link: Obama warns Coast Guard cadets global warming a national security ‘threat’ | Fox News
So in essence, the President is claiming that the weather is the greatest threat to national security.
The weather.
A nation that’s been around since 1776, one that has been instrumental in advancing the cause of civilization, of expanding markets, of creating novel technologies, of expanding education and which has acted as a magnet for ambitious people throughout the world is being threatened by… the weather.
This is analogous to the homeowner who worries about vines growing on the brickwork as his house is being inundated with flood waters during a storm. The flip side to his thesis is that the success of the United States through its almost 250 year history may have been attributable in large part to benign weather. Any school child making that claim would not only be held back a few years, but would also be monitored for signs of mental stability. He would be spoken to slowly in monosyllables.
And yet, the person who notionally wields the most influential position in the world is making this exact claim…with a straight face. It’s as if he’s been smoking too much of the same stuff as his vice president. The correct response of the media to this utterance should be, “wait, what did he say?” instead of general indifference. If this isn’t Chauncey Gardener in real life, I’m the uncle of monkeys.
We wonder if this might cause some wheels to roll in the minds of those who had bought into the ‘vision’ of the President when he first came to public light. If nothing else, perhaps there should be a new policy created whereby political aspirants should be asked a few simple skill testing questions before being allowed to be set loose on the public. They wouldn’t have to know what a prime number is or calculate the square root of a fraction, but they would have to correctly answer the question of whether or not the weather will cause the demise of western civilization as we know it. A wrong answer would cap their political aspirations at dog catcher.
link Citi Economist Says It Might Be Time to Abolish Cash – Bloomberg Business.
I think it’s a fair comment to make that if an economist says it’s a good idea, then the idea must be suspect. There’s the old joke that the reason that there are decimal points is because economists have a sense of humor. As many will know, economists live in the most esoteric of worlds in which arcane models are developed to explain movements in prices and in the supply and demand dynamics of goods and services in an economy. If convincing enough, such models are used to form political policies which greatly affect the lives of citizens. Often, these models are created with the most fundamental error in assumption: namely, that people are rational.
Do they work? One word: Keynes. Another one: Obamacare. So the musings of Citibank’s Mr. Buiter who thinks that the time is nigh to consider abolishing cash is a clarion call to go exactly the opposite way. As many should have realized by now, the pervasive invasion of everyone’s privacy by all manner of intrusions whether mandated by law or volunteered via the seduction of social media has made everyone a drone whose activities can be traced at almost any given time. You don’t need to wear tinfoil hats to be a bit wary of that. Who isn’t a bit creeped out when an ad for electric dog polishers shows up on your favorite website right after you were searching for the prices of them the day before?
If all money is electronically stored and there is no cash, there is a trail of every activity that you engage in. This will make life entirely more cumbersome for the regular people who don’t live in the make believe world of economists. While this can put a crimp into nefarious activities such as drug deals, it will also make it difficult to bribe doormen at bars and restaurants, to say nothing of how to discreetly show appreciation for your favorite exotic dancer.
A world in which cash is eliminated is a world in which we all become just numbers to be picked up as if we were in some futuristic Tom Cruise sci-fi flick. I think we should go the other way. Rather than having our net worth governed by some geek bureaucrat with access to a keyboard, we should go back to paying for things in cash. Judging by what has happened when you allow lawyers to make laws and accountants to oversee taxes, it would be fatal to allow economists to eliminate cash.