Arkady's Thoughts

There was a story I covered one year ago ago where several lawmakers met to hear a proposal of an outright 401K takeover modeled after the Argentine policy.  At the time it seemed like a far fetched notion, but BusinessWeek ran a story hinting that the threat still exists.  Now the story itself does not outright suggest a takeover, but the following should give you pause. The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort. So as of now the idea is to gently inquire as to whether people would be interested in converting their existing accounts into steady revenue streams.  For laymen this simply means investing into the treasury market and this shou...

Despite all the disagreements I have with people who believe wealth distribution works and the free market fails, there is one common aspect we can all agree on.  A transparent government is the only government.  When Obama ran his campaign, he focused his energy on promising a transparency unlike any other vowing to air all negotiations of legislation on C-SPAN.  In fact you can find videos of these promises scattered all over the Internet.  At this point in time it has become clear that Obama's promises were nothing more than underhanded tactics to buy votes.  At this point you can claim that all politicians lie and this is a fact of life, as if somehow making the reality better, but these promises strike at the core of American voters.  Regardless of what stripe or persuasion you are, the idea that a public agency should operate in the shadows on the matter of domestic policy is difficult to swallow and yet this administration spearheaded by ...

In a string of rapid announcements we learn that Senator Byron Dorgan of ND, Senator Chris Dodd of CT and Governor Bill Ritter of CO are all planning to retire.  Given their polling numbers in their respective states none of this should come as a big shock, although Dorgan was planning to run again as of very recently.  This of course has the Republicans salivating harder than Congress over tax revenues.  Should it?  In the case of Ritter, possibly, in the case of Dorgan/Dodd probably not.  Dodd is an especially interesting case considering how much corruption is circulating around this man stemming back from the mortgage crisis.  Even if Dodd runs and somehow manages to win his primary he has virtually no chance against the Republicans.  In fact the Republicans would use Dodd as a battering ram to humiliate and highlight the Democrat party as the party of corruption, given that 9 of the 10 most corrupt politicians happen to be Democrats. Now ...

Believe it or not there are two very important lessons we can learn today from a 1786 rebellion.  For those not familiar, Shays' rebellion took place in Massachusetts and involved Daniel Shays and hundreds of other poor farmers crushed by taxes and debt to launch a full scale rebellion.  However the story is not about citizens rioting because of injustices they felt were thrust upon them, but a state and federal government printing "money" to finance a war and ultimately failing to deliver the gold and silver promised to the holders of the printed "money".  Massachusetts was an especially egregious offender of printing money via their state bank and routinely inflated worthless paper on top of gold/silver they could not ultimately pay out in.   This practice stemmed back for decades prior to the Continental Congress engaging in similar practices ultimately leading to the infamous "Not worth a Continental".  Many argue Shays' rebellion inspire...

Charles Goyette's recent book The Dollar Meltdown is a fascinating book offering not only a thorough and comprehensive analysis of America's financial crisis but a common sense approach in how to protect yourself from the inevitable collapse of our currency. Charles begins with an investigation of how we arrived at our current predicament and tackles the increasingly difficult task of dissecting government's role in today's complex economy.   Charles shows his Austrian influence by bringing up common themes familiar to those partial to the Austrian school of Economics, but also does a fantastic job of presenting important aspects to those readers willing to learn and familiarize themselves in the only school that was able to accurately predict the current crisis.   More importantly, Charles discusses money;  it's origins and what function money serves in today's economy.  You may think you know what money is, after all it makes the world go round, but what is...

Wishing everyone a festive and joyous new year and hope you all have a drink for the coming 2010.   I would be lying if I were to say that politically speaking 2009 was a good year.  America has suffered from a massive erosion of freedom, confiscation of more private wealth, expansion of government at both the federal and state level.  Of course none of this is particularly unique to 2009, but the rate in increase is hard to ignore.  From my humble vantage point it would appear that 2010 will be a scary, strange and exciting year.  While it is always difficult to prognosticate, below are several facts that are important to remember. Debt levels are still out of control.  Due to the policy of the Bush/Obama administration virtually no contraction has taken place and we are deeply in debt.  Not only America, but the entire civilized world.  Stocks are inflated.  The current stock market is a manifestation of a liquidity pump engineere...

HotAir is a big voice in the conservative blogsophere and has done much to advance the cause of those wishing to stop and reverse the growth of a large central government.  Unfortunately Hot Air's Ed Morrissey has brashly thrown his weight behind Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election.  This is disturbing and disheartening for every tea party, small government loving soul in America.   While I certainly cannot blame casual Massachusetts Republicans for getting excited over Brown's possible win over Martha Coakley, it becomes much harder to justify it in the case of Ed whose life revolves around politics and whose message is fundamentally Jeffersonian. In a piece called Where is the national GOP in the Massachusetts special election Ed shows his frustration over the apparent lack of support for Brown, correctly pointing out that in NY-23 the GOP heavily contributed to the liberal Dede while throwing Hoffman under the bus. While Brown is ob...