Twin Deficits!

By Gary North

 

There are two deficits that we hear about most: the federal government's deficit and the balance of payments of the United States. They are linked, but they are very different in their effects.

 

The federal deficit is seen by Keynesians as mostly a benefit and by Austrians as mostly a liability, and for the same reason: higher government spending.

 

The balance-of-payments deficit is seen by virtually all economists as a benefit for Americans and their creditors. Otherwise, the exchanges would not take place.

 

At some point, the twin deficits will become unsustainable. Then the debtors will have a choice: either default or else adopt a systematic reversal of policies: debt repayment. This means a federal-budget surplus and a balance-of-payments surplus. Balanced budgets won't do it. There will have to be surpluses.

 

That day is coming. That will be the day of reckoning — of counting up.

 

The participants give no indications that they believe that day is coming.

 

Neither did Greece's politicians in early 2010… (Read more)

 

Source: Mises.org

Thanksgiving and Marginal Utility

By Gary North

 

O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever (Psalm 136:1–3)

 

This phrase appears in many of the psalms, but when you find the same phrase three times in a row, you can safely conclude that the writer was trying to make a point, and he thought the point was important. I know of no passage in the Bible where any other phrase appears three times in succession.

 

Thanksgiving Day is an old tradition in the United States. Although it was not the first such thanksgiving feast, the holiday had its origins in Plymouth Colony, in the fall of 1621, when the Pilgrims who had survived the first year invited Chief Massasoit to a feast, and he showed up with 90 braves and five deer. The feast lasted three days.

 

There had been a thanksgiving day of prayer and a feast in Maine in 1607. The tiny colony was abandoned a year later. There had also been a thanksgiving service in Jamestown in 1610, but it did not involve a feast.

 

The first official Thanksgiving Day was celebrated on June 29, 1676 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Boston. But Gov. Jonathan Belcher had issued similar proclamations in Massachusetts in 1730 and in New Jersey in 1749. George Washington proclaimed a day of thanksgiving on October 23, 1789, to be celebrated on Thursday, November 27. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln officially restored it as a wartime measure. The holiday then became an American tradition. It became law in 1941.

 

Lincoln was a strange contradiction religiously. He was a religious skeptic, yet he invoked the rhetoric of the King James Bible — accurately — on many occasions. His political rhetoric, which had been deeply influenced by his reading of the King James, was often masterful. For example, when he spoke of the… (Read more)

 

Source: Mises.org