As I write this, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average is up 53.92 points.  Oooohhhh.  This week, it climbed up 9% from its low of around 6000.  Cause for celebration?  Hardly.  The Dims and pro-stimulus Rips (i.e. Keynesians) are touting the triumph of central banking and government-controlled economics over adversity.  Apparently, so they say, the stimulus plan is working sooner than they thought.  There's a reason the market is up but it's more than likely not the reasons they want you to think.  No one wants to admit why and what is going on which shows how shallow our media is to simply start celebrating stimulus plans at the first sign of an uptick.  Most people are scratching their heads--Dims are pleasantly surprised and Rips are saying, "gee, well I guess it does work".  It doesn't.

In January, believe it or not, we cut our trade deficit by a small amount, the manufacturing sector (at least in Georgia) has actually grown, consumer confidence has grown despite the president's herranging of the economy because people have accepted times are tough and are adjusting as such.  The panic is simply settling.  This is how recessions (and potential depressions) work.  There's a drop, a panic, an acceptance, and a rebuilding, the end.  The problem right now is all part of the boom-bust cycle (made worse by government tampering) and is only temporary.  However, what is left out of the national discussion is that the fundamentals are not strong, we're not out of the woods yet, we've merely had a good couple of days in the market, which happens, and is not reflective of the economy as a whole. 

A huge reason for the upswing is because of a massive investment rush in health care companies like Humana, mainly because of all the talk about nationalizing health care, Keynesians are rushing to the trough to make their money, and Misesians (i.e. smart people) are putting their money in to capitalize and then get the hell out as soon as the nationalization of it is eminent.  Note the fact that financial stocks were plummeting when there was talk of nationalization, now that nationalization has been dismissed as an inevitablity and the banks have reported (shocker!) a profit, investment in them began inching up again.  Barring all of this in mind, there is no way that this week's upswing is because of the stimulus plan, and I don't even have to mention that NONE OF THE MONEY HAS EVEN BEEN SPENT YET!!!!!

I do have a feeling that the market will plummet if this card-check nonsense is passed, and it will begin tanking again once the tax-hikes and all the spending kicks in.  China, (the communists!) are sounding ever more and more capitalist when they tell us to stop spending and announce their squeemishness towards buying up more treasuries (they're actually saying "buying the US's debt" now).  And all of this is just a prelude to what will happen to us once that debt comes home to roost.  Europe and Asia are already talking about wanting a one world-currency, which usually makes folks on my side of the spectrum flip out but let me tell you: we already have a one world-currency--the US dollar.  Remember Bretton Woods?  Making the US Dollar the base currency for trade?  That's what a one world-currency is!  A trade currency!  That, I'm okay with, truthfully.  With the countries keeping their own currency based on a central currency held in reserves (by the countries' own banks, I'm NOT okay with a global central bank) and used strictly for trade.  The bad news on this is: bye-bye US Dollar.  The air would spew out from under it and the dollar will crash and America will be forced into having a (I know this is a stretch) real currency backed by either goods or gold.

Anyway, back on track!  An economy is more than just a stock market, and a fundamentally strong market can have a low amount of trading or no trading at all.  Third-world countries have economies, smaller countries have economies, and they don't trade on the floor of any stock exchange!  An economy is anywhere where there are human transactions and an exchange of goods, whether you're trading ducks, grapefruits, or dollars, it's an economy--and a fundamentally strong economy can exist without a stock exchange.  Smaller "emerging market" economies are fundamentally stronger than America's economy.  Hong Kong's economy is more fundamentally sound.  Singapore's economy is more fundamentally sound.  Switzerland's economy is more fundamentally sound.  China's economy is more fundamentally sound.  And these are all by capitalist standards!  The thing is that America's GDP is bigger than all of these countries' GDPs (our GDP is calculated rather fraudulently, by the way, wait for it) and more stocks are traded on our stock exchange floors than in these other countries but they are stronger economically.  You know why?  It's because they're producers, we are consumers.  We have become the Soviet Union.  More communist than China.  Surprised? 

An economy's strength cannot be judged by the GDP alone.  Our GDP measures all transactions in America, including the exchange of goods from foreign companies and excludes the exchange of American goods in foreign countries!  The GDP used to simply measure how much money American companies made; how much American goods made by American companies had been bought and sold domestically or foreign.  It doesn't measure that anymore.  The GDP now merely calculates our consumerism.  How much money we've spent as a market rather than how much we've earned as a nation.  So truthfully, the front of America having the strongest economy in the world is nothing less than a farse.  Strip away the fraudulent GDP, the artificially maintained inflation, and the picture becomes rather grim.  No longer do we see a robust nation that capitalism built, but a lie that socialism destroyed.  We are the world's biggest debtor, using the fact that our dollar is "needed" in order for other countries trade to force them to prop us up as we consumed whatever they created.  For what?  For "rights" that socialists and progressives insisted everyone was entitled to.  The truth is that we're a couple ammendments (speech, arms) shy of pure communism, and the government is working on those.

So this is the big joke, people.  We, the country founded on classical liberalism, free markets, and liberty (which means freedom from government) find ourselves in a country that sees our once inalienable rights as more arbitrary annoyances to be overcome.  The nation that fought the tyranny of communism adopted its principles in order to be "inclusive".  We allowed ourselves to get fat off of our newly defined consumer-capitalism where we take and take, never wanting to be bothered to earn.  Now, we wake up in chains.  Enslaved for the rest of our lives and for future generations.  What was once the freest country on Earth is now the least free.  We've been destroyed by our own mismanagement, miseducation, and misunderstanding of the very system of capitalism we pioneered.  That's the great joke.  How do you feel about the punch-line?

I write this as a staunch classical liberal and a minarchist.  A writer who believes in freedom and liberty as my highest of values.  Wont for those is what guides my decisions, my economics, my views, and forces me to defend the values of this country.  I refuse to let a good day on the DOW or a bromidic speech by some man-boy president guide what I know is right.  They say that stimulus is necessary.  Is it?  What is more important?  Security or freedom?  The slaves were secure.  They had housing, food, even medical care all supplied to them by their masters but they still weren't free.  And isn't that the burning desire that is etched through each and every one of the ideas that formed this country?  Whether it be the Articles of Association, the Articles of Confederation, or the Constitution, we all sought freedom from the heavy hand of government control.  We're so obsessed with the banks and the New York Stock Exchange like they're the most important thing America has!  It's not!  We have principles of freedom and liberty.  They're in our book stores!  The very ideas that made this country are available whenever you want in the words of Adam Smith, DeCartes, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Samuel and John Adams, even Aristotle and Socrates!  The resounding idea that men are made to be free!  Not safe!  Free!  And that it's men, not government that should be free.

We've totally lost this.  This is why I can mourn on a day when the market is up.  I don't care where the DOW or the S&P 500 are at.  They simply measure the value of stocks, not the strength of our economy.  The DOW or the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ are not accurate measures of our economy, but our economy is an accurate measure of our freedom. 

Show me a free people, and I'll show you a prosperous people.

And that's the Real Spit
-WilliamPitt