventionist policies as FDR before FDR ’ s landslide election .
It was never FDR ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dam ’ s name .
Research by Flanders and the BBC was either biased , deficient , blind or all three .
The myth that has even drawn in Boris is so powerful it has intelligent people swearing the earth is flat .
The FDR fairy-story is fundamental to the modern state ’ s interventionist stance ; the very reason for its existence and its welfare commitments to the electorate .
Wishful thinking about FDR ’ s pioneering role is now the pervasive theology .
But the way the world is viewed can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quote FDR and his new deal as the template for economic policy is to repeat the errors that led to the longest and deepest depression in American history .
The Anti-Demographic C ... Blessings , Joe Buy New $ 5.99 If in a few words one was to sum up why the state fails in its interventionist quest , it would be its inability to understand change .
Free markets change all the time .
Businesses and whole industries evolve and disappear in a natural process of selection driven by the consumer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis is always aimed at a return to normality ; normality being an unchanged state from before the crisis .
The state protects yesterday ’ s jobs and yesterday ’ s businesses .
Worse , by preventing evolutionary change at the heart of a dynamic economy it deprives it of the resources required to evolve .
And that ’ s why the depression lasted into the Second World War .
The back-story to the depression Before Hoover , US presidents understood a hands-off policy would let the economy rapidly fix itself .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to run its course .
It lasted just eighteen months and was the prelude to a period of technological revolution that gave enormous benefits in the quality of life for all Americans .
Following President Harding ’ s death in 1923 , Coolidge was elected the new president .
While Coolidge enforced a strict laissez-faire policy , he was either unaware of or ignored the monetary policies of Benjamin Strong at the Fed , which , to be fair to Coolidge , was only a decade old .
The Fed ’ s monetary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boom which ended in a stockmarket bubble in 1929 .
In 1927 , Coolidge announced he would not be standing for a second term , and Herbert Hoover was elected President in 1928 nearly a year before the stock market crisis occurred .
Fuelled by a free market approach and the stimulus of unbacked credit , when Hoover took office in March 1929 the economy was , in the epithet of historians , roaring .
We can now begin our comparison with the present day .
Boris Johnson became Prime Minister after a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important correlation is with Republican Donald Trump , whose interventionist policies imitate Hoover ’ s from his time as Secretary of Commerce in Harding ’ s administration onwards .
Hoover deported immigrants and Trump builds a wall , both reasoning they take American jobs .
And like Hoover , Trump uses tariffs to protect farmers and businesses from foreign competition deemed unfair .
Anatomy of the State Murray Rothbard Best Price : $ 5.00 Buy New $ 5.82 The combination of a massive credit expansion in the 1920s and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the month of the Wall Street Crash — serves as a template for the condition of America ’ s economy today .
Apart from some differences in timing , the most significant difference is in the money .
Before April 1933 the dollar was freely exchangeable by the public for gold at $ 20.67 to the ounce ; today the dollar is unbacked .
Prices were stable , today they rise .
By passing the Smoot-Hawley Act at the top of the credit cycle , Congress ensured a sharp downturn in the economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their loans .
The economy began to contract , and interventionist Hoover went to work .
To quote from his memoires ; “ …the primary question at once arose as to whether the President and the Federal government should undertake to investigate and remedy the evils… No President before had ever believed that there was a governmental responsibility in such cases .
No matter what the urging on previous occasions , Presidents steadfastly had maintained that the Federal government was apart from such eruptions .
.
.
therefore , we had to pioneer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hoover called a series of White House conferences with industry leaders and bankers to persuade them to invest and maintain wages in order to keep consumer spending going .
Like the neo-Keynesians of today , Hoover believed consumer spending was vital for the economy , but failed to make the connection with production , which is always first in temporal order , and provides the product for consumption without which it can not happen .
Hoover ’ s view on maintaining wages is reflected today in minimum wage rates , which innocuous though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As is the case today , the Fed was ready to inflate .
According to Murray Rothbard , the Fed What Has Government Do ... Murray N. Rothbard Best Price : $ 7.04 Buy New $ 6.50 “ …was just as ready to try to cure the depression by inflating further .
It stepped in immediately to expand credit and bolster shaky financial positions .
In an act unprecedented in its history , the Federal Reserve moved in during the week of the crash—the final week of October—and in that brief period @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reserves of the nation ’ s banks .
During that week , the Federal Reserve doubled its holdings of government securities , adding over $ 150 million to reserves , and it discounted about $ 200 million more for member banks.
” [ ii ] Monetary policy was a doppelganger for the Fed ’ s policies today .
In today ’ s money , $ 300 million is about $ 26bn , using gold as the conversion factor .
Today ’ s stimulus is a thousand times greater in real terms — so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landslide against Hoover , and as was the custom at the time he took office the following March .
Only a week before , an assassination attempt on Roosevelt struck the wrong man who died shortly afterwards .
Banks were failing .
Farmers were in revolt .
The numbers of unemployed were increasing alarmingly .
Hoover ’ s reflationary policies had failed , and he was said to be the least popular man in America on inauguration day .
Fast-forward eighty-eight years and we see President Trump following in Hoover ’ s footsteps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can be pretty sure Joe Biden — if he is not asleep at the wheel — will cast himself as the new FDR with his version of the new deal .
Roosevelt then delivered his inaugural address , which included the famous line , “ So , first of all , let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
” His speech was followed by the Hundred Days , the first time a president had set such a schedule .
In Britain , Rishi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now pursuing his version of a Hundred Days announcing subsidies and new support as the occasion demands , financed by monetary inflation .
Admittedly Sunak remains a free marketeer but has yet to prove his measures are temporary .
Meanwhile , President Trump is destroying his administration ’ s finances in an attempt to contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus in his election year .
When Money Dies : The N ... Adam Fergusson Best Price : $ 1.97 Buy New $ 10.08 They say that repeating a failed action in search @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of madness .
Hoover and Roosevelt were pioneers of today ’ s failed economic policies and it is their post-war successors who are arguably certifiable .
But the problem is deeper than that , with the public voting for the same failed policies , so even an economically literate politician has to deliver solutions in that context .
It is what makes history repetitious .
Instead of economics , psychological factors drive politics , including the public desire for the state to provide easy solutions to economic and personal difficulties .
But the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we stand on the precipice of an economic collapse as a result of a combination of excessive credit creation in the years before and the introduction of trade tariffs .
And that was before the coronavirus was added to this lethal mix .
The psychology suggests that this time the politicians and the monetary authorities will pursue much the same course as before , even more aggressively .
So far , the evidence supports this thesis , and it allows us to anticipate mistakes yet to be made .
The credit cycle and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wall Street crash and the onset of the depression were bank failures .
Not only had the 24,000 American commercial banks extended unbacked credit throughout the 1920s , but their reserves were to an extent , fictitious .
This arose from double counting cheques in the process of clearing , remaining in the cash reserves of the bank upon which it was drawn while being immediately credited to the receiving bank ’ s cash reserves .
But when the public began to withdraw cash in increasing amounts this false liquidity was exposed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1930 in Tennessee when a correspondent network in Nashville collapsed after the Bank of Tennessee closed its doors , forcing over 100 institutions to suspend operations .
And as the contraction in bank credit continued , additional correspondent systems imploded .
That was only the start of it .
The Bank of the United States in New York in December was followed by a new banking crisis in Chicago the following June , this time involving real estate .
In 1932 over 2,000 banks closed , and in 1933 a further 4,000 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ very different today .
Instead of many thousands of small one and two-branch banks the system is dominated by large international behemoths , global systemically important banks — the G-SIBs .
They operate under the rules and regulations of the Basel Committee , currently Basel III , administered by national regulators .
Aping the crookery of double-counting floating cheques , today ’ s banks game the system , this time aided and abetted by the regulators , who , so long as the forms are correctly filed , are happy to look the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stress tests have shown they would rather gloss over the issue of inadequate capitalisation .
The full weakness of the global banking system is illustrated in Figure 1 , which shows the leverage between total assets on the G-SIB balance sheets and their market capitalisation .
The regulators persist in using the relationship between total assets and balance sheet equity instead , despite the market valuing a typical bank ’ s equity at considerably less than book value .
Bank equity valuations on 8 July have benefited from the liquidity-driven rally in global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s shares , for example , almost doubling from a low of €4.50 in mid-March .
The recovery is not a sign of new-found strength but merely reflects the severe disconnection between rising financial asset values and a collapsing economy , which will almost certainly lead to a substantial adjustment to the detriment of financial asset values .
The full weaknesses of the current system are described in a paper on the big UK banks , jointly authored by Dean Buckner and Kevin Dowd .
Figure 1 was constructed using the methodology in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recommended read for anyone seeking to understand the severe risks associated with not just the UK banking system , but the G-SIBs in all jurisdictions plus other significant banks not on the G-SIB list .
With a fundamentally weak global banking system , over-leveraged and virtually guaranteed to collapse as current financial and economic conditions deteriorate , a new banking failure could make the first wave of bank failures in 1930 Nashville look like a vicar ’ s tea-party .
The failure of just one major bank anywhere in the world is likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because global regulation has ensured they all game the system similarly and they all share the same weaknesses to greater or lesser degree .
America ’ s Great ... Rothbard , Murray Buy New $ 12.95 In another potentially fatal error , following the Lehman crisis the G-20 agreed new rules designed to ensure that the costs of future bank failures are to be carried by bond holders and large depositors as well as shareholders , and not governments .
Fortunately , this bail-in route is intended to be optional , but there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ banking crisis one or more of the G-20 members will go down the bail-in route , probably for banks not on the G-SIB list but smaller and no less significant banks .
With some bailing-out and some bailing-in , simple nationalisation and preservation of all customer deposits becomes less likely , prompting a collapse not just in the banks bailed in , but a panic in all bank bonds and major deposits which would otherwise be protected in a clean bail-out .
Putting the bail-in uncertainty to one side , instead of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s global banking interdependence suggests one major crisis is more likely , which arguably has already started given the liquidity injections that have taken place since last September , commencing in the repo market .
A difference from the thirties is that cash money today is a lower proportion of overall money supply , payments being overwhelmingly electronic .
Depositors queueing up to withdraw their funds in old fashioned bank runs can not be ruled out , but today failing banks find funds transferred from them far more swiftly by electronic means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ depositor protection .
One reason that central banks have encouraged the abandonment of cash is to lessen banks ’ vulnerability to old fashioned bank runs .
Instead , by acting as back-stop liquidity provider , even when other banks reduce credit lines to a stricken bank , the intention is that no bank need fail .
By the creation of bank reserves through QE and using the repo facility to provide overnight liquidity , commercial banks are already drawing on this support , without which there would almost certainly have been a banking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bank failures are already here , only they are hidden from public view .
All that ’ s needed is for bank bond holders and large depositors to wake up fully to the risks to their capital for the banking crisis to become public .
And that ’ s why the values of financial assets can not be permitted to slide , because if they were to do so the whole financial system would rapidly collapse .
In the 1930s the dollar was exchangeable for gold until one month after Roosevelt ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order banning the ownership of gold and gold certificates .
It was a prelude to the devaluation of the dollar to $ 35 to the ounce the following January , the rate at which US citizens were forbidden to own gold .
Apart from that devaluation , and despite its demonetarisation from gold the dollar retained its objective exchange value , while the depression led to falling prices for traded goods and commodities .
Falling prices were the natural consequence of the contraction of bank credit , the imposition of trade tariffs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inflationary unbacked bank credit contracting , it was sound money in the form of a gold-backed dollar that took the blame .
The inflationists were in control in both fact and of the narrative , but they couldn ’ t quite discard gold altogether — that didn ’ t happen until 1971 .
Today there is no backing for government currencies , being entirely fiat .
There is therefore no restriction in the deployment of an inflationary tax to balance the government ’ s books .
Measured in gold , the dollar has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power since the late sixties , and now its supply is being increased at an unprecedented rate .
The mistake being made by central banks is to not understand that money is merely the mechanism for converting an individual ’ s labour into consumption .
It is the means by which we compare one good against another .
It is not , as modern economists seem to think , a means for individuals to evaluate the cheapness or dearness of a good in isolation .
If that was the case , then current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effect they expect .
The failure of monetary policy , therefore , is in large measure due to the error of not understanding the true role of money in the economy .
It wasn ’ t the increased purchasing power of the dollar in the 1930s which contracted the economy , but the withdrawal of bank credit combined with trade tariffs .
Similarly , the falling purchasing power of the dollar today will not , on its own , stimulate consumption .
This is not to merely dismiss the distortions in the market @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which are damaging in many other respects .
But above all , the debasement of the currency impoverishes the creative economy , the exact opposite of the effect intended .
It remains to be seen how far the destruction of fiat money will go , but as Figure 2 shows , M1 money has already jumped sharply — by 104 % annualised between 24 February to 22 June .
Unfortunately , governments in the developed nations are making the same mistakes dealing with the current economic crisis as they made ninety years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1930—1933 we can be almost certain of a banking crisis .
This time it will be global and almost certainly will require banks to be taken into public ownership .
The cost will be immense , and it will be paid for by inflationary means .
The scale of it will mean an unprecedented destruction of wealth — hardly the basis for economic recovery .
At the same time statist preservation of existing production for fear of unemployment will hamper , not help economic recovery ; and , so long as fiat currencies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be no economic revival .
Indeed , the most important difference from the 1930s is the money , which could well collapse entirely .
Guided by the pre-Keynesian economic theory of the Austrian school , of the economic consequences we can be certain .
The political consequences in the long run can only be guessed .
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author ( s ) and do not reflect those of Goldmoney , unless expressly stated .
The Best of Alasdair Macleod

So far, the current economic situation, together with the response by major governments, compares with the run-in to the depression of the 1930s. Yet to come in the repetitious credit cycle is the collapse in financial asset values and a banking crisis.
When the scale of the banking crisis is known the scale of monetary inflation involved will become more obvious. But in the politics of it, Trump is being set up as the equivalent of Herbert Hoover, and presumably Joe Biden, if he is well advised, will soon campaign as a latter-day Roosevelt. In Britain, Boris Johnson has already called for a modern “new deal”, and in his “Hundred Days” his Chancellor is delivering it.
In the thirties, prices fell, only offset by the dollar’s devaluation in January 1934. This time, monetary inflation knows no limit. The wealth destruction through monetary inflation will be an added burden to contend with compared with the situation ninety years ago.
Introduction
The Great Depression David A. Shannon Best Price: $4.95 Buy New $20.00 (as of 03:15 UTC - Details) Boris Johnson recently compared his reconstruction plan with Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. Such is the myth of FDR and his new deal that even libertarian Boris now invokes them. Unless he is just being political, he shows he knows little about the economic situation that led to the depression.
It would not be unusual, even for a libertarian politician. FDR is immensely popular with the inflationists who overwhelmingly wrote the economic history of the depression era. In fact, FDR was not the first “something must be done” American president, a policy which started with his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. But the story told is that FDR took over from heartless Hoover who had failed to step in and rescue the economy from a free-market catastrophe, by standing back and letting events take their course instead. Nothing is further from the truth: Hoover was an interventionist to his fingertips. The last of the laissez-faire presidents was Calvin Coolidge, Hoover’s predecessor.
A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a programme extolling the virtues of FDR and his new deal. Stephanie Flanders, at that time the BBC’s economics correspondent, reiterated the myth about Hoover being a non-interventionist and FDR having all the correct reflationary policies. In a piece to camera at the Hoover Dam, no less, she recounted how it was an example of FDR’s new deal stimulus. While it wasn’t completed until 1936, building started in 1931 as a project by the eponymous Hoover, pursuing the same interventionist policies as FDR before FDR’s landslide election. It was never FDR’s project, the clue being in the dam’s name. Research by Flanders and the BBC was either biased, deficient, blind or all three.
The myth that has even drawn in Boris is so powerful it has intelligent people swearing the earth is flat. The FDR fairy-story is fundamental to the modern state’s interventionist stance; the very reason for its existence and its welfare commitments to the electorate. Wishful thinking about FDR’s pioneering role is now the pervasive theology. But the way the world is viewed cannot change the facts, and to quote FDR and his new deal as the template for economic policy is to repeat the errors that led to the longest and deepest depression in American history. The Anti-Demographic C... Blessings, Joe Buy New $5.99 (as of 04:54 UTC - Details)
If in a few words one was to sum up why the state fails in its interventionist quest, it would be its inability to understand change. Free markets change all the time. Businesses and whole industries evolve and disappear in a natural process of selection driven by the consumer. The state’s response to a crisis is always aimed at a return to normality; normality being an unchanged state from before the crisis. The state protects yesterday’s jobs and yesterday’s businesses. Worse, by preventing evolutionary change at the heart of a dynamic economy it deprives it of the resources required to evolve. And that’s why the depression lasted into the Second World War.
The back-story to the depression
Before Hoover, US presidents understood a hands-off policy would let the economy rapidly fix itself. The post-war 1920—1921 depression in America was allowed to run its course. It lasted just eighteen months and was the prelude to a period of technological revolution that gave enormous benefits in the quality of life for all Americans. Following President Harding’s death in 1923, Coolidge was elected the new president. While Coolidge enforced a strict laissez-faire policy, he was either unaware of or ignored the monetary policies of Benjamin Strong at the Fed, which, to be fair to Coolidge, was only a decade old. The Fed’s monetary policy was the cause of an inflationary boom which ended in a stockmarket bubble in 1929.
In 1927, Coolidge announced he would not be standing for a second term, and Herbert Hoover was elected President in 1928 nearly a year before the stock market crisis occurred.
Fuelled by a free market approach and the stimulus of unbacked credit, when Hoover took office in March 1929 the economy was, in the epithet of historians, roaring. We can now begin our comparison with the present day. Boris Johnson became Prime Minister after a similar inflation-fuelled period; but the more important correlation is with Republican Donald Trump, whose interventionist policies imitate Hoover’s from his time as Secretary of Commerce in Harding’s administration onwards. Hoover deported immigrants and Trump builds a wall, both reasoning they take American jobs. And like Hoover, Trump uses tariffs to protect farmers and businesses from foreign competition deemed unfair. Anatomy of the State Murray Rothbard Best Price: $5.00 Buy New $5.82 (as of 05:45 UTC - Details)
The combination of a massive credit expansion in the 1920s and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act passed by congress in October 1929 — the month of the Wall Street Crash — serves as a template for the condition of America’s economy today. Apart from some differences in timing, the most significant difference is in the money. Before April 1933 the dollar was freely exchangeable by the public for gold at $20.67 to the ounce; today the dollar is unbacked. Prices were stable, today they rise.
By passing the Smoot-Hawley Act at the top of the credit cycle, Congress ensured a sharp downturn in the economic outlook, persuading bankers to call in their loans. The economy began to contract, and interventionist Hoover went to work. To quote from his memoires;
“…the primary question at once arose as to whether the President and the Federal government should undertake to investigate and remedy the evils… No President before had ever believed that there was a governmental responsibility in such cases. No matter what the urging on previous occasions, Presidents steadfastly had maintained that the Federal government was apart from such eruptions . . . therefore, we had to pioneer a new field.”[i]
Hoover called a series of White House conferences with industry leaders and bankers to persuade them to invest and maintain wages in order to keep consumer spending going. Like the neo-Keynesians of today, Hoover believed consumer spending was vital for the economy, but failed to make the connection with production, which is always first in temporal order, and provides the product for consumption without which it cannot happen. Hoover’s view on maintaining wages is reflected today in minimum wage rates, which innocuous though they may seem render certain activities uneconomic.
As is the case today, the Fed was ready to inflate. According to Murray Rothbard, the Fed
What Has Government Do... Murray N. Rothbard Best Price: $7.04 Buy New $6.50 (as of 05:50 UTC - Details) “…was just as ready to try to cure the depression by inflating further. It stepped in immediately to expand credit and bolster shaky financial positions. In an act unprecedented in its history, the Federal Reserve moved in during the week of the crash—the final week of October—and in that brief period added almost $300 million to the reserves of the nation’s banks. During that week, the Federal Reserve doubled its holdings of government securities, adding over $150 million to reserves, and it discounted about $200 million more for member banks.” [ii]
Monetary policy was a doppelganger for the Fed’s policies today. In today’s money, $300 million is about $26bn, using gold as the conversion factor. Today’s stimulus is a thousand times greater in real terms — so far.
In 1932 Roosevelt won a landslide against Hoover, and as was the custom at the time he took office the following March. Only a week before, an assassination attempt on Roosevelt struck the wrong man who died shortly afterwards. Banks were failing. Farmers were in revolt. The numbers of unemployed were increasing alarmingly. Hoover’s reflationary policies had failed, and he was said to be the least popular man in America on inauguration day. Fast-forward eighty-eight years and we see President Trump following in Hoover’s footsteps in this election year; and we can be pretty sure Joe Biden — if he is not asleep at the wheel — will cast himself as the new FDR with his version of the new deal.
Roosevelt then delivered his inaugural address, which included the famous line, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His speech was followed by the Hundred Days, the first time a president had set such a schedule.
In Britain, Rishi Sunak, the new Chancellor, is now pursuing his version of a Hundred Days announcing subsidies and new support as the occasion demands, financed by monetary inflation. Admittedly Sunak remains a free marketeer but has yet to prove his measures are temporary. Meanwhile, President Trump is destroying his administration’s finances in an attempt to contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus in his election year.
When Money Dies: The N... Adam Fergusson Best Price: $1.97 Buy New $10.08 (as of 10:10 UTC - Details) They say that repeating a failed action in search of a different outcome is a sign of madness. Hoover and Roosevelt were pioneers of today’s failed economic policies and it is their post-war successors who are arguably certifiable. But the problem is deeper than that, with the public voting for the same failed policies, so even an economically literate politician has to deliver solutions in that context. It is what makes history repetitious. Instead of economics, psychological factors drive politics, including the public desire for the state to provide easy solutions to economic and personal difficulties. But the lesson from the Hoover era is that we stand on the precipice of an economic collapse as a result of a combination of excessive credit creation in the years before and the introduction of trade tariffs. And that was before the coronavirus was added to this lethal mix.
The psychology suggests that this time the politicians and the monetary authorities will pursue much the same course as before, even more aggressively. So far, the evidence supports this thesis, and it allows us to anticipate mistakes yet to be made.
The credit cycle and the banks
A notable feature of the Wall Street crash and the onset of the depression were bank failures. Not only had the 24,000 American commercial banks extended unbacked credit throughout the 1920s, but their reserves were to an extent, fictitious. This arose from double counting cheques in the process of clearing, remaining in the cash reserves of the bank upon which it was drawn while being immediately credited to the receiving bank’s cash reserves.
But when the public began to withdraw cash in increasing amounts this false liquidity was exposed. The initial banking panic began in November 1930 in Tennessee when a correspondent network in Nashville collapsed after the Bank of Tennessee closed its doors, forcing over 100 institutions to suspend operations. And as the contraction in bank credit continued, additional correspondent systems imploded. That was only the start of it. The Bank of the United States in New York in December was followed by a new banking crisis in Chicago the following June, this time involving real estate. In 1932 over 2,000 banks closed, and in 1933 a further 4,000.[iii]
The banking scene is very different today. Instead of many thousands of small one and two-branch banks the system is dominated by large international behemoths, global systemically important banks — the G-SIBs. They operate under the rules and regulations of the Basel Committee, currently Basel III, administered by national regulators.
Aping the crookery of double-counting floating cheques, today’s banks game the system, this time aided and abetted by the regulators, who, so long as the forms are correctly filed, are happy to look the other way. Indeed, as their stress tests have shown they would rather gloss over the issue of inadequate capitalisation.
The full weakness of the global banking system is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows the leverage between total assets on the G-SIB balance sheets and their market capitalisation. The regulators persist in using the relationship between total assets and balance sheet equity instead, despite the market valuing a typical bank’s equity at considerably less than book value.
Bank equity valuations on 8 July have benefited from the liquidity-driven rally in global stock markets, with Deutsche Bank’s shares, for example, almost doubling from a low of €4.50 in mid-March. The recovery is not a sign of new-found strength but merely reflects the severe disconnection between rising financial asset values and a collapsing economy, which will almost certainly lead to a substantial adjustment to the detriment of financial asset values.
The full weaknesses of the current system are described in a paper on the big UK banks, jointly authored by Dean Buckner and Kevin Dowd. Figure 1 was constructed using the methodology in that paper. It is a strongly recommended read for anyone seeking to understand the severe risks associated with not just the UK banking system, but the G-SIBs in all jurisdictions plus other significant banks not on the G-SIB list.
With a fundamentally weak global banking system, over-leveraged and virtually guaranteed to collapse as current financial and economic conditions deteriorate, a new banking failure could make the first wave of bank failures in 1930 Nashville look like a vicar’s tea-party. The failure of just one major bank anywhere in the world is likely to degenerate into a widespread panic, because global regulation has ensured they all game the system similarly and they all share the same weaknesses to greater or lesser degree. America’s Great ... Rothbard, Murray Buy New $12.95 (as of 06:14 UTC - Details)
In another potentially fatal error, following the Lehman crisis the G-20 agreed new rules designed to ensure that the costs of future bank failures are to be carried by bond holders and large depositors as well as shareholders, and not governments. Fortunately, this bail-in route is intended to be optional, but there is a risk that in a widespread banking crisis one or more of the G-20 members will go down the bail-in route, probably for banks not on the G-SIB list but smaller and no less significant banks. With some bailing-out and some bailing-in, simple nationalisation and preservation of all customer deposits becomes less likely, prompting a collapse not just in the banks bailed in, but a panic in all bank bonds and major deposits which would otherwise be protected in a clean bail-out.
Putting the bail-in uncertainty to one side, instead of a series of bank failures between 1930-33 today’s global banking interdependence suggests one major crisis is more likely, which arguably has already started given the liquidity injections that have taken place since last September, commencing in the repo market.
A difference from the thirties is that cash money today is a lower proportion of overall money supply, payments being overwhelmingly electronic. Depositors queueing up to withdraw their funds in old fashioned bank runs cannot be ruled out, but today failing banks find funds transferred from them far more swiftly by electronic means, particularly from larger account balances lacking depositor protection.
One reason that central banks have encouraged the abandonment of cash is to lessen banks’ vulnerability to old fashioned bank runs. Instead, by acting as back-stop liquidity provider, even when other banks reduce credit lines to a stricken bank, the intention is that no bank need fail. By the creation of bank reserves through QE and using the repo facility to provide overnight liquidity, commercial banks are already drawing on this support, without which there would almost certainly have been a banking crisis already.
On this basis, bank failures are already here, only they are hidden from public view. All that’s needed is for bank bond holders and large depositors to wake up fully to the risks to their capital for the banking crisis to become public. And that’s why the values of financial assets cannot be permitted to slide, because if they were to do so the whole financial system would rapidly collapse.
Money differences
In the 1930s the dollar was exchangeable for gold until one month after Roosevelt’s inauguration, when he signed an executive order banning the ownership of gold and gold certificates. It was a prelude to the devaluation of the dollar to $35 to the ounce the following January, the rate at which US citizens were forbidden to own gold. Apart from that devaluation, and despite its demonetarisation from gold the dollar retained its objective exchange value, while the depression led to falling prices for traded goods and commodities.
Falling prices were the natural consequence of the contraction of bank credit, the imposition of trade tariffs and failing price support operations. Instead of inflationary unbacked bank credit contracting, it was sound money in the form of a gold-backed dollar that took the blame. The inflationists were in control in both fact and of the narrative, but they couldn’t quite discard gold altogether — that didn’t happen until 1971.
Today there is no backing for government currencies, being entirely fiat. There is therefore no restriction in the deployment of an inflationary tax to balance the government’s books. Measured in gold, the dollar has already lost 98% of its purchasing power since the late sixties, and now its supply is being increased at an unprecedented rate.
The mistake being made by central banks is to not understand that money is merely the mechanism for converting an individual’s labour into consumption. It is the means by which we compare one good against another. It is not, as modern economists seem to think, a means for individuals to evaluate the cheapness or dearness of a good in isolation. If that was the case, then current and prospective prices would broadly have the effect they expect.
The failure of monetary policy, therefore, is in large measure due to the error of not understanding the true role of money in the economy. It wasn’t the increased purchasing power of the dollar in the 1930s which contracted the economy, but the withdrawal of bank credit combined with trade tariffs. Similarly, the falling purchasing power of the dollar today will not, on its own, stimulate consumption. This is not to merely dismiss the distortions in the market from changes in the quantity of money, which are damaging in many other respects. But above all, the debasement of the currency impoverishes the creative economy, the exact opposite of the effect intended.
It remains to be seen how far the destruction of fiat money will go, but as Figure 2 shows, M1 money has already jumped sharply — by 104% annualised between 24 February to 22 June.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, governments in the developed nations are making the same mistakes dealing with the current economic crisis as they made ninety years ago. As was the case between 1930—1933 we can be almost certain of a banking crisis. This time it will be global and almost certainly will require banks to be taken into public ownership. The cost will be immense, and it will be paid for by inflationary means.
The scale of it will mean an unprecedented destruction of wealth — hardly the basis for economic recovery. At the same time statist preservation of existing production for fear of unemployment will hamper, not help economic recovery; and, so long as fiat currencies retain any exchange value, there can be no economic revival.
Indeed, the most important difference from the 1930s is the money, which could well collapse entirely. Guided by the pre-Keynesian economic theory of the Austrian school, of the economic consequences we can be certain. The political consequences in the long run can only be guessed.
—
[i] As quoted in Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression pp. 209
[ii] Ibid. pp. 214
[iii] See Federal Reserve History; Banking panics of 1930-31.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of Goldmoney, unless expressly stated.
Reprinted with permission from Goldmoney.
The Best of Alasdair Macleod


lewrockwell--2020-07-13--It Takes 3 Weeks To Escape Illinois

It Takes 3 Weeks To Escape Illinois

Why 3 weeks ?
That ’ s how long it takes to reserve a one-way U-Haul outbound .
“ Everyone is leaving .
No one is coming , ” a U-Haul agent told us a few weeks ago .
Illinoisans Leave State in Record Numbers , and So Are We On January 2 , 2020 I announced Illinoisans Leave State in Record Numbers , and So Are We I am pleased to report we loaded our U-Haul rental yesterday and I am on the road driving to our new home in Utah .
Right now we are just a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have crossed the state line and are now in Iowa .
Collusion Prins , Nomi Best Price : $ 11.54 Buy New $ 11.29 On February 12 , Wirepoints noted If the wealthy flee , ordinary Illinoisans will be left holding the progressive tax bag .
Yep , and we have had enough .
We were paying about $ 15,000 a year in property taxes on a home now worth about $ 380,000 or so .
We have a beautiful 1 acre lot , surrounded by 30 white or and burr oak trees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ values are sinking .
We will sell the house for a lot less than we paid for it 20 years ago .
Property taxes are a killer and taxes in general are going to rise in Illinois .
I discussed Utah in my October 5 , 2019 post Escape Illinois : Get The Hell Out Now , We Are The Best of Michael Shedlock

Why 3 weeks? That’s how long it takes to reserve a one-way U-Haul outbound.
“Everyone is leaving. No one is coming,” a U-Haul agent told us a few weeks ago.
Illinoisans Leave State in Record Numbers, and So Are We
On January 2, 2020 I announced Illinoisans Leave State in Record Numbers, and So Are We
I am pleased to report we loaded our U-Haul rental yesterday and I am on the road driving to our new home in Utah.
Right now we are just a few hours into the trip, but we have crossed the state line and are now in Iowa. Collusion Prins, Nomi Best Price: $11.54 Buy New $11.29 (as of 05:02 UTC - Details)
Goodbye Illinois
On February 12, Wirepoints noted If the wealthy flee, ordinary Illinoisans will be left holding the progressive tax bag.
Yep, and we have had enough.
We were paying about $15,000 a year in property taxes on a home now worth about $380,000 or so. We have a beautiful 1 acre lot, surrounded by 30 white or and burr oak trees 100-200 years old. \
But property values are sinking. We will sell the house for a lot less than we paid for it 20 years ago.
Property taxes are a killer and taxes in general are going to rise in Illinois.
Why Utah?
I discussed Utah in my October 5, 2019 post Escape Illinois: Get The Hell Out Now, We Are
The Best of Michael Shedlock


lewrockwell--2020-07-13--The Sinking Titanic’s Great Pumps Finally Fail

The greater fools still partying in the first-class lounge are in denial that even the greatest , most technologically advanced ship can sink .
On April 14 , 1912 , the liner Titanic , considered unsinkable due to its watertight compartments and other features , struck a glancing blow against a massive iceberg on that moonless , weirdly calm night .
In the early hours of April 15 , the great ship broke in half and sank , ending the lives of the majority of its passengers and crew .
The usual analogy drawn between the Titanic and our financial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the passengers after the collision .
Some passengers went on deck to play with the ice scraped off the berg , while most returned to the festivities still working their magic as midnight approached .
1 % .
The book that the ... Sharratt , Robert Best Price : $ 9.93 Buy New $ 8.99 The class structure of Edwardian Britain soon came into play , however ; as the situation grew visibly threatening , the First Class passengers were herded into the few lifeboats while the steerage/Third Class passengers–many of them immigrants–were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doom .
But there are even more compelling analogies than initial complacency turning to panic .
Consider this diagram of the great ship : The large black rectangles on the lower deck represent the coal bunkers ; they were located adjacent to the boilers which powered the engines .
Though the ship only scraped against the iceberg , as Titanic explorer Robert Ballard explains , that was enough to pop rivets and open hull plates : The glancing blow that ruptured the Titanic ’ s hull over a distance of roughly 250 feet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 882 feet ) and admitted water into six of her compartments sealed her fate .
Considerable hullabaloo attended the attempt in the summer of 1996 to raise a piece of the hull from the debris field , but far more interesting was the ultrasound investigation of the area of the bow damaged by the iceberg .
These images revealed six small tears or openings affecting the first six compartments .
Just as we had surmised in 1986 , the great gash was a myth and the actual openings into the ship seem to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and hull plates separating .
The Best of Charles Hugh Smith

The greater fools still partying in the first-class lounge are in denial that even the greatest, most technologically advanced ship can sink.
On April 14, 1912, the liner Titanic, considered unsinkable due to its watertight compartments and other features, struck a glancing blow against a massive iceberg on that moonless, weirdly calm night. In the early hours of April 15, the great ship broke in half and sank, ending the lives of the majority of its passengers and crew.
The usual analogy drawn between the Titanic and our financial meltdown stems from the initial complacency of the passengers after the collision. Some passengers went on deck to play with the ice scraped off the berg, while most returned to the festivities still working their magic as midnight approached. 1%. The book that the... Sharratt, Robert Best Price: $9.93 Buy New $8.99 (as of 02:53 UTC - Details)
The class structure of Edwardian Britain soon came into play, however; as the situation grew visibly threatening, the First Class passengers were herded into the few lifeboats while the steerage/Third Class passengers–many of them immigrants–were mostly kept below decks, sealing their doom.
But there are even more compelling analogies than initial complacency turning to panic. Consider this diagram of the great ship:
The large black rectangles on the lower deck represent the coal bunkers; they were located adjacent to the boilers which powered the engines. Though the ship only scraped against the iceberg, as Titanic explorer Robert Ballard explains, that was enough to pop rivets and open hull plates:
The glancing blow that ruptured the Titanic’s hull over a distance of roughly 250 feet (out of a full length of 882 feet) and admitted water into six of her compartments sealed her fate.
Considerable hullabaloo attended the attempt in the summer of 1996 to raise a piece of the hull from the debris field, but far more interesting was the ultrasound investigation of the area of the bow damaged by the iceberg. These images revealed six small tears or openings affecting the first six compartments. Just as we had surmised in 1986, the great gash was a myth and the actual openings into the ship seem to have been the result of rivets popping and hull plates separating.
Read the Whole Article
The Best of Charles Hugh Smith


The Woke Revolution

150 prominent intellectuals and Ivy League academics of leftish persuasion have signed a letter in Harper ’ s protesting the breakdown in civilized debate and imposition of ideological conformity .
The signatories made the obligatory bow to denouncing Trump as “ a real threat to democracy ” and called for “ greater equality and inclusion across our society.
” But this wasn ’ t enough to save them from denunciation for stating these truthful facts : “ The free exchange of information and ideas , the lifeblood of a liberal society , is daily becoming more constricted .
While we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radical right , censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture : an intolerance of opposing views , a vogue for public shaming and ostracism , and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty .
We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters .
But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought .
More troubling still , institutional leaders , in a spirit of panicked damage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ punishments instead of considered reforms .
Editors are fired for running controversial pieces ; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity ; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics ; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class ; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study ; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes .
Whatever the arguments around each particular incident , the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ price in greater risk aversion among writers , artists , and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus , or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
” See this .
Springtime for Snowfla ... Michael Rectenwald Best Price : $ 10.51 Buy New $ 14.65 The signatories to the letter do not understand that time has passed them by .
Free speech is no longer a value .
Free speach is an ally of oppression because it permits charges against Western civilization and the white racist oppressors to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ welcome .
The purpose of the woke revolution is to overthrow a liberal society and impose conformity with wokeness in its place .
Whiteness has been declared evil .
There is nothing to debate .
The signatories do not understand that today there is only one side .
In place of debate there is denunciation , the purpose of which is to impose ideological conformity .
It is pointless to search for truth when truth has been revealed : Western civilization and all its works are a white racist construct and must be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To make clear that in these revolutionary times not even prominent people of accomplishment such as Noam Chomsky are entitled to a voice different from woke-imposed conformity , the letter was answered by a condescending statement signed by a long list of woke journalists of no distinction or achievement , people no one has ever heard of .
The 150 prominent defenders of free speech were simply dismissed as no longer relevant .
Beyond Woke Michael Rectenwald Buy New $ 19.99 Noam Chomsky and the other prominent signatories were dismissed as irrelevant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took exception to the New York Times 1619 project , a packet of lies and anti-white propaganda .
The famous historians found that they weren ’ t relevant .
The New York Times has an agenda that is independent of the facts .
The message is clear : shutup “ white , wealthy ” people and you also Thomas Chatterton Williams , a black person with a white name .
Your voices of oppression have been cancelled .
The “ oppressed ” and “ marginalized ” voices of woke revolutionaries , who have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place , and via social media , are the ones that now control explanations .
No one is permitted to disagree with them .
Lining up on the woke side are CNN , New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Slate , and other presstitute organizations desperately trying to remain relevant .
Everyone of these institutions quickly took the side of the woke revolution against facts and free speech .
Se here , here , here and here .
The revolution is over unless the guillotine is next .
Academic freedom no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exists .
The media is a propaganda ministry .
Without free speech there can be no answer to denunciation .
White people are guilty .
Period .
The Best of Paul Craig Roberts

150 prominent intellectuals and Ivy League academics of leftish persuasion have signed a letter in Harper’s protesting the breakdown in civilized debate and imposition of ideological conformity. The signatories made the obligatory bow to denouncing Trump as “a real threat to democracy” and called for “greater equality and inclusion across our society.” But this wasn’t enough to save them from denunciation for stating these truthful facts:
“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.” See this. Springtime for Snowfla... Michael Rectenwald Best Price: $10.51 Buy New $14.65 (as of 10:49 UTC - Details)
The signatories to the letter do not understand that time has passed them by. Free speech is no longer a value. Free speach is an ally of oppression because it permits charges against Western civilization and the white racist oppressors to be answered, and facts are not welcome. The purpose of the woke revolution is to overthrow a liberal society and impose conformity with wokeness in its place. Whiteness has been declared evil. There is nothing to debate.
The signatories do not understand that today there is only one side. In place of debate there is denunciation, the purpose of which is to impose ideological conformity. It is pointless to search for truth when truth has been revealed: Western civilization and all its works are a white racist construct and must be destroyed. There is nothing to debate.
To make clear that in these revolutionary times not even prominent people of accomplishment such as Noam Chomsky are entitled to a voice different from woke-imposed conformity, the letter was answered by a condescending statement signed by a long list of woke journalists of no distinction or achievement, people no one has ever heard of. The 150 prominent defenders of free speech were simply dismissed as no longer relevant. Beyond Woke Michael Rectenwald Buy New $19.99 (as of 11:37 UTC - Details)
Noam Chomsky and the other prominent signatories were dismissed as irrelevant just as the prominent historians were who took exception to the New York Times 1619 project, a packet of lies and anti-white propaganda. The famous historians found that they weren’t relevant. The New York Times has an agenda that is independent of the facts.
The message is clear: shutup “white, wealthy” people and you also Thomas Chatterton Williams, a black person with a white name. Your voices of oppression have been cancelled.
The “oppressed” and “marginalized” voices of woke revolutionaries, who have imposed tyranny in universities, the work place, and via social media, are the ones that now control explanations. No one is permitted to disagree with them.
Lining up on the woke side are CNN, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, and other presstitute organizations desperately trying to remain relevant. Everyone of these institutions quickly took the side of the woke revolution against facts and free speech.
Se here, here, here and here.
The revolution is over unless the guillotine is next. Academic freedom no longer exists. Free speech no longer exists. The media is a propaganda ministry. Without free speech there can be no answer to denunciation. White people are guilty. Period.
The Best of Paul Craig Roberts


Reflections

A few items rattling their way through my brain .
Time to get rid of these .
We have seen statues come down , statues not only of slaveholders ( which would require the removal of most statues around the world of anyone born before around 1830 and a few born since ) , but statues of those who worked to free slaves and those who were slaves .
The point isn ’ t slavery ; the point is history .
As many have noted , and I have recently written about , a nation without a story is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of removing all statues – more accurately , removing the symbols that reflect the history of the nation .
Who does this benefit ?
If we can judge by the people who are tearing down the statues , it doesn ’ t benefit what might be described as civil society .
I have done my own share of tearing down statues , so to speak .
Call it revisionist history .
My contribution is meager compared to many who have done the same .
I wonder : what is different about what I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when statues are torn down ?
CANCEL CULTURE : How to ... Reich , Alexander Buy New $ 12.99 I guess I would say : my work was with the aim of exposing false narratives in our history , of giving some evidence in history that would alter the narrative .
It strikes me that such work can only help strengthen the nation by placing its history on firmer footing ; it can strengthen the nation by properly reflecting on and recognizing its past sins .
But is this just rationalization on my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s ( physical ) revisionists would say ?
This got me to thinking : a nation whose official historical narrative is compiled of many lies might inherently be headed down the road of its statues being torn down .
Building a narrative of lie upon lie merely opens the door for those who wish to question the foundation – and rightly so , it seems to me .
We read in Proverbs 19 : 5 “ A false witness shall not be unpunished , and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s comeuppance for building one false narrative on top of the other .
Anyway , returning to my question : what ’ s the difference of the work I have done vs. the tearing down of the statues today ?
I guess I can say my work was in search of truth – open to someone revising what I described ; the physical revisionists are only able to tear down , regardless of narrative : slaveowner , slave trader , abolitionist , or slave .
It is a task solely of destruction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its wake .
Such as these are not facing history honestly .
I guess , ultimately , this is the difference of my work and theirs .
Whether I am furthering truth or not is the task of the next revisionist to decide .
But approaching it honestly ?
I believe so .
Why didn ’ t I cheer on CHAZ or CHOP or whatever name they wanted to use ?
Three years or so ago , Catalunya was voting on secession .
I wrote then , and have written since : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if those in the seceding group do not wish to secede , then support their secession from this group .
So , why not cheer on CHAZ ?
What ’ s different ?
I guess I can answer it with a quote from Jeff Deist , writing at the time of the vote in Spain : So , first there is the question of self-determination .
It seems correct to me – ever-smaller levels of government bring governmental leaders closer to the community , and give those in the community more opportunities to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preferences .
But this only works to advance liberty if the higher governmental institution does not continue usurping life and property from those who have now seceded .
So this is a second consideration .
But then we have this line : So , why did I not cheer on the street gang in Seattle as I did the secessionists in Catalunya ?
I guess for a few reasons – and I suspect Deist would concur : first , it is not clear that there was any “ self-determination ” by those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the district on this matter ; from what I can understand , it was kind of the opposite .
Maybe I am wrong one this .
Second , the higher levels of government didn ’ t leave those inside alone : still obligated for taxes , still obligated to the laws ( well , not the armed thugs , but those whose homes and businesses were destroyed ) .
The only way that these people were left alone was in the only function the higher entity owed them : defense of life and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ third reason : until we come to a stateless society , should we not expect those in government and authority to do their jobs ?
By “ jobs , ” I don ’ t mean spying and flying drones over wedding parties and the like .
I mean protect life and property – the only proper role of a government if there is to be a government .
This clearly didn ’ t happen in Seattle .
In fact , it was the opposite .
Dissenters Project : Th ... Collection , Essay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 9.95 Those looting and destroying were left free by the government that was supposed to protect from such thuggery .
Imagine what would happen if a private citizen-victim of these looters did the government ’ s job in the stead of those who had the obligation .
This defender of his property would have been the one sent to the gallows .
So , I guess my point is this : this event in Seattle was no secession .
It was a militarized invasion , with those responsible for defense abandoning their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defense by those whose property and lives were jeopardized .
Which brings me to… Would libertarians be happy with pulling the plug on the existing state structures , confident that freedom would then ring – that eventually things would work out ?
Working through this question in the past is one of the reasons I concluded that a proper cultural foundation is necessary before one can consider anything like liberty – or consider anything like pulling the plug .
If I was a resident in the CHAZ district of Seattle , I suspect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this view than I did before .
In the absence of my free ability to properly defend my property ( as all legal risk and all laws are against those who will do so ) , and in the absence of my ability to secure the services of a private and competing defense agency ( which would be cost prohibitive for many reasons and would also open me up to the liabilities of a criminal ) , what are we to do with today ’ s police ?
Defund them ?
Spit on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reducing the number of laws on the books – eliminate all laws against non-violent offenses .
Second , demilitarize ; almost every department has SWAT teams and the like that are supplied like military invaders of Afghanistan .
After that , we can talk about defunding the police .
The Best of Bionic Mosquito

A few items rattling their way through my brain. Time to get rid of these.
History
We have seen statues come down, statues not only of slaveholders (which would require the removal of most statues around the world of anyone born before around 1830 and a few born since), but statues of those who worked to free slaves and those who were slaves. The point isn’t slavery; the point is history.
As many have noted, and I have recently written about, a nation without a story is not a nation. This is the endgame of removing all statues – more accurately, removing the symbols that reflect the history of the nation. Who does this benefit? If we can judge by the people who are tearing down the statues, it doesn’t benefit what might be described as civil society.
I have done my own share of tearing down statues, so to speak. Call it revisionist history. My contribution is meager compared to many who have done the same. I wonder: what is different about what I have done compared to what is done when statues are torn down? CANCEL CULTURE: How to... Reich, Alexander Buy New $12.99 (as of 04:40 UTC - Details)
I guess I would say: my work was with the aim of exposing false narratives in our history, of giving some evidence in history that would alter the narrative. It strikes me that such work can only help strengthen the nation by placing its history on firmer footing; it can strengthen the nation by properly reflecting on and recognizing its past sins.
But is this just rationalization on my part? Is this not what today’s (physical) revisionists would say?
This got me to thinking: a nation whose official historical narrative is compiled of many lies might inherently be headed down the road of its statues being torn down. Building a narrative of lie upon lie merely opens the door for those who wish to question the foundation – and rightly so, it seems to me.
We read in Proverbs 19: 5 “A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.” Perhaps tearing down statues is America’s comeuppance for building one false narrative on top of the other.
Anyway, returning to my question: what’s the difference of the work I have done vs. the tearing down of the statues today? I guess I can say my work was in search of truth – open to someone revising what I described; the physical revisionists are only able to tear down, regardless of narrative: slaveowner, slave trader, abolitionist, or slave. It is a task solely of destruction, with no attempt at leaving truth in its wake.
Such as these are not facing history honestly. I guess, ultimately, this is the difference of my work and theirs. Whether I am furthering truth or not is the task of the next revisionist to decide. But approaching it honestly? I believe so.
Secession
Why didn’t I cheer on CHAZ or CHOP or whatever name they wanted to use? Three years or so ago, Catalunya was voting on secession. I wrote then, and have written since: cheer on every opportunity for secession; if those in the seceding group do not wish to secede, then support their secession from this group.
So, why not cheer on CHAZ? What’s different? I guess I can answer it with a quote from Jeff Deist, writing at the time of the vote in Spain:
For libertarians, self-determination is the highest political end. In political terms, self-determination is liberty. In an ideal world, self-determination extends all the way to the individual, who enjoys complete political sovereignty over his or her life. The often misused term for this degree of complete self-determination is anarchy.
So, first there is the question of self-determination.
In an imperfect world, however, libertarians should support smaller and more decentralized governments as a pragmatic step toward greater liberty. Our goal should be to devolve political power whenever possible, making states less powerful and easier to avoid. Barcelona is less ominous than Madrid. The Legislature in a US state is less fearsome than Congress in Washington DC.
It seems correct to me – ever-smaller levels of government bring governmental leaders closer to the community, and give those in the community more opportunities to find a situation better suited to their preferences. But this only works to advance liberty if the higher governmental institution does not continue usurping life and property from those who have now seceded. So this is a second consideration.
But then we have this line:
Street gangs are bad, but they can be avoided in ways Uncle Sam cannot.
So, why did I not cheer on the street gang in Seattle as I did the secessionists in Catalunya? I guess for a few reasons – and I suspect Deist would concur: first, it is not clear that there was any “self-determination” by those who lived and worked and owned businesses in the district on this matter; from what I can understand, it was kind of the opposite. Maybe I am wrong one this.
Second, the higher levels of government didn’t leave those inside alone: still obligated for taxes, still obligated to the laws (well, not the armed thugs, but those whose homes and businesses were destroyed). The only way that these people were left alone was in the only function the higher entity owed them: defense of life and property.
Which brings me to the third reason: until we come to a stateless society, should we not expect those in government and authority to do their jobs? By “jobs,” I don’t mean spying and flying drones over wedding parties and the like. I mean protect life and property – the only proper role of a government if there is to be a government. This clearly didn’t happen in Seattle. In fact, it was the opposite. Dissenters Project: Th... Collection, Essay Best Price: $16.66 Buy New $9.95 (as of 05:08 UTC - Details)
Those looting and destroying were left free by the government that was supposed to protect from such thuggery. Imagine what would happen if a private citizen-victim of these looters did the government’s job in the stead of those who had the obligation. This defender of his property would have been the one sent to the gallows.
So, I guess my point is this: this event in Seattle was no secession. It was a militarized invasion, with those responsible for defense abandoning their duty while leaving illegal the possibility of defense by those whose property and lives were jeopardized. Which brings me to…
Pulling the Plug
Would libertarians be happy with pulling the plug on the existing state structures, confident that freedom would then ring – that eventually things would work out? Working through this question in the past is one of the reasons I concluded that a proper cultural foundation is necessary before one can consider anything like liberty – or consider anything like pulling the plug.
If I was a resident in the CHAZ district of Seattle, I suspect I would feel even more confident of this view than I did before.
And, Finally…
In the absence of my free ability to properly defend my property (as all legal risk and all laws are against those who will do so), and in the absence of my ability to secure the services of a private and competing defense agency (which would be cost prohibitive for many reasons and would also open me up to the liabilities of a criminal), what are we to do with today’s police? Defund them? Spit on them?
I suggest we start by reducing the number of laws on the books – eliminate all laws against non-violent offenses. Second, demilitarize; almost every department has SWAT teams and the like that are supplied like military invaders of Afghanistan.
After that, we can talk about defunding the police.
Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito.
The Best of Bionic Mosquito