Creason Family

Happy Veterans Day to my older brother whom serves now and to all those who are currently serving or did in the past. Thank you.

I found this extremely interesting, and I'd love to try it!

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
-Thomas Sowell

This article has some good points, and some really funny ones too :-) My favorite is this:

"And it's unlikely that all the pseudo-hipsters who buy their Che T-shirts at Urban Outfitters will stop wearing them. No. These T-shirts send a message, which effectively boils down to this: I have vague left-wing sympathies but don't read history. I am educated enough to want nonconformity but not intelligent enough to avoid conformity. I believe in supporting the wretched of the earth but happily purchase products from multinational corporations."

Read the whole thing here.

Party like it's 1234567890!! This is awesome, mainly because I'm a computer programmer and I use Unix Time frequently, but others may appreciate it as well!

http://www.1234567890day.com/

This is kinda neat. Google created a website with a few tools which allow you check your internet connection and see if your ISP is messing with you or not. It's obviously more technical than that, but read this PC World article; Google, Partners Release Net Neutrality Tools.

One interesting excerpt from the article:
"If you believe that network neutrality government regulation is not needed, if you believe that the market will handle this ... then you should also welcome Measurement Labs," Felten said. "What you are appealing to is a process of public discussion ... in which consumers move to the ISP [Internet service provider] that gives them the best performance. It's a market that's facilitated by better information."

Mom, I suggest you try this tool, although I haven't yet even reached the page... Ironically, it seems to be down right now...

This is taken from: http://www.house.gov/list/speech/tx14_paul/Living_Beneath_Means.shtml

It has been said, and all too often ignored, if you live beyond your means, you will be forced to live beneath your means.
Living and consuming on borrowed money always end. Lenders, even in an age of inflation, have their limits.
When living extravagantly, it seems the good times will continue forever. But when the bills come due and the debt, with interest, needs to be repaid, the good times end. The fiction that the appreciating prices of houses, stocks and other assets serve as savings is always self-limited and ends with pain.
Without a source of newly borrowed funds, once the values of stocks and houses depreciate, the individual comes to the realization that hard work and effort are required to produce sustained wealth.
Working minimally is replaced with working maximally to survive, as well as to pay for the extravagance of previous years.
The consequence is more work and a diminished standard of living.
A nation that has lived beyond its means for a long period of time must go through a similar process. Once the national debt grows to an extreme proportion, as ours has, there’s no possibility of its being paid off in the conventional sense.
Default and liquidation are required. But sovereign states that enjoy the ruthless power to tax and create new money always resort to paying their bills by deliberately depreciating the currency. This makes it hard to identify the victims and the beneficiaries.
Today’s middle class and poor are suffering and the elite are being bailed out, and all the while, the Federal Reserve refuses to tell the Congress exactly who has benefited by its largesse. The beneficial corrections that come with a recession, of debt liquidation and removing the mal-investment, are delayed by government bailouts. This strategy proved in the 1930s to transform a recession into a Great Depression and will surely do so again.
We have become the greatest debtor nation in the world. The borrowed money was not used to build our industries but was used mainly for consumption. The fact that the world trusted the dollar as the reserve currency significantly contributed to the imbalances of the world financial system.
The fiat dollar standard that evolved after the breakdown of Bretton Woods in 1971 has ended. This is a consequence of our privileged position of living way beyond our means for too many years.
At present, all efforts worldwide are directed toward salvaging a financial system that cannot be revived. The only tool the economic planners have is the creation of trillions of dollars of new money out of thin air. All this does is delay the inevitable and magnify the future danger.
Central bank cooperation in the scheme will not make it work. Pretending the dollar is maintaining real value by manipulating the price of gold—the historic mechanism for measuring a currency’s value—will work no better than the effort of the 1960s to keep gold at $35 an ounce. Nevertheless, Bretton Woods failed in 1971 as was predicted by the free-market economists, despite these efforts.
This crisis we’re in is destined to get much worse, because the real cause is not acknowledged. Not only are the corrections delayed and distorted, additional problems are yet to be dealt with—the commercial property bubble, the insolvent retirement funds, both private and public, state finances, and the university trust funds. For all these problems, only massive currency inflation is offered by the Fed.
The real concern ought to be for a dollar crisis which will come if we don’t change our ways.
Even massive bailouts cannot work! If they did, no person in the United States would ever have to work again.
We need to wake up and recognize the importance of sound money. We need to reintroduce the work ethic. We must once again cherish savings over consumption. We must recognize that an overextended foreign policy has been the downfall of all great nations.
Above all else, we need to simply believe once again in the free society that made America great.

He can say it much better than I can; Ron Paul on the current economy, taken straight from: http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2008/tst033008.htm

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On Money, Inflation and Government

These past few weeks have provided an unfortunate opportunity to discuss inflation. The dollar index has reached new all-time lows. The total money supply, M3, as calculated by private sources, is growing at a disturbing 17% rate. The Fed is pumping dollars into the economy at an alarming rate. Just recently the Fed announced new loan auctions totaling $100 billion. That is new money created from thin air. If these money auctions, combined with the bailout of Bear Stearns, continue to be the trend, we are in for some economic stormy weather. The explanation lies in understanding the basics of money, and why it is dangerous to give government and big banks control over it.

First, money is not wealth, in and of itself. You cannot create more wealth simply by creating more money. Wall Street bankers cry out for more liquidity, but what is really needed is more value behind the dollar. But the value, unfortunately, isn't there.

You see, the Fed creates new money and uses it to purchase securities from banks. Flush with funds, these banks seek to put this money to use. During the Fed's expansionary period, much of this money went to home loans. Through a combination of federal government inducements to lend to risky borrowers, and the Fed's supply of easy money, the housing bubble took shape. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were encouraged to purchase and securitize mortgages, while investors, buoyed by implicit government backing, rushed to provide funding. Money that could have been invested in more productive, less risky sectors of the economy was thereby malinvested in subprime mortgage loans.

The implicit guarantee from the Fed is quickly becoming explicit, as those institutions deemed "too big to fail" are bailed out at taxpayer expense. Wall Street made a killing during the housing bubble, reaping record profits. Now that the bubble has burst, these same firms are trying to dump their losses on the taxpayers. This approach requires more money creation, and therefore debasement of all dollars in circulation.

The Federal Reserve, a quasi-government entity, should not be creating money or determining interest rates, as this causes malinvestment and excessive debt to accumulate. Centrally planned, government manipulated economies always fail eventually. The collapse of communism and the failure of socialism should have made this apparent. Even the most educated, well-intentioned central planners cannot plan the market better than the market itself. Those that understand economics best, understand this reality.

In free markets, both success and failure are options. If government interventions prevent businesses, like Bear Stearns, from failing, then it is not truly a free market. As painful as it might be for Wall Street, banks, even big ones, must be allowed to fail.

The end game for this policy of monetary inflation is that the money in your bank account loses purchasing power. So, by keeping failing banks afloat, the Fed punishes those who have lived frugally and saved. The power to create money is a power that should never be granted to government. As we can plainly see today, the Fed has abused this power, and taxpayers are paying the price.