Winter Patriot Community Blog

I've been wondering for a while now how much of the economy is based on the phenomena of trading cards, batman cards, baseball cards. It costs probably less than a cent to make a card. Flip it a few times and it can sell for hundreds of dollars. What can you do but try to sell it off at a higher price?

A new generation grows up and maybe they don't care who Sandy Koufax or the funny-style batman was. Then what would you have? A ten thousand dollar shoebox.

It defies comprehension that a country that can't/won't afford to cover its citizens health care costs, can afford to bail out the rich for being greedy.

At 16 seconds Bush praises "fine taxpayers":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdeCl1ZDYwo

If - when - this bill passes, the government will have sold our children and grandchildren into indentured servitude.

I've known for a very long time that "whatever" has co opted the united states government is the center of evil in this world....It's not the system that is broken, but rather a moral malleability (euphamism to the nth) that has brought us to this perceived edge of an abyss......there's an evil hegelian dialectic that has been in place since I was born, and i'll assume before.......I could always feel it, but never could define it until later years.........try to step outside the dialectic, take a deep breath, and remember what it is to be free and in your natural state..........the conclusion of the dialectic will enslave you if you allow it...........divine intervention is as valid a philosophy.

Sorry, should have put afford as 'afford'

Well guys it looks like NZ has fallen head over heals for John Key (Leader of the NZ National party) who’s resume includes “Investment Banker/Adisor to defunct Merrill Lynch in the US. Our main newspaper The New Zealand Herald and a host of others is now owned by Irish Billionaire "Tony Oreilly who has major connections to Shell and Exxon. He's also in business with the Carlyle group in Australia where they own a large share of the Australian media in partnership. Looks like honest forthright John Key who never states his opinion on anything at the advise of public relations firm “Crosby Texter” will be the next PM after our nov 8 election leading a bunch of corporate sycophants with a record of selling off our assets to wealthy men at fire sale prices. They don’t believe in regulation or in the state managing Health care and other sectors. They are part of the corporate cult.
I'm opting for the lesser evil once again which will be Labour/Green coalition. If we get National I think we'll be joining you all real soon in disbelief and despair. That will happen anyway. Our stupid government invested our national superannuation fund in the stock market. I warned them to pull the money out a few months ago "ha ha :)" re the uptick rule and collapse of Bear Stearn etc. Just look what all those experts have achieved aye.
Nearly 1 billion of our 4 billion super fund lost pretty quick. So the self interested reckless folly of our experts who probably knew it would all fall apart but took those big bonuses and kept quiet has cost us a big chunk of the future and no doubt it will be much more soon.

Just a little comment on the dismissal of economic theory. Unfortunately what universities (especially in the english speaking world) teach about the subject is just a little part of neoclassical literature about economics. There are other unknown theory that are probably closer to reality, a model would never be reality, but it can come closer than others.
General equilibrium theory to which all economic measures are inspired, for instance, have been theoretically (and Mathematically) proved wrong in 1960. But no one teaches us this.
Friedman, that everyone hates, posed great emphasis on strict statistical proof of economic theories and proved wrong many economic measures that were taken as granted especially in monetary economics. That part of his economic theory is ignored. He is the typical example of what policymakers do with economics: they take the bit they like, out of the context where it was formulated and leave the rest. It is like taking in maths only sums and differences and forgetting the other basic operations.
Regards, Eliseo

Friedman was a student (disciple?) of Irving Fisher, a professor of economics who during the Great Depression came to understand how the economy really worked. He understood the central importance of credit creation and the imperative that this be in the hands of the government and NOT in private hands.
Friedman was inimately aware of this yet went to work for those private hands at the University of Chicago. He sold his soul for a handful of silver.