Author: VD

Redefining reality

One thing we see here again and again, primarily from evangelical atheists, but not infrequently from other ideologues of various strains, is redefining clearly defined, well-understood terms in order to protect their subjective reality from the objective one. Thus, we see absurdities such as an atheist state redefined as “religious” state while a state with an official state church is redefined as “secular” and so forth.

Now, we’re seeing a similar concept, which is basically the progressive language which Orwell described as Newspeak, being utilized in the financial world:

“China’s biggest provincial borrowers are deferring payment on their loans just two months after the country’s regulator said some local government companies would be allowed to do so….Hunan Provincial Expressway Construction Group is delaying payment on 3.11 billion yuan in interest, documents governing the securities show this month. Guangdong Provincial Communications Group Co, the second-largest debtor, is following suit. So are two others among the biggest 11 debtors, for a total of 30.16 billion yuan, according to bond prospectuses from 55 local authorities that have raised money in capital markets since the beginning of November.” So not even two months in and companies are already becoming serial defaulters, pardon, “loan payment deferrers?” And China is supposed to bail out the world? Ironically, in a world in which can kicking is now an art form, China will show everyone just how it is done, by effectively upturning the capital structure and saying that paying interest is, well, optional.

These sorts of linguistic gymnastics and redefinitions are going to serve the financial world little better than it has the argumentative atheists. It might fool a few of the more gullible for a short period of time, but sooner or later, objective reality will reassert itself. Unless the name of the game is simply to buy a little more time in order to allow the responsible parties to prepare for the consequences, this strikes me rather as an NFL team calling a timeout it doesn’t have in a futile attempt to buy time.

The short life of the Fourth Reich

Have you ever noticed that those who say failure is not an option and refuse to consider any backup plans almost inevitably end up failing? Applying that principle, what can one now conclude about the Euro?

The reason is that in Europe, the mere admission that Plan B is a possibility, apparently set off a chain of events that makes Plan B an inevitability: “…officials there feared that releasing the information could fuel further doubts and instability in the euro zone.”

And so Europe is left to fend on its own, with the mere mention of the possibility of failure being completely ignored, as the mere contemplation of failure is not only no longer an option, but apparently an outright admission of defeat. Needless to say, the fact that European banks have no way to hedge anything any more, CDS trading having been killed, thank you ISDA, and now supervisory bodies themselves telling banks to not even consider Plan B, is enough reason why the LTRO will be an abysmal failure.

Because one does not need to be a rocket scientist to realize that when everyone is telling you that even Plan B is improper, then it is all too clear there is absolutely no Plan Whatever.

Game Over for the Euro would appear to be fast approaching, even faster than I had expected. The Fourth Reich looks to be even shorter-lived than the Third One.

Merry Christmas

On this Christmas Eve, one of the great unreported stories throughout what we used to call Christendom is the persecution of Christians around the world. In Egypt, the “Arab Spring” is going so swimmingly that Copts are already fleeing Egypt and, for those Christians that remain, Midnight Mass has to be held in the daylight for security reasons. In Iraq, midnight services have been canceled entirely for fear of bloodshed, part of the remorseless de-Christianizing that has been going on, quite shamefully, under an American imperium.
– Mark Steyn, Silent Night, December 24, 2011

The secular War on Christmas throughout the West presently serves as a lightweight bookend for the religious War on Christians throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East. In the West, the persecution is still petty, tentative, and small-minded, elsewhere, it is purposeful, murderous and systematic. One cannot equate the banning of Merry Christmas wishes by elected politicians to the banning of Christians from holding elected office, or pretend that atheists co-opting public parks in order to promote nasty anti-holiday messages is the equivalent of violent attacks on Christian church celebrants.

But if the actions are different, the motivations stem from the same source, which is the desire to eliminate Christianity from the world. This is not a new desire; it was already hundreds of years old when the Emperor Diocletian issued the first of his four “Edicts against the Christians” in the year 303. Like the Western anti-Christians, Diocletian did not initially intend for there to be any bloodshed, but hoped that political and legal pressure would be sufficient to cause Christians to apostatize, but his hopes were dashed by the stalwart faith of the empire’s Christians. His fourth Edict, therefore, demanded summary execution of all men, women, and children who were unwilling to offer sacrifice to any of the pagan gods.

Secular culture is no more intrinsically tolerant than Diocletian. Those who consciously adhere to “secular values” understand that they are fundamentally different than, and inherently opposed to, Christian values. While far too many Christians and non-Christians alike believe that it is still possible to arrange society in such a manner that secular values are given primacy in the public while still respecting Christian values in private, both ancient and recent history indicate otherwise. This is particularly true in any society with an activist government that uses fiscal policy and administrative law as tools for social engineering.

Many of the accomplishments of Christendom are being unwound, often by the unworthy heirs of Christendom itself. The increasingly secular British people bitterly complain about the continental subjugation of their once-independent isle even as they simultaneously continue to support the societal secularization that made that subjugation possible. Slaves are being bought and sold in numbers that have not been seen since William Wilberforce led the evangelical charge against the slave trade. As the concepts of individual rights and human liberty arose under Christendom, it is both logically and empirically apparent that they will decline in tandem with the decline of Christianity across the West.

And yet, Christians need have no fear for the future of their faith in the coming years. The Church has survived every persecution, every attempt to stamp it out for nearly two thousand years. It will survive the current secular assault just as it survived the historical Soviet assault. Kim Jong-Il is dead, while the Christians struggling to survive in the concentration camps he established throughout North Korea have not only outlived him, but celebrate the birth of their Lord and Savior today. We pray that their faith will be rewarded and their suffering will be eased; may they pray that our faith will survive our wealth and comfort.

The Truth is. It does not depend upon one man, or seven billion men, women, and children, acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord. All the powers and principalities of the world will exert their fury in vain, all the Gates of Hell will announce their lethal edicts to no avail, as they have already been defeated by the birth of the boy child who is called King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas, and may God bless us all, every one.

A Christmas present from the OC

The Original Cyberpunk has a gift for everyone with a Kindle. It’s available for the next five days, so check it out!

Two stories by award-winning science fiction writer Bruce Bethke, packaged back-to-back in a special “hit single” ebook with cover art by “Girl Genius” co-creator Phil Foglio. “Jimi Plays Dead” is the Nebula-nominated story of the guitarist who will do anything to sound just like Hendrix, while “Buck Turner and The Spud From Space” is, according to the author, at least partially absolutely true.

Mailvox: catastrophe is clarifying

In which Ashley Miller and I exchange email on the matter. She responded to my email thusly:

Thank you for your very polite e-mail.

The point of my article was to say for that people like me — people for whom secular values, gay rights, and abortion are important issues – Ron Paul is a bad choice.

For people like you, who believe the country is going to implode economically and therefore, relatively reasonably, don’t care so much about the other issues, Ron Paul may well be an excellent choice. And I agree that it isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing, I have no respect for either party.

It’s just that I don’t think that the country is going to implode. And I don’t think a man who thinks it’s OK for states to take away my rights so long as the federal government doesn’t is libertarian or worth supporting.

Thank you,
Ashley

In response to which, I wrote the following:

Dear Miss Miller,

I completely agree with you. If you don’t think the country is in any significant economic peril, and most people admittedly don’t, then there is no reason you should support Ron Paul if you disagree strongly with his social positions. I would simply encourage you to keep an open mind about him if your perception of the economic situation changes.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter if you favor government support for the poor or for foreign invasions, if the government has no money, it can’t do anything at all.

Best regards,
Vox

Now, contrast with this the barrage of pointless venting she received in response to her original piece. While I don’t agree with her posting the contact information and IP addresses of those who attacked her, I don’t agree with the over-the-top vituperation either.* It’s neither necessary nor productive; if one recalls that the woman isn’t even aware that the US and global economies are in a frighteningly parlous state, then what are the chances that she has correctly analyzed other socio-political issues, or is even capable of doing so?

I treat the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and PZ Myers harshly because they claim to be intellectually and academically superior, when it is readily apparent and easily demonstrable that they are not. I treat the various anklebiters harshly because their aggressive behavior and incivility demand it. But someone who is a graduate student, who is doing no more than expressing her opinion, however ignorant, fallacious, and stupid it might be, on her own blog is not simply not acting in an offensive manner.

I know I’m not going to convince someone like Miss Miller that a libertarian like Ron Paul merits support from those who disagree with him on social grounds because she is not going to be able to recognize that her concerns about Paul enforcing his own social perspective in an authoritarian manner stems from her own psychological projection. Nor do I have any interest in repeating myself and attempting to convince her of the current economic state, not when I have already published a book on the subject. But it is quite possible to convince her that IF her perception of the economy is incorrect, THEN Paul merits not only another look, but outright support since in that case Paul would be correct and her position would clearly have been shown to be false. Catastrophe is clarifying, and some will never see clearly until forced to do so by events.

This isn’t about being patient, it is about being civil and understanding that even the strongest, most thoughtless brick wall has cracks that the reality of nature can eventually exploit and utilize to bring down.

As for those who think a few nasty emails prove anything at all about Ron Paul or his supporters, I have more than one hundred times that many that would suffice to “prove” the same thing about Obama supporters, Bush supporters, atheists, Muslims, scientists, feminists, and so forth.

*I would encourage Miss Miller to remove the contact information. I’ve received hundreds of threats like those and worse for more than 10 years of writing op/ed and have never seen any benefit to me or anyone else in publicizing the personal information of those attacking me. Once you start writing on controversial topics in public, you can expect to be targeted by those who disagree with you and there is nothing to be gained from exacerbating the situation.

Loaning to your depositors

Tyler Durden explains why the latest Eurorescue deal is not only smaller than it looks, but even more ludicrous too:

On the day of the 3 Year European LTRO, in a whim of fancy we wondered if contrary to all expectations, the European banks would not instead of using the money for any real releveraging (carry Trade) or deleveraging (switching out of expensive into cheaper debt) purposes, just park it with the ECB’s deposit facility, an outcome which would be the worst possible case as it simply recycles ECB cash from on pocket into another without any incremental velocity. As it turns out, we were only half kidding: as of yesterday, the day after the LTRO, European banks parked almost half of the free €210 billion (recall that while gross LTRO proceeds were €489 billion, only €210 billion was net), or €82 billion, with the ECB’s deposit facility…. And that is what monetary policy failure is all about.

In other words, the ECB loaned $640 billion to 532 banks, but $365 billion simply went to roll over existing debt. Of the remaining $275 billion, $110 billion was simply deposited… in the ECB. That means that the much-publicized $640 billion in “new loans” meant to stimulize the global economy was actually $165 billion.

This behavior is in sync with that predicted by the debt-deflationist position. The money for loans is available, but there simply isn’t anyone who wants to borrow the money, even at interest rates that are effectively zero. In an inflationary environment, people are inclined to borrow as much as they can.

The cruelty of affirmative action

Jeff Jacoby spells out the obvious consequences of affirmative action in education:

The inability of racial preferences to vault more minority students into high scholastic achievement shouldn’t come as a surprise. When an elite institution relaxes its usual standards to admit more blacks and Hispanics, it all but guarantees that those academically weaker students will have trouble keeping up with their better-prepared white and Asian classmates. Minorities who might have flourished in a science or engineering program at a middle-tier state college are apt to find themselves overwhelmed by the pace at which genetics or computer architecture is taught in the Ivy League. Many decide to switch to an easier major. Others drop out altogether.

This is the cruelty of affirmative-action “mismatch’’ — the steering of minorities to schools where they are less likely to succeed.

I saw this happening to quite a few black students at my university. Because I was a 100m sprinter, I was in the track team’s sprinter/jumper/hurdler group, which did all of its training and ate most of its evening meals together. It was probably the most racially mixed group in a predominantly white university. And it was really disturbing to see what a difficult time many of my black teammates had with collegiate academics, despite the fact that they were very diligent and hit the books extremely hard.

This wasn’t true of all the blacks on campus. One of my friends from the soccer team was also black, but he was a very smart guy, a doctor’s son who had attended an elite prep school. He was not the beneficiary of affirmative action, had no academic trouble, and went on to graduate from med school and become a doctor.

Affirmative action is disastrous because it doesn’t help people, but rather, sets them up to fail.

Vibrancy in the Valley

VDH writes about the many benefits that the vibrancy of immigration has brought to rural California:

In short, all the stuff of civilization — municipal buildings, education, religion, transportation, recreation — seems under assault in the last year by the contemporary forces of barbarism. After several thefts of mail, I ordered a fortified, armored mailbox. I was ecstatic when I saw the fabricator’s Internet ad: On the video, someone with an AK-47 emptied a clip into it; the mail inside was untouched. I gleefully said to myself: “That’s the one for me.” And it has been so far. But I wonder: Do the thieves not like to get their own mail? Do their children not play Little League? Do they not want a priest at their funeral? Would they not like to drive their cars without worrying about holes in the street? Or is their thinking that a rich society can cover for their crimes without their crimes’ ever much affecting them — given that most others still do not act as they do?

I know it is popular to suggest that as we reach our sixties, everything seems “worse,” and, like Horace’s laudatores temporis acti, we damn the present in comparison to the past. Sorry, it just isn’t so. In 1961, 1971, and 1981, city street lights were not systematically de-wired. And the fact that plaques and bells of a century’s pedigree were just now looted attests that they all survived the Great Depression, the punks of the 1950s, and the crime-ridden 1970s.

A couple now in their early 90s lives about three miles away from me on their small farm. I have known them for 50 years; he went to high school with my mother, and she was my Cub Scout leader. They now live alone and have recently been robbed nine, yes, nine, times. He told me he is thinking of putting a sign out at the entrance to his driveway: “Go away! Nothing left! You’ve already taken everything we have.” Would their robbers appreciate someone else doing that to their own grandparents? Do the vandals have locks on their own doors against other vandals?

There is indeed something of the Dark Ages about all this. In the vast rural expanse between the Sierras and the Coast Ranges, and from Sacramento to Bakersfield, our rural homes are like stray sheep outside the herd, without whatever protection is offered by the density of a town. When we leave for a trip or just go into town, the predators swarm.

Meanwhile, the Republicans and Democrats alike support policies that will ensure even more Hispanics enter the country. They pretend that the division between legal and illegal immigration is significant in any way, but the issue is not HOW people are entering the country but WHO is doing so.

Perhaps it is racist to assert that a sane and self-interested people would refuse to permit the mass entry of Somalis, Mexicans, and other semi-civilized peoples. But whether it is or not is entirely irrelevant. A clear choice was presented to the American people some fifty years ago. Americans had the option of living in a low-crime, homogenous, functioning civilization or a high-crime, heterogeneous, dysfunctional, post-civilized barbarism.

They chose the latter. And now they are only beginning to enjoy the fruits of vibrancy.

Why smart people support Ron Paul

Ashley just can’t figure out why:

I’ve been trying to understand why smart people I know support Ron Paul and I just can’t get my head around it. I get the sense that maybe the Ron Paul People I know just don’t realize what Ron Paul’s all about. That or they just don’t care.

The Ron Paul People I know are almost all straight, single, relatively young, non-religious, white men. Available demographics suggest that this is an accurate picture; there are others in Ron Paul’s camp, but it’s basically youngish white men.

They do not consider themselves to be Democrats or Republicans. Some of them hate the idea of rules, many of them hate the idea of having their money taken away in taxes, but none of them are stupid or without the resources to learn more about their candidate. And none seem to care about any of Ron Paul’s policies outside of cutting spending, regulations, and taxes.

Every Ron Paul Person I know comes out of the woodwork any time anything negative is said about the guy, no matter how true the statement and no matter how much that individual disagrees with Ron Paul’s position or behavior. I get the sense that libertarians are so excited to have someone on the national stage that they don’t want to see anything problematic with the guy, but he’s transparently a bad deal.

So, why are these people supporting a crazy, racist Christian fundamentalist?

I sent her the following email:

Dear Ms Miller,

I’m not going to waste any time correcting your attempt to criticize Ron Paul. Instead, let us simply posit that you are absolutely correct concerning every single complaint you listed about the man. Here is why you, and everyone else, should not only vote for him, but pray to the God in whom you do not believe that he wins the 2012 election anyhow.

He is the only national politician who gives the United States any chance of surviving the collapse of the global economy.

You may not like him. You may think he is crazy and hypocritical and wrong on a panoply of issues. But the fact of the matter that he has been warning everyone about the eventual consequences of the credit boom that the Federal Reserve and the federal government created over the last fifty years, and the subsequent bust they have been desperately staving off since 2008. In doing so, they have made things worse, so much so that the USA may not survive as a nation when their efforts finally fail.

This is not a Democrat vs Republican thing. It is an economic sanity vs insanity thing. Obama has been disastrous, as he has increased federal debt 92% since 2008. McCain would have done the same or worse. Romney and Gingrich would actually be worse than Obama in this regard. The economic Fimbulwinter is coming and there is only one national politician who even understands the core issues involved.

You probably won’t believe anything I say here. That’s fine. But the central banks are presently dancing on the very edge of the precipice, as the recent actions of the Fed and the ECB serve to demonstrate. And if it all collapses before November, I hope you will remember that there was one man who understands why it happened, who tried to prevent it happening, and has been preparing to rebuild from the ashes for a very long time.

With regards,
Vox

PZ Myers attempts economics

Bemusement ensues. I haven’t thought much of PZ Myers ever since I was under the mistaken impression that he was a strange woman producing nonsensical criticisms of my WND columns. What I have come to find uniquely amusing about him is the way he applies his intellectually inexcusable Courtier’s Reply as a general intellectual principle; the man never allows complete ignorance to prevent him from spouting a ludicrous and uninformed opinion:

It reminds me why I detest Libertarians, and Ron Paul in particular. The man would be a total disaster for the economy, in addition to being a poisonous social regressive.

Just to be clear, PZ Myer’s believes Ron Paul would be a total disaster for the economy. What is so insane about this is that even neocons and moderate Republicans who absolutely loathe Ron Paul and are pulling out all the stops to prevent his nomination will readily admit that Ron Paul is the only national American politician who knows the first thing about economics, being the only one who repeatedly, for literal decades, warned about the evils of an economy built on credit.

Statements like this offer conclusive proof that self-styled champions of science often don’t give a damn about science or empirical evidence, they are merely using the patina of science to further their philosophical and political ideologies.