The Information Age and the Philippine Cybercrime Law

Amidst fiery protest by many Philippine cyberspace users, the newly enacted Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 RA 10175 took effect today (BBC). 

So far, according to Freedom House in 2012 the Philippines ranks 6th in the world in internet freedom.

I am pretty sure that the law will diminish the current state of internet freedom, regardless of the excuses given by politicians, and regardless of the relative standings of internet freedom in the world overtime. Although I expect some of the current activities to shift to the informal cyberspace.

Just read all the clauses containing the term “misleading” as punishable by law to understand the law’s arbitrariness. This simply means legalistic vagueness could be used to harass political opposition or anyone on the whims of the politicos.

As of this writing the government website hosting RA 10175 is down. This could be because of heavy traffic or could be down due to protest activities undertaken by hacktivists (Examiner)

As a side note, I am also quite delighted to see the passionate responses even by statists against internet censorship. It’s a bizarre world though, when curtailment of freedom involves them, the statists balk, resist and join the commotion, but when curtailment is applied only to others they cheer.

Nevertheless, here are the top 10 Countries who censor the internet most.

From 24/7 Wall Street based on Freedom House's ranking of internet freedom

1. Iran

2. Cuba

3. China

4. Syria

5. Uzbekistan

6. Ethiopia

7. Myanmar

8. Vietnam

9. Bahrain

10. Saudi Arabia

The next list is from the Committee to Protect Journalists 

The growing crusade by governments against the internet or internet censorship should be expected and constitutes resistance to change as forces of decentralization (internet) and centralization (governments) have been on a head-on collision course.

This essentially represents part of the volatile and turbulent transition process towards the deepening of the information age.

The lists of the 10 countries who apply internet censorship most reveals that despite governments’ acts to suppress free expression, the freedom of internet expression still thrives, albeit underground.

To give some examples

-China’s shadow or informal social media users continue to swell despite the government’s prohibition.

-Cuba’s repressive government has repeatedly failed to stop domestic political activist blogger who became an international sensation Yoani Maria Sánchez Cordero.

-There is the ongoing harassment against Wikileaks through  founder Julian Assange and the war against eponymous group Anonymous (who ironically appears to have taken up the cudgels of domestic cyber activists) for exposing on government malfeasances.

-Also the Iranian government’s attempt to convert her cyberspace into a national intranet has dramatically backfired where Iran’s government has been forced to retreat.

From Gizmodo,

After seriously flipping out, cutting of Iranian access to Google and basically herding all its citizens into a tiny little government-approved intra-net pen, the Iranian government has softened its Internet ban just a little bit and restored access to Gmail.

Though the outcry against censoring the Internet at large was loud, the backlash against cutting users off from Google services such as Gmail was particularly strong. Many Iranians (reportedly around half) resorted to using VPNs to get outside of the the intra-net bubble, creating millions of dollars in profit for local VPN firms. Even government officials railed against the lack of Gmail, and complained that local clients just weren't up to snuff.

Given that the penetration rate of internet users in the Philippines is nearly at 30% of the population (internetworldstats.com), from which the bulk comes from the elite and the middle class, it would not be surprising if a sustained uproar would end up with a political ‘compromise’ ala Iran.

Bottom line: Global governments including the Philippines will continue to do everything to try to control and regulate the flow of information in order to preserve the status quo. However and unfortunately for them, the free market in the internet, people’s newfound fondness with connectivity and the knowledge revolution will give them quite a challenge.

Yet there is no stopping the march towards the information age.

Quote of the Day: The Ethics of Fascism

Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position.

This is from Mario Palmieri in The Philosophy of Fascism 1936 (Liberty Tree).  

A alter ego of fascism is nationalism. 

From Wikipedia: Fascism ( /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology

ASEAN’s Interest Rate Swap Markets Signals Stagflation Risks

Mainstream "experts" continue to dish out bromides about forthcoming rate cuts for the Philippines and her ASEAN peers without recognizing that impact of the FED-ECB-BoJ-SNB-BoE inflationists policies will heighten the risks of stagflation for the region.

Yet current market signals seems pointing to such direction.

From Bloomberg (bold emphasis added) 

Interest-rate swaps in Malaysia and Thailand are signaling central banks will start to tighten monetary policy next year for the first time since 2011, as fighting inflation takes precedence over economic growth.

Malaysian and Thai contracts in which investors exchange a fixed payment for a floating rate for two years climbed to four- month highs of 3.18 percent and 3.08 percent, respectively, in September. Societe Generale SA recommends clients pay the swaps in Malaysia targeting an increase to 3.35 percent. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its forecasts for five-year rates in both countries on Sept. 19.

Southeast Asian nations are expanding at a faster pace than economists predicted this year, even as Europe’s debt crisis and unemployment in the U.S. reduce export orders. Analysts including Societe Generale’s Wee-Khoon Chong and central banks are starting to flag inflation risks for next year, driven by rising domestic demand and funds pumped into the European and U.S. financial systems.

What the mainstream imputes as ASEAN’s “growth dynamic” represents no less than a concealed credit driven boom.

Indonesia (IMF)

ASEAN M3 and Claims on private sector credit (IMF)

Thailand (US Global Investors)

These dynamics seem in the process of validating my prognostications

Capital inflows coupled with domestic negative real rates regime will likely translate into serial bubble blowing dynamics.

So yes, the risks of bubbles in Asia will become more enhanced. Even the local central bank or the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has recently acknowledged of such risks which they arrogantly claim they can control.

In addition, domestic and global bubbles will increase the risks of a global stagflation which is likely slam emerging markets harder.

The risks of ballooning bubble or stagflation will likely become evident in 2013-2014.

Remember that emerging Asia (ASEAN) is highly vulnerable to inflation risks, as I also wrote earlier, 

High commodity prices are likely to influence emerging markets consumer price inflation more. Food makes up a large segment of consumption basket for emerging Asia including the Philippines. This would prompt for their respective central banks to reluctantly tighten. Monetary tightening will put pressure on the stock market.

Stagflation, thus, also represents both a contagion and internal (political and market) risk for the Philippines and for emerging Asia.

A stagflationary environment will prove to be a spoiler for stock market bulls.

But the effects of monetary inflation via stagflation will not be the same, there will select sectors that may surf the stagflation tide.

For now, these incipient signs of price inflation won’t be much of a headwind for central bank sponsored stock market and financial asset boom...until next year.

Global Debt Default Binge: US Debt Now at $16,159,487,013,300.35

Speaking of the global debt default binge, the US debt clock according to the US treasury direct have now been at $16,159,487,013,300.35 as of October 1, 2012

Writes the Zero Hedge (bold original)

September 30 was the last day of Fiscal 2012 for the US which explains why despite the barrage of debt issuance in the past month, the year closed with total debt of just $16.066 trillion, a modest increase of just $50 billion in the month. Luckily, moments ago we got the first DTS of the new fiscal year, which eliminated any residual confusion we had. As of the first day of FY 2013, total US debt soared by $93 billion overnight, and is now a record $16,159,487,013,300.35. One can see why Tim Geithner wants to push all the debt under the coach for as long as possible (and the scariest thing is that the actual increase in Treasury cash was a mere $11 billion). But wait, there's more. As a reminder, final Q2 US GDP was recently revised lower by $20 billion, which if we extrapolate into Q3 (leading to a nominal GDP print of $15.71 trillion), means that as of today, total US Federal debt to GDP is 103%. And rising about 1.5% per month.

At the Brilling.com US debt clock time bomb, as of this writing is now $16.164 trillion!

Tic tic tic boom!

Signs of Dancing on the Grave of Keynesianism

Yesterday my quote of the day was about Austrian economist Gary North’s prediction of the twilight of the Keynesian political economy.

Today, Sovereign Man’s Simon Black enumerates of the 8 signs that reveals how the “system is broken”.

Apparently 6 of them represent symptoms of Mr. North’s prophesy.

The 6 signs from Simon Black:

3) Last month, a school district in California sold $164 million worth of bonds at 12.6% interest; this is more than Pakistan, Botswana, and Ecuador pay in the international bond market.

4) Based on the Treasury’s most recent statistics, US government interest payments to China will total at least $26.055 billion this year. The real figure may be much higher given that China has been purchased Treasuries for decades, back when interest rates were much higher. They’re still getting paid on those higher rates today.

Even still, this year’s interest payment to China totals more than ALL the silver that was mined in the world last year.

5) In August 2008, just before the Lehman Brothers collapse, the number of employed persons in the United States was 145.47 million persons. Over the subsequent years, the employment figure dipped to as low as 139.27 million. Today it stands at 142.1 million.

Even if this is considered recovery, to ‘rescue’ those 2.8 million jobs, it took the federal government an additional $6.421 trillion worth of debt ($2.3 million per job), and a $1.9 trillion (203%) expansion of the Federal Reserve balance sheet.

6) Meanwhile, despite trillions of euros in debt and bailouts, the unemployment rate in the eurozone just hit a record high of 11.4%… and a second Spanish bailout is now imminent.

7) Inflation in Zimbabwe (3.63%) is lower than inflation in the UK (3.66%, August 2011-July 2012).

8) Last week, the French government reached a ‘historic’ budget compromise, shooting for a budget deficit that’s ‘only’ 3% of GDP. This is based on an assumption that the economy will grow by 0.8%.

In other words, France’s official public debt (which is already at 91% of GDP) will increase by 2.2% of GDP next year amid flat growth. And this is what these people consider progress.

From Cato’s Dan Mitchell

To add, last month the French government approved of the 75% tax on those earning over one million euros a year — by holding public spending and not cutting government jobs (IBD). So the French class warfare policy essentially kills the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs.

So by maintaining the unproductive segments of a society who entirely depends on the shrinking the productive sectors, French politicians believe that the Santa Claus Fund will never end and instead would bring about prosperity.

The populist measures undertaken by the French government essentially assures of the diffusion and the intensification of the Euro crisis which most likely serves as the death warrant for the euro.

Events in France will perhaps herald the coming global debt default that will engulf most of developed nations and emerging economies whose economies have been predicated on the Keynesian parasitical relationship welfare-warfare states.

In a world of politics, common sense is uncommon specially backed by obtuse theories moored on the belief of the Philosopher’s stone of turning lead into gold.

As the distinguished Ron Paul recently wrote,

It's because too many politicians believed that a free lunch was possible and a new economic paradigm had arrived. But we've heard that one before — like the philosopher's stone that could turn lead into gold. Prosperity without work is a dream of the ages.

Gary North on How to Gum Up Any Institutions

Well if governments can make a mess of society through immoral  statutes and regulations, people can reciprocate by goofing up the system through non-violent means.

Austrian economist and author Gary North offers how to gum up any institutions, not limited to the government.

Rules are about redirecting people’s behavior to assure compliance. And institutions rely on sets of rules for it to thrive.

Economist Gary North explains:

First, every institution assumes voluntary compliance in at least 95% of all cases. This may be a low-ball estimate. Most people comply, either out of fear or lack of concern or strong belief in the system and its goals.

Second, every institution has more rules than it can follow, let alone enforce. Some of these rules are self-contradictory. The more rules, the larger the number of contradictions. (There is probably a statistical pattern here – some variant of Parkinson's law.)

Third, every institution is built on this assumption: partial compliance. Not everyone will comply with any given procedural rule. There are negative sanctions to enforce compliance on the few who resist. They serve as examples to force compliance. Conversely, very few people under the institution's jurisdiction will attempt to force the institution to comply exactly with any procedural rule.

These three laws of institutions – and they really are laws – offer any resistance movement an opportunity to shut down any system.

Economist North provides an example of how Vladimir Bukovsky jammed the Soviet Union Gulag, along with other inmates, by sending daily letter of protests to the Soviet bureaucracy from which the latter had to legally respond. The result was bureaucratic chaos.

As the 75,000 complaints became part of the statistical record, the statistical record of the prison camp and the regional camps was spoiled. All bureaucrats suffered. There went the prizes, pennants, and other benefits. "The workers start seething with discontent, there is panic in the regional Party headquarters, and a senior commission of inquiry is dispatched to the prison."…

Finally, in 1977, they capitulated to several specific demands of the prisoners to improve the conditions of the camps. The governor of the prison was removed and pensioned off. Their ability to inflict death-producing punishments did them little good, once the prisoners learned of the Achilles' heel of the bureaucracy: paperwork.. The leaders of the Soviet Union could bear it no longer: they deported Bukovsky.

Economist North further discusses on American community organizer Saul Alinsky’s improvisation of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent means of protests:

Alinksy realized early that very few people will pay the price that Gandhi paid. So, he devised a system of resistance that lowered the risk, thereby lowering the cost. He understood the economists' law: "When the cost of producing anything falls, more will be supplied." More of what? Resistance.

His system involved at least one of two tactics: (1) violating a rule to which only a minimal negative sanction was attached, (2) follow the organization's procedural rules to the letter in a Bukovsky-like manner.

He tested his non-violent strategy and tactics in the 1960s in Chicago. He wrote a book on his system, Rules For Radicals (1972). He wrote this.

Let us in the name of radical pragmatism not forget that in our system with all its repressions we can still speak out and denounce the administration, attack its policies, work to build an opposition political base. True, there is still government harassment, but there still is that relative freedom to fight. I can attack my government, try to organize to change it. That's more than I can do in Moscow, Peking, or Havana. Remember the reaction of the Red Guard to the "cultural revolution" and the fate of the Chinese college students. Just a few of the violent episodes of bombings or a courtroom shootout that we have experienced here would have resulted in a sweeping purge and mass executions in Russia, China, or Cuba. Let us keep some perspective.

We will start with the system because there is no other place to start from except political lunacy. It is most important for those of us who want revolutionary change to understand that revolution must be preceded by reformation. To assume that a political revolution can survive without a supporting base of popular reformation is to ask for the impossible in politics. Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives – agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate. "The revolution was effected before the war commenced; John Adams wrote. "The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people. . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments and affections of the people was the real American Revolution." A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny.

Read the rest here 

Mr. Alinsky then devised of 13 tactical guidelines for the “gummit” model, again Mr. North:

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long is a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counter side.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize and polarize it.

The Gandhi Alinsky disobedience model reminds me of Etienne de la Boetie, French judge, writer and founder of modern philosophy and one of the early advocates of civil disobedience, who once wrote 

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces

Gumming up a tyrannical institution is a way to re-establish or win back freedom.

Libertarians are Thinkers, Not Feelers

Our adapted political ideology have not only been shaped by our life’s circumstances, orientation and other influences but importantly from our personality.

And from the psychological framework, libertarians are said to be thinkers and not impulsive and emotional chumps.

That’s according to a study cited by the prolific author Matthew Ridley at the Wall Street Journal

The study collated the results of 16 personality surveys and experiments completed by nearly 12,000 self-identified libertarians who visited YourMorals.org. The researchers compared the libertarians to tens of thousands of self-identified liberals and conservatives. It was hardly surprising that the team found that libertarians strongly value liberty, especially the "negative liberty" of freedom from interference by others. Given the philosophy of their heroes, from John Locke and John Stuart Mill to Ayn Rand and Ron Paul, it also comes as no surprise that libertarians are also individualistic, stressing the right and the need for people to stand on their own two feet, rather than the duty of others, or government, to care for people.

Perhaps more intriguingly, when libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use "cold" calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed "effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks" more than others do.

The researchers found that libertarians had the most "masculine" psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine, and these results held up even when they examined each gender separately, which "may explain why libertarianism appeals to men more than women."

All Americans value liberty, but libertarians seem to value it more. For social conservatives, liberty is often a means to the end of rolling back the welfare state, with its lax morals and redistributive taxation, so liberty can be infringed in the bedroom. For liberals, liberty is a way to extend rights to groups perceived to be oppressed, so liberty can be infringed in the boardroom. But for libertarians, liberty is an end in itself, trumping all other moral values.

Just a clarification: libertarianism is a political theory which according to Mr. Libertarian, Murray N. Rothbard is “an important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life” and that while libertarians agree with Lord Acton "liberty is the highest political end", it is “not necessarily the highest end on everyone's personal scale of values”.  

In short, in terms of politics yes "liberty is an end", but politics is just one of the many aspects of a person’s life.

Quote of the Day: Dancing on the Grave of Keynesianism

From author Gary North at the Mises Institute:

The Keynesians seem to be dominant today. They are dominant because they have been brought into the hierarchy of political power. They serve as court prophets to the equivalent of the Babylonians, just before the Medo-Persians took the nation.

They are in charge of the major academic institutions. They are the main advisers in the federal government. They are the overwhelmingly dominant faction within the Federal Reserve System. Their only major institutional opponents are the monetarists, and the monetarists are as committed to fiat money as the Keynesians are. They hate the idea of a gold-coin standard. They hate the idea of market-produced money….

The welfare-warfare state, Keynesian economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations are going to suffer major defeats when the economic system finally goes down. The system will go down. It is not clear what will pull the trigger, but it is obvious that the banking system is fragile, and the only thing capable of bailing it out is fiat money. The system is sapping the productivity of the nation, because the Federal Reserve's purchases of debt are siphoning productivity and capital out of the private sector and into those sectors subsidized by the federal government…

I offer this optimistic assessment: the bad guys are going to lose. Their statist policies will bring destruction that they will not be able to explain away. Their plea will be rejected. "Give us more time. We just need a little more time. We can fix this if you let us get deeper into your wallets."

In the very long run, the good guys are going to win, but in the interim, there is going to be a lot of competition to see which group gets to dance on the grave of the Keynesian system.

Get out your dancing shoes. Keep them polished. Our day is coming.

A Video Tale of Two Koreas

Economic Freedom defines the difference (hat tip Art Carden at the Division of Labor) 

North Korea

  

South Korea
 

Charts: Gold versus Major Fiat Currencies

The mainstream has been focused on the price of gold vis-à-vis the US dollar.

Although the US dollar, as the world’s major reserve currency, through the US Federal Reserve, dominates global central bank policymaking, apparently other major international reserve currencies have mimicked US Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s approach.

The result of concerted inflationism has been to devalue respective currencies against gold. 

All charts from gold.org

Gold: British Pound (approaching record highs)

Gold: euro (at record highs) 

Gold: Australian dollar (approaching record highs)

Gold: Canadian dollar (approaching record highs)

Gold: Swiss Franc (at record highs). Since the Swiss franc has been pegged to the euro thus the franc essentially reflects on the euro’s conditions

Gold: Japanese Yen (near record highs)

Gold: South African Rand (record highs)

Gold: India’s Rupee (record highs)

Gold: China’s yuan (near record high despite China’s aggressive gold accumulation)

Gold: Hong Kong dollar (near record highs) HKD is pegged to the US dollar

Gold: Mexican peso (near record highs)

The above clearly shows that governments have not been engaged in devaluation against other currencies but against gold, which should eventually spillover to other commodities.

As the great dean of the Austrian school of economics once wrote,

It must be emphasized that gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium. Above all, the supply and provision of gold was subject only to market forces, and not to the arbitrary printing press of the government.

Bastiat on Why Protectionism Fails: Money is Not Wealth

One of the fundamental flaws of protectionism have been to mistake money, which is a medium of exchange, for wealth. Thus, the obsession by the mainstream for inflationism-protectionism as popular political solutions to economic predicaments.

The great classical liberal Frédéric Bastiat explodes this myth more than a century back. (From Mises Institute/The Bastiat Collection) [bold emphasis mine]

Do you desire to be in a situation to decide between liberty and protection? Do you desire to appreciate the impact of an economic phenomenon? Inquire into its effects upon the abundance or scarcity of commodities, and not upon the rise or fall of prices. Distrust nominal prices; they will only land you in an inextricable labyrinth.

Mr. Matthieu de Dombasle, after having shown that protection raises prices, adds:

"The enhancement of prices increases the expense of living, and consequently the price of labor, and each man receives, in the enhanced price of his products, compensation for the higher prices he has been obliged to pay for the things he has occasion to buy. Thus, if everyone pays more as a consumer, everyone receives more as a producer."

It is evident that we could reverse this argument, and say:

"If everyone receives more as a producer, everyone pays more as a consumer."

Now, what does this prove? Nothing but this, that protection displaces wealth uselessly and unjustly. In so far, it simply perpetrates spoliation.

Again, to conclude that this vast apparatus leads to simple compensations, we must stick to the "consequently" of Mr. de Dombasle, and make sure that the price of labor will not fail to rise with the price of the protected products. This is a question of fact that I remit to Mr. Moreau de Jonnes, that he may take the trouble to find out whether the rate of wages advances along with the price of shares in the coal mines of Anzin. For my own part, I do not believe that it does; because, in my opinion, the price of labor, like the price of everything else, is governed by the relation of supply to demand. Now, I am convinced that restriction diminishes the supply of coal, and consequently enhances its price; but I do not see so clearly that it increases the demand for labor, so as to enhance the rate of wages; and that this effect should be produced is all the less likely, because the quantity of labor demanded depends on the available capital. Now, protection may indeed displace capital, and cause its transference from one employment to another, but it can never increase it by a single farthing.

But this question, which is one of the greatest interest and importance, will be examined in another place. I return to the subject of nominal price; and I maintain that it is not one of those absurdities that can be rendered specious by such reasonings as those of Mr. de Dombasle.

Put the case of a nation that is isolated, and possesses a given amount of specie, and that chooses to amuse itself by burning each year one-half of all the commodities that it possesses. I undertake to prove that, according to the theory of Mr. de Dombasle, it will not be less rich.

In fact, in consequence of the fire, all things will be doubled in price, and the inventories of property, made before and after the destruction, will show exactly the same nominal value. But then what will the country in question have lost? If John buys his cloth dearer, he also sells his corn at a higher price; and if Peter loses on his purchase of corn, he retrieves his losses by the sale of his cloth. "Each recovers, in the extra price of his products, the extra expense of living he has been put to; and if everybody pays as a consumer, everybody receives a corresponding amount as a producer."

All this is a jingling quibble, and not science. The truth, in plain terms, is this: that men consume cloth and corn by fire or by using them, and that the effect is the same as regards money, but not as regards wealth, for it is precisely in the use of commodities that wealth or material prosperity consists.

In the same way, restriction, while diminishing the abundance of things, may raise their price to such an extent that each party shall be, pecuniarily speaking, as rich as before. But to set down in an inventory three measures of corn at 20s., or four measures at 15s., because the result is still 60s. — would this, I ask, come to the same thing with reference to the satisfaction of men's wants?

It is to this, the consumer's point of view, that I shall never cease to recall the protectionists, for this is the end and design of all our efforts, and the solution of all problems. I shall never cease to say to them: Is it, or is it not, true that restriction by impeding exchanges, by limiting the division of labor, by forcing labor to connect itself with difficulties of climate and situation, diminishes ultimately the quantity of commodities produced by a determinate amount of efforts? And what does this signify, it will be said, if the smaller quantity produced under the regime of protection has the same nominal value as that produced under the regime of liberty? The answer is obvious. Man does not live upon nominal values, but upon real products, and the more products there are, whatever be their price, the richer he is.

In writing what precedes, I never expected to meet with an anti-economist who was enough of a logician to admit, in so many words, that the wealth of nations depends on the value of things, apart from the consideration of their abundance. But here is what I find in the work of Mr. de Saint-Chamans (p. 210):

If fifteen million worth of commodities, sold to foreigners, are taken from the total production, estimated at fifty millions, the thirty-five million worth of commodities remaining, not being sufficient to meet the ordinary demand, will increase in price, and rise to the value of fifty millions. In that case the revenue of the country will represent a value of fifteen million additional.… There would then be an increase of the wealth of the country to the extent of fifteen million, exactly the amount of specie imported.

This is a pleasant view of the matter! If a nation produces in one year, from its agriculture and commerce, a value of 50 million it has only to sell a quarter of it to the foreigner to be a quarter richer! Then if it sells the half, it will be one-half richer! And if it should sell the whole, to its last tuft of wool and its last grain of wheat, it would bring up its revenue to 100 million. What a way of getting rich, by producing infinite dearness by absolute scarcity!

Again, would you judge of the two doctrines? Submit them to the test of exaggeration.

According to the doctrine of Mr. de Saint-Chamans, the French would be quite as rich — that is to say, quite as well supplied with all things — had they only a thousandth part of their annual products, because they would be worth a thousand times more.

According to our doctrine, the French would be infinitely rich if their annual products were infinitely abundant, and consequently, without any value at all.

Think of it, if you alone have been stranded in a remote and inaccessible island inhabited by primitive tribes, what will your bag filled with $10 million buy (if they should accept your greenbacks at all)?

Currency Manipulation and the Politics of Neo-Mercantilism

At the local stock market forum, the Stock Market Pilipinas I had been asked to comment about the currency manipulation charges hurled against China.

For starters, as per Wikipedia’s definition of currency intervention, otherwise known as exchange rate intervention or foreign exchange market intervention, is the purchase or the sale of the currency on the exchange market by the fiscal authority or the monetary authority, in order to influence the value of the domestic currency. (bold emphasis mine)

In brief, the employment of currency/foreign exchange/exchange rate interventions implies that both monetary and fiscal authorities of ALL nations are currency manipulators.

(chart from Bloomberg)

As evidence, considering that international reserves assets (excluding gold) are at record highs mainly through the expansion of central bank balance sheets (via unsterilized interventions) these means that all central banks have been manipulating their respective currencies.

The growth of central bank balance sheets includes Asia and the Philippines. (Bank of International Settlements)

Such concerted balance sheet expansions has also been reflected on the state of money supply growth. (chart from Mao Money, Mao Problems)

Fund manager David R. Kotok of Cumberland Advisors has a good narrative of why the growing concerns over dollar debasement are valid.

Mr. Kotok writes, (bold emphasis mine)

The dollar maintains its reserve currency status because it is the least worst of the major four currencies – the US dollar, the British pound, the Japanese yen, and the euro.  All four of these currencies are now suffering the effects of a stimulative, expansive, and QE-oriented monetary policy.

We must now add the Swiss franc as a major currency, since Switzerland and its central bank are embarked on a policy course of fixing the exchange rate between the franc and the euro at 1.2 to 1.  Hence the Swiss National Bank becomes an extension of the European Central Bank, and therefore its monetary policy is necessarily linked to that of the eurozone… 

When you add up these currencies and the others that are linked to them, you conclude that about 80% of the world’s capital markets are tied to one of them.  All of the major four are in QE of one sort or another.  All four are maintaining a shorter-term interest rate near zero, which explains the reduction of volatility in the shorter-term rate structure.  If all currencies yield about the same and are likely to continue doing so for a while, it becomes hard to distinguish a relative value among them; hence, volatility falls.

The other currencies of the world may have value-adding characteristics.  We see that in places like Canada, Sweden, and New Zealand.  But the capital-market size of those currencies, or even of a basket of them, is not sufficient to replace the dollar as the major reserve currency.  Thus the dollar wins as the least worst of the big guys.

Fear of dollar debasement is, however, well-founded.  The United States continues to run federal budget deficits at high percentages of GDP.  The US central bank has a policy of QE and has committed itself to an extension of the period during which it will preserve this expansive policy.  That timeframe is now estimated to be at least three years.  The central bank has specifically said it wants more inflation.  The real interest rates in US-dollar-denominated Treasury debt are negative.  This is a recipe for a weaker dollar.  The only reason that the dollar is not much weaker is that the other major central banks are engaged in similar policies.

Given the high concentration of exposure by the world’s banking system on these four major international reserves currencies (US dollar, British pound, Japanese Yen, and the euro), this means that policies of ancillary central banks has to adjust in accordance to the policies of these major international reserve currencies.

In short, policies by the US mostly dominate on the policies of global central banks. Alternatively this suggest that the US has been the world’s biggest 'currency manipulator'.

While it is also true that some peripheral currencies has differentiating factors as pointed above, the point is that these currencies don’t have enough market depth to replace the incumbent international reserve currencies.

As caveat, such premises remain conditional on the absence of a currency crisis. Abrupt changes to the current setting should be expected if or once a currency crisis should occur.

Yet the fundamental issue is to understand the role of role of central banks. As Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell Jr. recently wrote, (lewRockwell.com):

First, they serve as lenders of last resort, which in practice means bailouts for the big financial firms. Second, they coordinate the inflation of the money supply by establishing a uniform rate at which the banks inflate, thereby making the fractional-reserve banking system less unstable and more consistently profitable than it would be without a central bank (which, by the way, is why the banks themselves always clamor for a central bank). Finally, they allow governments, via inflation, to finance their operations far more cheaply and surreptitiously than they otherwise could.

The bottom line is that currency manipulation, through inflationism, is the essence of the paper money legal tender based central banking.

So what’s the hullabaloo over China as "currency manipulator"?

Well, “currency manipulation” has been no less than a popular sloganeering of “us against them” politics meant to attain political goals.

Such political goal has been subtly designed for the protection of the privileged business interests allied with the political class through trade restrictions or through the transformation “of the economy from roughly laissez-faire to centralized, coordinated statism” as the great dean of Austrian school of economics Murray N. Rothbard pointed out.

This is called neo-mercantilism.

In the 80s, rising Japan had been painted as a threat to American economic standings, such that hate and envy based politics echoed the call for neo-mercantilist protectionism, again from Professor Rothbard,

Protectionism, often refuted and seemingly abandoned, has returned, and with a vengeance. The Japanese, who bounced back from grievous losses in World War II to astound the world by producing innovative, high-quality products at low prices, are serving as the convenient butt of protectionist propaganda. Memories of wartime myths prove a heady brew, as protectionists warn about this new "Japanese imperialism," even "worse than Pearl Harbor." This "imperialism" turns out to consist of selling Americans wonderful TV sets, autos, microchips, etc., at prices more than competitive with American firms.

Is this "flood" of Japanese products really a menace, to be combated by the U.S. government? Or is the new Japan a godsend to American consumers? In taking our stand on this issue, we should recognize that all government action means coercion, so that calling upon the U.S. government to intervene means urging it to use force and violence to restrain peaceful trade. One trusts that the protectionists are not willing to pursue their logic of force to the ultimate in the form of another Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

With Japan suffering from a humongous bubble bust that has led to a lost decade, today such political bogeyman has shifted to China.

The mainstream (mostly representing captured interests) has used all sorts of highly flawed and deceptive technically based assumptions and theories as cheap labor theory, cheap currencies, global savings glut, global imbalances and others to divert or camouflage the public’s attention from the unintended consequences from serial interventionist domestic policies and bubble monetary policies by riling up or conjuring emotive nationalist or xenophobic sentiment.

Gullible public opinion are easily swayed due to either the dearth of economic understanding or because they are blinded from the obsession to politics.

As the great Ludwig von Mises pointed out (OMNIPOTENT GOVERNMENT p.183)

People favor discrimination and privileges because they do not realize that they themselves are consumers and as such must foot the bill. In the case of protectionism, for example, they believe that only the foreigners against whom the import duties discriminate are hurt. It is true the foreigners are hurt, but not they alone: the consumers who must pay higher prices suffer with them.

And part of that reality has not entirely been about achieving some dubious trading objectives but to expand credit, again for political goals.

Again the Professor von Mises, (Human Action)

While the size of the credit expansion that private banks and bankers are able to engineer on an unhampered market is strictly limited, the governments aim at the greatest possible amount of credit expansion. Credit expansion is the governments' foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.

The politics of neomercantilism exploits economic patsies and the politically blind in the name of nationalism for the benefit of political class, vested interest groups and or their cronies at the expense of society.

How Actions of the UN Security Council Increases the Risks of World War III

The UN Security Council has been a stooge for the war mongering politicos of Israel, neoconservatives and the military industrial complex which has been increasing the risks of World War III

Writes historian Eric Margolis at the Lew Rockwell.com 

Ahmadinejad has become a vital enabler of Netanyahu’s scare tactics. In reality, both are playing to domestic audiences. Netanyahu is fighting for a third term as Israel suffers from major economic problems. However, his nuclear alarms over Iran have succeeded in sidelining demands for a viable Palestinian state. No one at the UN paid any attention to Palestinian’s plaintive chirps.

There was no mention that Israel’s threats to attack Iran, and its demands the US blitz Iran, clearly violate the UN Charter and international law. Iran’s claims the West and Israel were waging economic and computer war against it and murdering its scientists were shrugged off.

Few seemed to take notice of Russia’s increasingly forceful comments that a US/Israeli attack against Iran or Syria could produce “consequences.” For those who enjoy worrying about a possible World War III,” this could be a good way to begin.

What was again painfully clear is that the UN Security Council is an unfair outdated relic of World War II that needs be expanded and made more democratic – and moved to a neutral nation. The victors of World War II they make the real decisions.

Quote of the Day: Prices and the Myth of Energy Budgets

There is no "energy budget" any more than there is a lumber budget, coffee budget, iron budget or oatmeal budget. There are supplies of these products, which can increase or decrease depending upon prices, but to call these supplies "budgets," suggests A. a fixed amount and B. something that needs to be managed at some national level.

Anyone who understands free markets, would not for a minute be concerned with the amount of energy that is used by various consumer products. Prices will simply dictate limitations of use of products.. For example, gold is a perfectly functional metal that could be used in the construction of bridges. It is not because gold is valued more as jewelry and as a safe non-inflationary alternate medium of exchange. This is reflected in its price. There is no need for any thinking about a "gold budget." The price of gold provides the knowledge to bridge builders that gold should not be used in the building of bridges.

In the same way, it is economic ignorance to be thinking about an "energy budget." Prices will signal to us how energy sensitive our products need to be. That plenty of people use  full-sized HD television sets and X-Box Consoles + a TV, suggests that the energy used for these products is not prohibitive for most…concern about a "world energy budget" belongs up there with the concern for the "world jock strap" budget. It's a complete central planning notion that results from the failure to understand how prices signal uses and production.

This is from Robert Wenzel at the Economic Policy Journal. 

The point is to understand the essence of market price signals than to fall for political demagoguery.