Dear Readers,
It is said that death and taxation are the only certainties in life.
Expanding on that list, however, we also know there are "physical
laws" derived from extensive observations, in some cases dating back to
antiquity. For example, sticking fingers in fires will result in
unpleasantness.
Then there is
the realm of what one might call "common knowledge." For example,
the historical record makes it appear certain that, universally, power
corrupts the human mind, and the greater the power, the greater the
corruption.
For a relevant example, look no further than Kim Jong-Il, who at an
early age evidenced what psychologists term the "big six" personality
disorders commonly shared by dictators: sadistic, paranoid, anti-social,
narcissistic, with schizoid and schizotypal thrown in for good measure.
Without the power devolved to him by his equally degraded father, Kim
Jong-Il would have been hard pressed to get a date anywhere else in the
world. As supreme leader, on the other hand, he was unhesitant in pressing
into service a "Mansions Special Volunteer Corps" – a harem of
attractive women plucked out of the population to attend to his every prurient
whim.
Tangling things up in this area of common knowledge is that we humans
are quite adroit at adopting unproven ideas as certainties, even though they
may be anything but. While the list of entries in this particular ledger are
almost infinite, as just one example, I would point to the absolute certainty
with which so many people view the notion that humans are the biggest
culprits in climate change (previously referred to as "weather").
Another of these false certainties is that a government can create
currency units out of thin air in unlimited amounts without triggering a
subsequent devaluation of the currency units already in circulation.
Furthermore, these days it is taken almost as common knowledge by a large
swath of the population (at least by those who pay any attention at all to
such things) that flooding a country with unbacked money is a good thing.
Not to go on, as I am wont to do, but I would also mention the
misconception by many that the United States, the most powerful country in
the world (see reference to Kim Jong-Il above), remains the Land of the Free
and the Home of the Brave.
While one might subscribe to a different definition of the words
"Free" and "Brave," from where I sit, the United States
is increasingly looking like a large Club Fed populated by a people whose
re-education as serfs laboring on behalf of the state is almost complete.
Recently, support for that contention was provided when Phil Mickelson
pointed out that his taxes had reached 63% of his annual income and that, as
a result, he was contemplating moving to a lower-tax state than California.
For daring to want to keep more of his earnings than the state, which sinks
not a single putt for its share, he was soundly pilloried in the press.
Sadly, rather than telling his many critics to bugger off, he issued a
series of apologies for speaking out against his tax-slave status.
But the hour is growing late,
and so enough of this rambling on.
Moving along, I thought it
worth trying to divine something approaching certainty about a few of the key
aspects of today's world that have the very real potential to affect us all
in ways most profound.
What We Now Know
In no particular order, here
are just a few important aspects of today's world that appear to be true to
me.
- The
crusades are alive and well and will continue indefinitely.
Since the first crusade in 1095, the Christians and the Muslims have
been at war pretty much continually. In other words, the war has been
going on for over 900 years.
Back then, the battles were pretty straightforward affairs involving a
wide range of sharpened instruments and projectiles, with no mercy asked
and none given even if it was.
In modernity, however, the war has evolved in most interesting ways. For
example, there are no longer distinct lines of battles. Instead, thanks
to the natural evolution of societies, the advent of political
correctness accompanied by a whopping dollop of bureaucratic pandering,
the Muslims are thoroughly embedded in previously staunchly Christian
societies. (Interestingly, the opposite is not the case.)
Adding to the fog of war is the nature of the weaponry and, by
extension, tactics. Whereas in antiquity the warring parties had no real
technological advantage, or at least not of a lasting nature, today the
range of possible weapons and tactics is almost limitless.
Case in point, the next attack on a major city is as likely to come in
the form of a few jars of some particularly nasty germ dropped in the
water supply as it is from a reengineered Stuxnet computer virus.
Furthermore, as the potential enemies are numerous and reside within
many borders, including your own, the possible responses to such an
attack are rendered ineffective and even counterproductive. That's how
the moronic act of attacking Iraq after a small group of Saudis and
Pakistanis in planes took down the World Trade Center buildings came
about. The US had to attack someone, and so it picked the appropriate
fall guy and set to work.
Recapping what we know now in this instance:
- The
crusades will continue indefinitely.
- There
will never be complete clarity on who the enemy is (unless you live in
a Muslim country, in which case the uniforms of the Western crusaders
conveniently identify them).
- The
next attack can come literally anywhere in the world and in any form.
- It
is nearly impossible to anticipate or to respond in any way other than
with ineffective surgical strikes or blunt-force invasions.
In the case of the former, as much as some misguided individuals might
wish it to be the case, this is not a war that will be a series of
drone strikes. And we need look no further than Afghanistan to see the
failures of trying a blunt-force invasion when the enemy is fleet of
foot and deeply embedded in the population, but is not the population
as a whole. (If it were the population as a whole, as was believed to
be the case in Germany in WWII, then the war would be a simple matter
of unleashing widespread hell.)
The biggest consequence of
this sloppy Forever War is that the helpless (and some would chirp, hapless)
Western governments and the military-industrial complex that props them up
are at liberty to improvise countermeasures and strategies without any real limitations.
Thus, every new attack, or
perceived new threat, results in a new set of actions pretty much made up on
the spot to punish the perps and counter the next attack. To name one
relatively tame example, the act of a single Jihadist fitting a bomb in his
sneakers resulted in the loss of countless of hours, and more than a little
dignity, when the bureaucrats instituted a requirement that John Q. Sheeple
must remove his shoes in order to board a plane.
In addition, because these
governments have no idea where the next attack is likely to occur or what
form it will take, the perfect-worlder bureaucrats increasingly in charge of
Western governments have begun to exercise the precautionary principle to the
point of dangerous absurdity.
In the event you are not
familiar with the term, the precautionary principle basically holds that if
there is a threat to the public, even though it is not proven, the burden of
proof that it is not a threat falls to those claiming that it is not a
threat.
Thus, for example, if the
military states that it sees a threat emanating from, say, Iraq and certain
analysts disagree, the burden of proof falls upon the dissenting analysts.
Because as often as not the perceived threats are little more than
abstractions that are virtually unprovable, the threat-seers invariably win
out, and off go the jets.
Hoping to make the point
clear, one might counter the gun waving of today's military by theorizing
that the most effective way of eliminating the Jihadist threat would be to
pull all the troops out of the Middle East and to stop the constant meddling
in the affairs of those countries. As this thesis is unprovable without
actually taking the measure in order to gauge its effectiveness, the
military-industrial complex and the headline-grabbing politicians and their
bureaucratic stooges are free to dismiss it out of hand and continue to layer
on the countermeasures they believe will head off the threats of further
attacks.
Unfortunately, many of those
countermeasures are not just inane and ineffective, but require stomping on
personal liberties. But, for the reasons just mentioned, there is no
effective argument against them.
"Why do you want me to go through an
X-Ray machine in order to travel?" you might ask a TSA agent.
"Because we're at war
with the terrorists, and it's our job to keep the public safe!"
"But I'm not a
terrorist!"
"Oh, yeah? Prove it.
Starting by stepping into the X-Ray machine."
Likewise, arguments against
building electronic files on everyone, including all their communications and
Facebook contacts, fall on the deaf ears of bureaucrats who are charged with
heading off the next attack.
And because of the nature of
the crusade, in the absence of a radical change of direction, the hit to
personal freedoms will only get worse. Because this "war" is
never-ending and has no hard targets of any consequence, which means that the
tentacles of the government's countermeasures will grow until they reach into
every corner of our lives.
The real consequences, however, will be felt only after the next large-scale
attack. After that, the ardent advocates of the precautionary principle will
kick their machinations into high gear, and you won't be able to sneeze
without first getting permission.
(Somewhat related is the idea that schools should be turned into day-visit
penitentiaries complete with metal detectors, bullet-proof glass, and armed
guards, further inculcating the culture of paranoia and fear that now exists
in the US. Managing by exception, a key tenet of the precautionary principle
– and attacks on schools are very much the exception – is never a good idea.
But that won't stop the US from turning its schools into mini-Camp Feds.)
Any way of ending the crusades and turning this terrible trend back?
Not that I can see. Well, I suppose the better-armed Western governments
could really take off the gloves, turn the Middle East into the proverbial
parking lot, then round up anyone within their borders unwilling to denounce
Islam and throw them into gas chambers re-education camps. But that's
not going to happen (and, lest you get the wrong idea, I am not advocating it
in the slightest), which means that there is no way to end the Crusade.
Instead, all you can really do is recognize it for what it is and, more
importantly, recognize the direct consequences to you and your family in the
months and years just ahead. Personally, I opted out from a seat within
ground zero and, along with Doug Casey, plan on watching events unfold on CNN
while sipping on a nice Malbec here in Cafayate.
(Speaking of which, the next
Harvest Event and Casey Research conference at La Estancia de Cafayate is coming up March
14-19. This is the single best opportunity to find out for yourself
what's going on in this up-and-coming wine-growing town. For details and a
registration form, write Dave Norden a note at dnorden@LaEst.com today.)
So, what else do we know now?
- The
United States is perilously close to becoming a one-party, socialist
state. As a result of winning the
last election, President Obama, a man whose ego needs no encouragement,
may come to believe he has a mandate and will try to become far more
than a token president – to wit, the first black elected to the office.
Instead, he'll try to become the first among firsts. The socialists in
charge have effectively taken over medical services, are now focusing on
taking away guns, and, based on the comments made during Obama's inauguration
speech, are planning to continue pushing the agenda of radical
environmentalism, which, in turn, is a fulcrum point into more
regulations on private business.
It's all about legacy at this point, and part of that legacy could very
well be a follow-on term for the beloved Evita Michelle Obama, a
woman whose mere presence can cause a liberal to grow weak at the knees.
Or soft in the mind, as was in evidence on the always entertaining Huffington Post when
one Nina Bahadur unleashed a torrent of drivel under the following
masthead.
(My personal favorites from Nina's list were #21 – She's a fan of pillow forts,
and #45 – She has a sweet
tooth. Who knew?!)
The potential consequences of back-to-back Obamas and their devoted army of
sycophants are many, and few of them good, as the roots of the tree they
sprung from are of steadfast socialist stock.
The historical record shows unequivocally that there is a line that, if
crossed, makes the whole "from each according to their ability to each
according to their needs" thing devolve into economic collapse and,
often, fascism. At that point the slogan changes to something akin to,
"From the burning houses of the greedy capitalists to the impoverished
masses."
Any way this situation could turn around? Again, none that is easily
imagined. We as a nation are way past the more genteel era when it was
considered bad form for a sitting president to campaign for his party.
Instead, it's Chicago-style bare-knuckle politicking all the way, with overt
distribution of favors to the inert to ensure reelection.
The one possible way that the rising socialist tide is held up is if there is
a major financial crash and the ruling elite somehow lose their ability to
pin blame on someone else.
In other words, the country is either headed for certain ruin as the
productive class becomes further outnumbered by the recipient class and then
turned into little more than tax cows, and the equivalent of Atlas Shrugs occurs. Or we
have a whopping good crash that chases the socialists out from the shadows.
Note that either scenario involves a crash. Which begs the follow-on
question: how will the government react when things go off the rails?
Will the population, confronted with inescapable ruin, come to their senses,
starting by remembering that there actually isn't such a thing as a free
lunch? Or will they redouble their calls for the government to do more? While
no one can see the future, I expect the latter. That is when the risk of
socialism sliding into fascism will be greatest.
Which brings us to the next certainty, if there can be any such thing (other
than death and taxes)…
- The US government will do
whatever it takes to keep the statists in power.
That the nation is no longer governed by principles should be obvious to
everyone at this point. Well, perhaps with the exception of the
principle of self-preservation for the politicos.
That they are masters at survival can be seen in the high reelection
rate of members of Congress, despite the polls indicating their
popularity as only a smidgeon above stepping into a pile of fresh dog
droppings.
In the current economic environment, however, their skills at blaming
others and kicking cans down the road is being tested, witnessed by the
adoption of concepts such as unlimited money printing, a concept
previously reserved for banana republics and Weimar Germanys.
Unfortunately, as I have expressed in my writings before, the quantitative
easing is likely to be one of the last "soft" options as the
crisis deepens.
In the United States, the government is just a couple
of ticks away from turning the de
facto capital controls currently in place into those of a
more hardened type. With the new FACTA foreign financial assets
reporting regulations now in effect, all the necessary functionality is
in place, leaving only a quick turn of the knobs to dial in punitive tax
levels on such holdings or take some similar action to make the "unpatriotic"
act of daring to move assets offshore into one that is also distinctly
ill-advised.
Then there is the inevitable grab for the trillions of dollars now in US
pension plans, something that Doug has warned about for years. A recent
story out of Bloomberg
a couple of weeks ago sure looks like a straw in the wind to me. And I
quote.
The U.S. Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping
Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a
move that would be the agency's first foray into consumer investments.
"That's one of the
things we've been exploring and are interested in in terms of whether and
what authority we have," bureau director Richard Cordray said in an
interview. He didn't provide additional details.
Here's the link...
All that's missing is the next stock market crash, and this initiative will
rise to the fore. That the Sheeple will fall right in line with the logic of
a government takeover of the pensions can be understood by looking at a
number of surveys showing the majority of Americans don't have any real
savings.
One study by the Employee Benefits Research Institute found that 56% of US
workers have less than $25,000 saved. And that's workers. Fully 54% of folks
who have actually retired also report that they have less than $25,000 to
live on.
What this means is that over 50% of Americans are either currently, or will
someday soon, be wards of the state. So, that's something else we know.
"The democracy will
cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give
to those who are not."
Thomas Jefferson
Drifting back to this particular point, this fairly startling reality is all
the excuse the government needs to shove both its mitts into the nation's
pensions and take what it needs to keep Washington DC in the wealth
redistribution/political pandering business.
The taking is as simple as requiring that all pensions contain at least
"XX%" of safe Treasury bills or some new form of government-backed
paper whipped up for the scam. Or, alternatively, you must withdraw your
money from your IRA and pay the penalty – the rationale being that you are
bound to lose your money if you manage it yourself and therefore the penalty
and taxes for withdrawing are merely a deposit on future government handouts
you are sure to need.
It is, of course, ironic that the very people now contemplating helping
retirees with their finances are the ones most responsible for bankrupting
the country and devastating the finances of retirees by rigging interest
rates to an artificially low rate.
I would be remiss at this point if
I didn't tip the hat in the direction of the plain-talking, straight-shooting
Dennis Miller, author of Retirement
Reboot and editor of the highly praised Miller's Money Forever, a
monthly publication dedicated to helping those in or nearing retirement get
their financial act together, and keep it together, through good times and
bad.
Earlier this week, Dennis sent along 95 pages of comments he received from a
survey on what his subscribers wanted to learn more about. The top three
topics were all related to moves people can make to generate reliable income
– annuities, reverse mortgages, and dividend-paying stocks – all topics
Dennis and his team have written extensively on.
In fact, he has produced a number
of special reports, The
Cash Book, The
Yield Book and The
Annuity Guide, all of which are available at no additional
cost to paid-up subscribers.
Listen, this stuff is serious. If you are behind the 8-ball on your retirement
savings, don't even begin to hesitate to subscribe to Dennis' service.
Of course, we've got to make some money, so we can't give the service away,
but at just $99 a year – and you receive Dennis' book Retirement Reboot (a
$9.95 value) as a premium – it's an extraordinarily good value.
As the publication includes a 3-month, 100% money-back guarantee, you have
zero risk in trying the service out.
For details, click here.
Which brings me to my final entry for today's musings about what we now know…
- The global economic recovery
is a fiction.
Over the past week, it was revealed that Eurozone unemployment has now
reached an all-time high to this point in the crisis… and real GDP has
gone negative in the US. Wait a sec, some of you might
say, that sure doesn't look like a recovery!
And you'd be right. Despite throwing literally trillions of dollars in
new debt at the debt crisis (anyone else see something wrong with that
logic?), the global economy continues to struggle.
As I'm now running late, I'm not going to belabor this point. Instead,
I'll step out for a quick cup of coffee and let Casey Research Chief
Economist Bud Conrad weigh in on the topic.
Real GDP Dropped 0.1% in Q4 2012 – What Are the Implications?
By Bud Conrad
Expectations were for GDP
growth of about 1.6%, but a negative growth of minus 0.1% was a surprise.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Is a negative print indicating
a possible recession ahead? Stocks were down in the US, but only by 44 points
on the Dow, so the surprise was not so big a worry to the market. What's
going on?
I'm reminded of the saying,
"There are lies, damned lies, and (government) statistics."
This is the advance estimate
of GDP, which will be revised two more times before it becomes official. It
relies mostly on the first two months of the quarter and will change when
December data is added. So the small negative is not really a meaningful
number yet, as it will be revised.
The cause of the drop was that
national defense spending fell a whopping 22% in the quarter. When filtered
through the various other effects on the economy, that made the real GDP 1.3%
weaker than it would have been if defense were unchanged.
I don't think military
spending gives us societal benefits, so I question if it should even be in
GDP, but it is, and in the past it has made the economy look stronger,
especially during its growth under Bush. There is also a tendency for
military spending to grow in the third quarter, as that is the last quarter
of the government's calendar. The story is that once money is allocated, you
have to spend it before you lose it. So a drop in relative spending in the
fourth quarter is not uncommon.
It was probably made worse by
plans to implement the sequester at the beginning of the year (now delayed).
There will be a new budget
battle coming up over whether to go ahead with the sequester (cut) of defense
spending in the next few months. There may be an argument that we can't
afford cuts when the economy is weak. I have my own bias that the government
is too big and that, when you include the social programs that induce
household spending, the GDP is far too dependent on the government for its
growth. The combined effects of government are something like 40% of GDP, and
that will be with us for a long time.
The market is not taking the
negative GDP as indicating a new recession, because other parts of the
economy are continuing along with reasonable growth. Consumer spending, the
main engine of US growth, rose 2.2%. Construction on new homes and apartments
jumped 15.3%. Business spending on equipment and software was up. So the
private-sector economy was not appearing weak.
By one interpretation, the GDP
number is probably a little worse than the headline because the inflation, as
measured by the implicit price deflator, was also down.
(Click on image to enlarge)
If the deflator were 2%, as it
has been reported in recent months, rather than the Q4 number of 0.6%, then
the real GDP would have been 1.6% worse, at a negative 1.7%.
Implications
In the face of the deficit
crises, I have often shared my opinion that the government would "kick
the can," as it consistently has. The tax rise on the wealthy was also
Obama's political promise and had been expected. Raising taxes, including the
payroll tax, which was just accomplished, could cut household spending and
hurt the GDP. If the economy is too weak to cut spending, then we will
continue with the huge deficits that we cannot afford.
Going forward, the debt
ceiling will have no effect except to elicit hot air from politicians. It is
their own shell game that goes back to the fig leaf that was instigated to
replace the requirement that the administration had to get approval from
Congress for each new debt offering in the early part of the last century.
My prediction going forward is
that Congress will make no major changes to the deficit until the dollar
weakens and interest rates rise, forcing action. The Fed is monetizing at the
rate of a trillion dollars a year, which covers 80% of the deficit. For now,
the Fed has bailed out the federal deficit so politicians don't need to do
anything.
The economy has been driven by
Fed bubble blowing: first the stock market dot-com bubble (Internet stocks
attracted day traders), then the housing bubble (flippers and the meme that
real estate never goes down), and now a massive bond bubble (there's no other
safe place to put your money). The collapse of the biggest bubble ever in
bonds will start once confidence in the Fed is lost in seeing that they can't
keep rates suppressed forever.
The weak GDP report suggests
the Fed will keep its attempt to pump up the economy, even as each QE program
is having less and less effect. Simply put, as the government won't cut its
deficits, the Fed will keep up the QE because there is no exit strategy from
this mess. As rates begin to rise, the deficit will become unmanageable
due to the rising scale of interest payments. But this debt bubble will burst
because low interest rates cannot be forced forever. If history is any guide,
the time will come when Fed stimulus will decrease confidence in the dollar
more than it helps the economy, and at that point the deficit-boosted economy
will collapse. The slowing GDP is an early warning we will be keeping a close
eye on.
Ed. Note: How much would it be worth to you
personally to be thoroughly informed on the bubble in bonds, when it is
likely to burst, and how you can profit – or avoid the losses? Bud Conrad
will be providing his comprehensive analysis of the bond bubble in the
upcoming issue of The
Casey Report. You don't want to miss it, and don't have to…
just take us up on our fully guaranteed trial offer for The Casey Report. If
you don't love the publication, simply cancel for a full refund within the
first 90 days – and keep all the issues you've received as our way of saying
thanks for giving it a try. Learning more is as easy as clicking
here now.
Final Thoughts
David again. Given the highly
politicized nature of today's world, it is important to take the effort to
understand the fundamental realities, rather than blindly accept the fictions
that spew forth from officialdom and its quislings on Wall Street and in the
media.
Things have reached the point
where the reality gap between those deluded souls living in North Korea under
the rule of Kim Jong Wu Ever
and those living in the degraded Western democracies is rapidly narrowing. In
North Korea, they are told that the South Koreans want to eat their babies or
some such; in the United States, people are told that just across the border
in Mexico, the streets are paved with headless corpses.
(You might find the map linked to here of interest as it compares the murder rates
of various countries against those in US cities. Let's see, there are
approximately 10 murders per 100,000 people in Mexico… half that of
Washington and less than a third of that in Baltimore.)
In North Korea, the people are
told that the Jong family are one tick off from being deities and believe it.
In the US and Europe, people are told that debt issuance and money printing
without end is the "solution" to the financial crisis and believe
that too.
The bottom line on today's
musings is that it really behooves us all to revisit our beliefs and kick the
tires on our assumptions, looking for some kernel of observable truth that we
can use to guide us through the challenges ahead.
One such reality is that gold
has been considered sound money around the globe for most of recorded human
history. While it's been in a consolidation phase for over a year now, and
could remain flat to down for a while longer, you have to ask yourself what's
more likely to retain its value? Currency units created out of thin air or an
ounce of gold?
Wherever possible, try to
align your finances and your life with reality. While that may make you
subject to periodic losses and inconveniences as popular delusions and the
madness of crowds push markets, and countries, in unsustainable directions –
in time, you'll come out on top.
Friday Funnies
If you're not familiar with
the work of Steven Wright, he's the humorist who once said, "I woke up
one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact
duplicates." His mind sees things differently than most of us do; here
are some of his gems:
1 - I'd kill for a Nobel Peace
Prize.
2 - Borrow money from
pessimists – they don't expect it back.
3 - Half the people you know
are below average.
4 - 99% of lawyers give the
rest a bad name.
5 - 82.7% of all statistics
are made up on the spot.
6 - A conscience is what hurts
when all your other parts feel so good.
7 - A clear conscience is
usually the sign of a bad memory.
8 - If you want the rainbow,
you got to put up with the rain.
9 - All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
10 - The early bird may get
the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11 - I almost had a psychic
girlfriend… but she left me before we met.
12 - OK, so what's the speed
of dark?
13 - How do you tell when
you're out of invisible ink?
14 - If everything seems to be
going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15 - Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16 - When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
17 - Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
18 - Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
19 - I intend to live forever... so far, so good.
20 - If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21 - Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
22 - What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23 - My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I
made your horn louder."
24 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
25 - If at first you don't
succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 - A conclusion is the place
where you got tired of thinking.
27 - Experience is something
you don't get until just after you need it.
28 - The hardness of the
butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 - To steal ideas from one
person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 - The problem with the gene
pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 - The sooner you fall
behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
32 - The colder the x-ray
table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 - Everyone has a
photographic memory; some just don't have film.
34 - If at first you don't
succeed, skydiving is not for you.
And the all-time favorite –
35 - If your car could travel
at the speed of light, would your headlights work?
Weekend Reads and Watches
Interview with Dennis
Miller. Earlier
this week, our own Dennis Miller sat for an interview with Kerry Lutz of the
Financial Survival Network. It's a good interview as it provides insights
into the scale of the problems now facing retirees and those who would like
to retire, and some of the solutions Dennis has uncovered. Here's the link to the interview.
Busy-Bodies of the
Month. I really
like Reason TV.
In this installment, they reveal their busy-bodies of the month – in this
case an absolutely mind-boggling new proposal to criminalize nicotine. Here's the
link.
Perfect-Worlders Try
to Kill Bambi.
Along a similar line, this morning Dennis Miller sent me a link to a
ridiculous story about a former police officer and his wife facing jail time
for rescuing an injured deer. Here's the link.
Live Again. Earlier I mentioned the upcoming
Harvest Celebration at La Estancia de Cafayate, March 14 - 19. For those of
you who haven't yet seen it, a short film titled Live Again was made at
La Estancia that will give you a sense of the place. Here's the link.
Until Next Week!
Sorry for going on a bit long
this week. Starting work well before the crack of dawn and trying to
compensate by getting juiced up on mate
and coffee and ramped up with loud music has that effect on me.
Before signing off, however, I
want to mention that there are two new Casey Phyles forming – one in
Nashville, TN, and one in Cleveland, OH. If you would like to join one of
these meet-up groups, or one in your area, drop us a note at phyle@caseyresearch.com.
I also want to mention that
we’ve nailed down the dates for our fall
Casey Research Summit in Tucson, Arizona: If you are
interested in participating, mark October
4 – 6, 2013 on your calendar. We’re still working on the
details, but you’ll hear from us as soon as more information becomes
available. If you want to stay up to date and be the first to learn when
registration opens for the Summit, simply get on our
waitlist (being on the list doesn’t oblige you to attend the Summit).
And with that, I will bid you farewell for the week by thanking you for reading and
for being a subscriber to a Casey Research publication.
David Galland
Managing Director
Casey Research
Cafayate, Argentina
