It already shouldn’t matter (at least not in the west), but certain individuals do seem to think that equality an intrinsically good thing and they’re not likely to be going away. Suffice to say, I have no time for them.

…That leaves the frozen Fed strategy. For this alternative I admit to having considerable sympathy: I can hardly do otherwise, having proposed the idea myself in my first book (see chapter 11). Besides, unlike the other plans this one could preserve the dollar network whilst safeguarding dollar holders from the Fed’s machinations. But in what sense is this strategy any less of a cop-out than my now favorite plan for replacing the present Federal Reserve dollar with an NGDP- (or Domestic Final Demand) stabilizing Bitdollar? If a tamper-proof Bitdollar is a form of monetary central planning, then so is a frozen Fed dollar. The difference between the schemes is, not that one involves a planned base money stock and the other doesn’t, but that one involves a fixed base money stock and the other doesn’t.

But, you may ask, isn’t a fixed stock of base money more consistent with laissez-faire than a stock that grows at some constant rate while also adjusting, albeit automatically, in response to changes in the real demand for base money? No, it isn’t. Consider the classical gold standard, or any commodity-money regime for that matter. Such a regime involves, not a constant monetary base, but one that tends to expand along with growth in the real demand for base dollars. Thus the long-run price-level stability that was one of the gold standard’s most noteworthy achievements. Whatever else it might be doing, a discretionary Fed that insisted upon keeping the monetary base constant would not be emulating a gold standard. Instead, it would be pursuing a policy that might well lead to disturbances as serious, if not considerably more serious, than those that could be justly attributed to the historical gold standard or (for that matter) than those that might arise today under a discretion-based regime that yielded low and steady inflation. In any event the belief that a central bank is “doing nothing” when it chooses to maintain a constant monetary base (or constant stock of any monetary aggregate) is my personal choice for top honors (and, take my word for it, the competition is stiff) in the “crudest free market monetary fallacy” contest.

http://www.freebanking.org/2014/12/12/free-banking-and-the-dollar/

But be careful, if you start reading someone as sensible as George Selgin, who knows where it will end …

Well, duuuuuh…

“We’ve established that the average Japanese IQ is 108 with a narrow distribution around that figure, so clearly they are not retards. Maybe they are smarter than Stockman and Zerohedge.”

This joke just made my day, thanks mate.

Oh, wait … sorry … It turns out Abe won in a LANDSLIDE and has a veto-proof majority for the next five years (with the help of his coalition partner Komeito).

Are the Japanese retards? Or after two years of Abenomics are they still reasonably of the view that it’s the best option on the table?

We’ve established that the average Japanese IQ is 108 with a narrow distribution around that figure, so clearly they are not retards. Maybe they are smarter than Stockman and Zerohedge …

I thought it was pretty funny how the last thing he said was him going, “I’m more humble than the Americans. That’s the difference between us” as if there’s some sort of humility contest that he’s totally kicking the Americans’ asses in. Hey, Dugin, ever heard of being a sore winner?