Thursday, June 29, 2006

MARGARET THATCHER: EXCERPTS FROM "SALUTE TO RONALD REAGAN"




"I note President Reagan, from one of your books, that in 1987 you heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the '90s. You were set to run again, because you thought he said a president in his 90s and you were (inaudible)."


"Sir, you strode into our midst at a time when America needed you most. This great country had been through a period of national malaise bereft of any sense of moral direction. Through it all, throughout eight of the fastest moving years in memory, you were unflappable and unyielding."

"You brushed off the jibes and jabs of your jealous critics. With that Irish twinkle and that easy homespun style, which never changed, you brought a new assurance to America. You were not only America's President -- important as that is -- you were a great leader. In a time of average men, you stood taller than anyone else."


"With a toughness unseen for a long time, you stood face-to-face with the evil empire. And, with an unexpected diplomacy which confused your foes -- and even some of your friends -- you reached out to that empire, perhaps no longer evil, but still formidable. You met its leaders on their turf, but on your terms."

"In a time of politicians, you proved yourself a statesman. And that leadership, that faith in freedom and enterprise brought about a renewal of this great country. America was back and the free world became a safer place."

"It was not only that you were the Great Communicator -- and you were the greatest -- but that you had a message to communicate."

"The message that had inspired the founding fathers, the message that has guided this nation from its birth -- the essence of good government is to blend the wisdom of the ages with the circumstances of contemporary times -- that is what you did. Not since Lincoln, or Winston Churchill in Britain, has there been a President who has so understood the power of words to uplift and to inspire."

"You reached beyond partisanship to principles, beyond our own selves to our very souls. You reached for and touched, as Lincoln had said so long before you, the better angels of our nature. Leadership is more than budgets and balance sheets. More than the policy of public measures, it is a matter of moral purpose. And that moral realm is reached by that insight and rhetoric of which only the truly great are capable."

"In 1969, as Governor of California, you spoke at Eisenhower College. It was a terrible time of student rebellion, of violence against property, violence against fellow students and violence against others on the campus. "How and when did all this begin?", you asked. "It began," you said, "the first time someone old enough to know better declared it was no crime to break the law in the name of social protest. It began with those, who in the name of change or progress, decided they could strap all the time- tested wisdom man has accumulated in his climb from the swamp to the stars." And I particularly like the next bit. "


"And my second choice arises because we are coming to the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings -- the Longest Day, the day we dare not lose the battle. Let us recall what you said on the 40th anniversary on those beaches, for no one else could say it better.
You said, "Those men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. The Americans who fought here that morning," you continued, "knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They felt in their hearts that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell. And they knew that God was an ally in this great cause. That night General Ridgeway was listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua; 'I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee'." And you said "Let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died. We will always remember. We will always be proud."


"Ron, I think that was your greatest speech. "

"Like Winston Churchill, you made words fight like soldiers and lifted the spirit of the nation
And my third one, also a favorite, which was seen the world over, was the terrible Challenger space shuttle disaster. You knew immediately, with that unfailing instinct, that the tragedy needed a national voice to share the mourning, to comfort and yet to say, "The quest must go on." You were on television within hours. And I remember so well you spoke especially to the school children who had been watching. You said "I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew is pulling us into the future. And we'll continue to follow them." And, of course, America did, as we saw today. "



"You always had the right words, and we honor you for it. "


"There were so many other speeches, some prophetic, some humorous, but all with a vision, all which inspired. We could identify with each and every one. More than anyone else, you knew peoples' desire to be attached to some cause greater than themselves. "

"So, instead of inundating the American people with the torrent of projections and percentages, you spoke of the voluntary spirit of community and charity. "

"When others spoke of the fear of war, you spoke of the need for warriors and peace through strength. When others bewailed the failure of big government to provide for the collective good, you spoke of self-reliance, of personal responsibility, of individual pride and integrity. When others demanded compromise -- when other demanded compromise, you, Ronald Reagan, preached conviction."

FINNISH EU LEADERSHIP - A SHAMEFUL INTRODUCTION

Finland already has power to hike its own alchohol taxes but ever since there are about to takeover the position of EU Leadership, they want higher alchohol taxes in every EU nation to prevent Finns from making purchases where taxes are less oppressive. Curbing alchoholism is not a matter of the government but rather the matter of every individual who is accountable for what he does, so why shouldn't Finnish policymakers expell their miserable suggestions and finally let everyone on this statist European continent of socialism, to be able to realize one of his/her very basic and inalienable right - FREE CHOICE!

Read about the topic discussed above here.

THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH A TRADE DEFICIT

Read Alan Reynolds's effective explanation which correctly points out that trade deficits are a sign of economic strength, since it means that a nation gas a growing economy and that foreigners find it a good place to invest.

"The Economist's survey of world forecasters estimates the current account deficit will reach 7.3 percent of GDP in Spain this year and 5.6 percent of GDP in Australia. I think the U.S. current account deficit will be about 6.5 percent, the flip side of which means that 6.5 percent of GDP measures the difference between foreign investment rushing into the United States minus the amount of U.S. investment flowing abroad. We have a large capital surplus, otherwise known as a current account deficit.
What do countries with large capital account surpluses have in common? Economic growth over the past year was 3.1 percent in Australia, 3.5 percent in Spain and 3.6 percent in the United States. The expected current account deficit is smaller in the United Kingdom (2.7 percent), yet British economic growth is also slower (2.2 percent). India's current account deficit is running about 2.5 percent of GDP. By contrast, Germany has a perpetual current account surplus and a pathetic economic growth rate that has long been stuck close to 1 percent..."


Read more on Market Center Blog at CENTER FOR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

MERCER'S SURVEY: THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE CITIES 2006

Click here and view the latest Mercer's Survey which covers the research of where is the most expensive place in the world.

Here're some of the most fascinating results:

1. Moscow has taken the lead of world's most expensive city.

2. London has moved downward and is not anymore recognized as the world's most expensive city.

3. According to EIU Survery, ten the most expensive cities in the World are the following ones: (1) Oslo, (2) Tokyo, (3) Reykjavik, (4) Osaka, (5) Paris, (6) Copenhagen, (7) London, (8) Zurich, (9) Geneva, (10) Helsinki

4. Click here and check the richest cities in the world (UBS Survery)

5. Click here and see the top 10 European Business Cities

6. Click here and view the most expensive shopping streets in Europe and in Americas

7. Click here and see the 50 most literate cities in the U.S. The results are quite surprising

8. Click here and check-up the latest "up-to-date" reports concerning the situations of health care, education, business, economics, finance, sport, transport and of course TOURISM!

Monday, June 26, 2006

THUMBS UP!

Read "The Road from Serfdom" where Friedrich August von Hayek is being interviewed by Thomas W. Hazlett

Sunday, June 18, 2006

DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM: WHO ARE THE ENEMIES OF OPEN MARKET SOCIETY

"What hadn't been realized in the literature until now is that merely to describe how severely something has been tested in the past itself embodies inductive assumptions, even as a statement about the past."
ROBERT NOZICK

After having overcome relative transitional progress it seems invariable that the numbers of those who fearfully reject the idea of open society and send fanatical shocks to those who advocate the very fruitful idea of open society. The roots of opposition to open society lies in the most anti-American country nowadays, namely France and it spreads like a disease through the signals of those who Karl Popper named them “the enemies of open society”.

Open Society is about prosperity and progress. Its idea is the idea of happiness being achieved through openness and productive behavior, rewarding risk, work and entrepreneurship as the main point of productive behavior respectively. The most giant source of opposition to open society is so called “wordsmith” intellectualism and it is mainly outsourced by those who pretend to be highly important persons in every-day life. Those wordsmiths include poets, novelists, literary critics, newspaper and magazine journalists, and many professors.

In fact those wordsmiths have wages above average. They fare well in capitalist society. In fact, the opposition to capitalist society is a social significance. Intellectual wordsmiths sends wave of how to behave and how to express ourselves. Their proposals are mostly counter-productive. Following the reasonable sentence each individual is guided through the invisible hand, guiding him through the market in order to help him pursuing his or her interest enabling prosperity and long-term happiness. However, intellectuals and other enemies of open society are afraid of progress and its increase. By and large, each wordsmith intellectual is afraid of success of the other because the value of anti-capitalist intellectual would have been laid-down. That’s how propelling towards anti-capitalism and expressing extremely activist thoughts against it factually depends on other forces pushing the enemies of open society on the edge of despair where anti-capitalistic views are the only tool left in order to boost the promotion of fearful hostility towards those who are more successful and are being pointed out as exploiting people (Americans, Capitalists, Jews,…).

As normal and hard-working people are heading towards progress, wordsmith intellectuals use the only lethal weapon left in order to keep trying to put them down. This very commonly used weapon is so called “neoliberalism” used by the Soviet satellites. Progress is what you gain from hard-work, risk, self-initiative and entrepreneurial actions, penetrating into the information asymmetry and choosing the best maybe for today’s less but inevitably for tomorrow’s more. However, “wordsmith” enemies of open society dislike “productive initiative” and their way to stop it is to try to cause disorder of information. The latter is entailed within the wordsmith argument of “social state”, “social ethics, “social whatever”… But as FA Hayek correctly emphasized facing arguments and instantly using the word social means to avoid personal responsibility and transfigure it onto something what is actually unknown to everybody. Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. Agreeably, intellectuals have been expressing enviousness instantly to those who achieved the truest value of prosperity which seems unreachable to wordsmith intellectuals. Instead, intellectuals rather humble those who advocate free choice and use its function in order to prosper tomorrow and become rich by inserting the human capital where it yields the most profitable returns. Wordsmith intellectuals however don’t seem to be in favor of this. Successful capitalists, inventors and businessmen are pointed out as the main enemies of welfare, as the source of exploitation.

The reason for this very unfavorable hostility is that wordsmiths are simply captured “somewhere in the middle of nowhere”. They don’t understand the trade and don’t know how to explain the measure of relative value together with marginal utility which makes them impossible to understand what Hayek called “an expanded order”.

Wordsmith intellectuals, as the main advocates of “explicit socialism”, are captured within the essence of wrong and harmful definition of individual. Their definition of the latter is to be highly active and completely dedicated to the idea of cherishing his choice and eliminating his shiningly flattering career in order to contribute as much power as possible to community.

In the mentality of socialists and collectivists each prosperous individual has been treated negatively, as an enemy and exploiter, just because his race for profit has enabled welfare to thousand and let them into the fortune of middle class income earners. Wordsmith intellectuals build their defense by penetrating where it’s possible to send waves of anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism because their defective way of thinking seeks channels of propaganda and thus “successfully” implements the lessons of Lenin, their most probable source of philosophical inspiration. It is not surprising that in many Western and few Eastern countries media are keep frightening people about progress and liberal economic reforms (i.e. flat tax). Those sheltered signals are the product of pure anti-capitalist mentality and leftist propaganda whose weapon against Reason, courage and challenge is media and especially daily newspapers where we can see what kind of miserable “shits” are possible to be written by those who are completely unaware of some basic principles of Economics.

Who knows, perhaps one the most masterful macroeconomists, Gregory Mankiw could start teaching them some basic definitions and laws of Economics.

Another possibly the most probable, much more elementary source of anti-Capitalism and extreme hostility towards the creature of competitive, successful and encouraged individuals is the school system. There, wordsmith intellectuals have succeeded on nearly every front and send anti-capitalistically inspired youth on the market where their “social significance” is recognized in a complete unawareness of productive behavior which could boost their unused grain of power and help them becoming the leaders of tomorrow. The (future) wordsmith intellectuals are successful within the formal, official social system of the schools, wherein the relevant rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. The schools contain another informal social system within classrooms, hallways, and schoolyards, wherein rewards are distributed not by central direction but spontaneously at the pleasure and whim of schoolmates. Here the intellectuals do less well.

It is not surprising, therefore, that distribution of goods and rewards via a centrally organized distributional mechanism later strikes intellectuals as more appropriate than the "anarchy and chaos" of the marketplace. For distribution in a centrally planned socialist society stands to distribution in a capitalist society as distribution by the teacher stands to distribution by the schoolyard and hallway.

Beside promoting income equality and telling capitalists, economists, businessmen and free marketers exploiters makes wordsmiths a firm grounding of ideological fire, holding strongly against the efforts of economic progress and defining market as chaos.

Public schools are in general the opposition to private property itself. Wordsmith intellectuals seem to be the most fanatical defenders of anti-Americanism, hiding behind the curtain of “human rights”. Neosocialism’s defective way of thinking has poured into nearly every channeled area of life. The ideas sound fairly well in practice and extend from feminism, environmental protection and the defense of human rights. But when you uncover the shield you discover the unthinkable – a dirty mud of hostility towards everything what is more successful and continues to prosper accordingly.

The world of wordsmith intellectuals is actually a fairytale world of hopelessness, uncompetitiveness and fearfully hostile anti-capitalistic mentality wherein “literary critics” and sometimes even amusingly funny “novelists” produce their very special forcible thoughts of development puzzled into a phenomena called “anti-Capitalism”.

“There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.”
RONALD REAGAN


The opposition to free market society, competitive advantage, productive behavior, encouraged challenge of creating positively unthinkable achievements, competitive entrepreneurship, risk taking, progress and going for growth are only the fractions being a great target for wordsmith intellectuals in order to shoot them and penalize them for being successful, prosperous and challengingly encouraged to go forward. Helpfully recommended is to not listen to them and ask what you can do for you for today’s less in order to achieve comprehensive tomorrow’s more.

Disclaimer: Together with libertarec.blogspot.com, Capitalism & Freedom is a newly-joint member of Freemasonic-Zionistic-Libertarian conspiracy for destroying Alpine paradise of public economic well-being for pensioners and public privileges of wordsmith intellectuals penetrated into the channels of public rent-seeking.


Literature

Annelise Anderson, Martin Anderson and Ronald Reagan: Reagan in His Own Hand. The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America, Free Press, 2001
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074320123X/104-9966621-4914341?v=glance&n=283155

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago University Press, 1972
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15395.ctl

Friedrich August von Hayek, Fatal Conceit: Errors of Socialism, Chicago University Press, 1988
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320669/104-9966621-4914341?v=glance&n=283155

Ludwig von Mises, Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Libertarian Press, 1972
http://libertarec.blogspot.com/anticap.pdf

Gregory Mankiw, Teaching Principles of Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, 1998

Robert Nozick, Why Do Intelectuals Oppose Capitalism, CATO Policy Report, 1998
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html

Alexander Marriot, The Limitations of Marxist Approach to Writing History, Capitalism Magazine, 2005
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4512

Sean Hannity, Deliver us from Evil. Defeating Terrorism, Despotism…, Reagan Books, 2004
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060582510/104-9966621-4914341?v=glance&n=283155

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

CAPITALISM - MAKE A WISH IN EVERY PROSPEROUS FOUNTAIN!

"There is no such thing as society."
MARGARET H. THATHCER



"Then the dean understood what had puzzled him in Roark's manner.
"You know," he said, "you would sound much more convincing if you spoke as if you cared whether I agreed with you or not."
"That's true," said Roark. "I don't care whether you agree with me or not." He said it so simply that it did not sound offensive, it sounded like the statement of a fact which he noticed, puzzled, for the first time.
"You don't care what others think - which might be understandable. But you don't care even to make them think as you do?"
"No."
"But that's... that's monstrous."
"Is it? Probably, I couldn't say."
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead

INDIA: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REAL-ESTATE INVESTMENT AFTER LIBERALIZING THE INVESTMENT RULES

Over the past decade, India has valuted from an also-ran to a leader in global economy. It is becoming an attractive magnet to foreign investment. Its presence in India remarkably outshines the global average. The increase in foreign investment, more competitive joint ventures between Indian and foreign companies and a gigantic growth of Indian domestic economy have create an uprising employment opportunities on Indian market for Indian young, proferssional, highly skilled and middle-classed workforce. With more disposable income workers are spending more on consumer goods and services and especially BUYING HOMES!
Click here in order to connect to one of Ernst&Youngs' latest reports on Indian "real estate" FDI and the liberalization of the investment rules. The file is downloadable!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

CONGRATULATIONS - CAPITALISM DAY - 6th OF JUNE - LETS' CELEBRATE LAISSEZ FAIRE




"Education is the best provision for the journey to old age."
ARISTOTLE


"The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others."
JOHN LOCKE


"It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy...What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage."
ADAM SMITH


"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
THOMAS JEFFERSON


"They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers. The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."
FREDERIC BASTIAT


"Individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices."
LUDWIG von MISES


"The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve the “common good”. It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with mans rational nature, that it protects mans survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice."
AYN RAND