Thursday, October 27, 2011
Does ‘Austerity’ Work?
Remember the Great Depression of the 1920s? If not, that’s because it didn’t happen. The recession of the early ‘20s quickly ended after spending and taxes were cut dramatically. It provides a clear lesson in “austerity” that President Obama should heed.
In 1920, newly elected President Warren Harding inherited a very sharp downturn from his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. According to Cato economist Jim Powell, the downturn was “almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.”
Unlike President Herbert Hoover, who dealt with the initial downturn precipitating the Great Depression, President Harding knew that the market would best recover if left to do so on its own. He loosened government’s inflexible grip and gave the economy the breathing room it needed. He cut spending sharply, from $6.3 billion in 1920 to $5 billion in 1921 and $3.2 billion in 1922.
At the same time, Harding took the advice of his Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, and steeply slashed tax rates. The top income tax rate went from 73 percent to 24 percent. The bottom rate went from 4 percent to 0.5 percent.
These combined cuts resulted in economic recovery in 1922, only a year-and-a-half later. Gross national product (GNP) rebounded, and unemployment fell to 2.8 million. The cuts fueled an explosion of growth and prosperity through the rest of the ‘20s.
Powell notes that “GNP expanded year after year without inflation. Productivity improved, and real wages increased. The stock market tripled. There was a dramatic expansion of the middle class.” The unemployment rate was as low as 1.8 percent in 1926!
‘Rogue Websites’ Bill Creates Chinese-Style Ban List
ISPs would be forced to block websites by government decree
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, October 27, 2011
The newly introduced ‘rogue websites’ bill that has attracted bi-partisan support in the House will force Internet Service Providers to create a list of banned websites and prevent their users from accessing the sites, creating a Chinese-style ‘ban list’ that could easily be abused to silence free speech.
Rogue Websites Bill Creates Chinese Style Ban List Internet user 007
“US lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday that would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites accused of piracy of movies, television shows and music and the sale of counterfeit goods,” reports AFP.
“The Stop Online Piracy Act has received bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and is the House version of a bill introduced in the Senate in May known as the Theft of Intellectual Property Act or Protect IP Act.”
Although the legislation is primarily aimed at foreign websites, it could just as easily be applied to all .com domains.
The most chilling part of the legislation makes it clear that this is about empowering the federal government to create a blacklist of banned websites.
“A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address,” states the bill.
Feds Order You Tube To Remove Video For Containing “Government Criticism”
US Authorities Hit Google With 70% Rise In Takedown Orders
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The number of takedown orders received by Google from authorities based in the United States rose dramatically over the past year, with demands to remove information, including videos containing “government criticism,” increasing by 70 per cent.
Feds Order You Tube To Remove Video For Containing Government Criticism youtubezensur
“In the US, Google received 757 takedown requests across its sites and services, up 70 per cent from the second half of last year,” reports technology website V3.co.uk.
“US authorities also called for the removal of 113 videos from YouTube, including several documenting alleged police brutality which Google refused to take down.”
The figures are revealed in Google’s newly released transparency report, which also details how the number of “user data requests” by US authorities increased by 29 per cent compared to the last reporting period.
The reason listed for the removal of a You Tube video in one instance is “government criticism”. The exact identity or content of the video is not divulged. The report states that the removal requests pertaining to “police brutality” were done on the grounds of “defamation” and are included in that separate category, meaning the takedown order on the grounds of “government criticism” was made by the “executive,” ie the federal government.
The report does not indicate whether or not You Tube complied with the removal request, but it did comply with 63 per cent of the total requests made.
NY Fed’s $40 Billion Iraqi Money Trail
It has been called the largest airborne transfer of currency in the history of the world. But finding out what happened to all the money involved has become one of the biggest financial mysteries of all time.
Beginning in the very earliest days of the war in Iraq, the New York Federal Reserve shipped billions of dollars in physical cash to Baghdad to pay for the reopening of the government and restoration of basic services.
The money was packed onto pallets inside a heavily guarded New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey, trucked to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, and flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport.
By one account, the New York Fed shipped about $40 billion in cash between 2003 and 2008. In just the first two years, the shipments included more than 281 million individual bills weighing a total of 363 tons. But soon after the money arrived in the chaos of war-torn Baghdad, the paper trail documenting who controlled it all began to go cold.