Richard Spencer

Max Keiser on the manipulation of the prediction market for Obamacare: 



And Max again on the manipulation of the precious metals and treasuries markets.  



Peter Schiff on Paul Krugman's delusions.



And if you're up for a good read, check out this piece by Jon Matonis on the famous "silver spike" of 1980, when the metal climbed to over $40 an ounce (it's now under $20.)

Growing up in Dallas, I remember people mentioning the Hunt brothers and their attempt to "corner the silver market" in dark, hushed tones...  it was always implied that the brothers were these greedy and evil tycoons who wanted to hold the public hostage with a precious metals monopoly. Thankfully the government stepped in before it was too late.

The reality is much different. The Hunt brothers quite rationally expected inflation and feared gold confiscation and were trying to protect their fortune by hoarding silver.

And what a hoard it was:  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, (the Circle K Ranch in Texas) brother in law Randy Kreiling and his brother Tilmon held a shooting contest amongst the cowboys to find the best marksmen. The dozen best marksmen were hired for a special assignment to ride shotgun on one of the largest private silver transfers in history. The Circle K cowboys flew on 3 specially chartered 707 jets to Chicago and New York where they were met by a convoy of armored trucks during the middle of the night. Forty million oz of silver was loaded onto the planes and they immediately flew to Zurich where they were met by another convoy of armored trucks. The cowboys loaded the trucks and silver was dispersed to six different storage locations in Switzerland. The transfer cost Bunker and Herbert $200,000. The storage costs for the 40 million oz in Switzerland and the 15 million oz still in the US amounted to $3 million/year." (from "H.L. Hunt's Boys and the Circle K Cowboys", January 26, 2004)

The "government" -- or rather the COMEX and CBOT markets -- weren't White Knights, but fearing that the brothers might demand delivery of all those metals they legally owned on paper, arbitrarily changed the rules in mid-game, forcing the brothers to liquidate and the price to plummet.  

It's a great read and probably gives a good preview of the kinds of strange, colorful, and frightening things that might happen in the coming inflation.

I can't say that I find any of this surprising... Human Events professes to be the flagship of the conservative movement. And though many CPAC attendees are showing signs of life -- exemplified by Ron Paul's win at this year's straw poll and the popularity of groups like the Campaign for Liberty -- the leadership of the movement is still stuck in a 2003 morass in which Conservatism = Zionism + War.  

Bebe of Conservative Heritage Times sums it up:

The U.S. appears to be gearing up for it...

The budget deficit is much worse than you've heard, says Bud Conrad of Casey Research:

Yesterday, however, I came upon a surprising measure that is as simple as it is effective in helping to understand just how extraordinary today’s deficits are. The measure calculates how big the deficit is, expressed in “constant” dollars – dollars that have the same purchasing power over time.

Using that measure, the current deficit ($1.4 trillion) is a surprising 260% of what the government deficit was in the worst years of WWII, the biggest war we as a nation have ever fought.

The comparison to WWII is relevant and important, because the effort for that war turned this country completely upside down and saw the government commandeer the levers of industry, for example auto makers and refrigerator plants, to make tanks, airplanes, bullets, and bombs. At its peak, the war effort consumed 90% of government spending.

But there’s a crucial difference between then and today: back then we knew that, in time, the war would end and the elevated government spending would be reduced. Today, however, while the cost of military is a still high 20% of federal spending, the vast majority of our government’s expenses are for non-discretionary items, such as Social Security and Medicare, that aren’t expected to be cut. In fact, they are only going to go higher from here.

FrumForum's latest attack on me and AlternativeRight, "Richard Spencer's Nordic Supermen," is notable in that its author, Alex Knepper, has moved beyond the ho-hum "guilt by association" accusations we've come to expect from such people. Earlier he had attempted "guilt by dramatization" and now has tried the exceedingly difficult "guilt by the recounting of an anecdote that reminds the author of the person he's trying to smear." Bold! Knepper's article makes SPLC tactics seem tame and boring in comparison.

The young Alex speaks of his fascination with the esoteric and the fringe, and tells a tale about how he attended a Nordic Pride festival (where, we're not told) and met some Odinists. These rough-and-tumble folks, who wore Thor's Hammers, discussed kith, kin, and bloodlines, and talked about rearing warriors, clearly offended Alex's delicate sensibilities. Alex hints that they're anti-Semitic, but the portrait he paints doesn't lead me to believe that these people have done anything wrong. Our world is full of groups that desire a sense of roots and "Us-ness" -- for proof, Alex might try to join the National Council of La Raza.

I don't have any problem with Pagans, but these people are supposed to be my Nordic Supermen? Really? For nowhere in the article does Alex claim that, say, I was there, that I'm a member of their group, that I even know any of these people, etc. etc. etc.

For further evidence (as if it were needed) of my Nordic supremacy, Alex cites the title of an AltRight article ... by Robert Weissberg, the good-natured, Manhattan-dwelling cosmopolitan who, I'm afraid, is about as far from "Odinic" as you can get.

 

Though I've generally enjoyed the free publicity for my fledging webzine offered by FrumForum, this latest blog really marks a new low in smear. I'd be happy to have a debate with anyone about why African countries fail, but I'm not going to respond to anything mentioned in this blog because Alex Knepper is simply putting words into my mouth. One can't just conjure up a figure who sounds like Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and attribute his words to me (with quotation marks and a full narration no less) because Knepper thinks that it's the kind of thing an "intellectual coward" like me would say. You can't just make stuff up. Some might call this slander, though luckily, I'm a soft-hearted type who'll overlook Mr. Knepper's irresponsibility on account of his youth. I would have thought, however, that even David Frum would have demurred from publishing this piece of garbage at his website.

I'll add that there's nothing about Knepper's Horatio Alger version of European and American history that leads me to believe that he "know[s] the first thing about the West." Class and hierarchy have informed society from the beginning, and even in post-Enlightenment, "individualist" America, political sovereignty is based on the populace ("We The People"). (I don't want to go into this any more, because it's so obvious.) And though Knepper calls me a "collectivist," I guarantee that one can find more advocacy of human freedom in AltRight then in the wonkish, triangulating FrumForum.

PS -- Though I enjoyed the presentation of myself as "fairly tough," unfortunately I have rarely been able to rely on thuggish intimidation and usually have to make recourse to rational arguments -- for now!

I’d like to agree with Austin Bramwell that suburban sprawl is the fault of government, but for the most part, it’s just not true. Moreover, when government does subsidize urban decay and unsightly subdivisions, it does so in ways that Austin doesn’t consider. I imagine my friend reaches his false conclusions mainly due to the fact that he lives in the national anomaly that is New York City.

For the 101st time: sprawl -- an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States -- is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations.

If [John] Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl. It’s odd that self-described libertarians such as Stossel are so slow to grasp that government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous.

The American public (along with the world) doesn't seem to care about last weekend's elections in Iraq. One doesn't even hear much about this March of Freedom from Dubya's greatest admirers within the conservative movement. Michelle Malkin, for instance, hasn't written a column on the subject. Only the center-left is talking up the election -- and it all seems forced, if not sarcastic: "Victory At Last!"; "Iraq's newborn democracy is a juggernaught that will not be stopped." Really?     

A lot of this unconcern is due to the fact that everyone's focused on the economy, healthcare, and Obama. But I think the main reason for it is that the display last weekend was profoundly embarrassing. There were over 6000 candidates "from all of the country's major sects and many different parties," according to Newsweek. And the election represented, even more baldly than here in America, an "advance sale on stolen goods." Jobs, handouts, a more equitable distribution of the fabled Iraqi dish  al-qawza were promised (though, in truth, that latter one was satire.) Even the one-time neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi took part: after getting his use from Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, he's now teamed up with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr! Does anyone out there really want to stand up and exclaim, "Boys, this is what we've been fighting and dying for!"

Tim Mak, a staff reporter at David Frum's modestly titled "FrumForum," has just published a hit piece on Alternative Right that amounts to little more than what Steve Sailer calls "point and stutter." Mak doesn't seem to have read our website very thoroughly -- for he missed out on a lot of juicy material! -- and his entire mode of argumentation could be reduced to him exclaiming, "I can't believe they actually think that!" For in AltRight's mere week of existence, we have expressed sentiments that haven't been heard since the dark, pre-Enlightenment times of "fifty years ago."

Though Mak cherry picked quotes from our 15-minute conversation to support his depiction of me as a reprobate, I don't deny saying any of the things quoted in the piece. Indeed, I think Mak will probably find my ideas even worse after I "put them into context" in this blog! (Plus, it's fun to get inside the mind of a young Frumbot who tries to write like a blogger from Gawker.) So here goes.

The problem with the conservative movement, say the founders of the new webzine, Alternative Right, is that conservatives no longer want to ‘go there’.

“The conservative establishment is… brain dead,” said contributing editor and VDARE.com proprietor Peter Brimelow. “We’re trying to do something cutting-edge,” says editor Richard Spencer.

That’s all well and good, save the fact that the cutting-edge ideas that Alternative Right seeks to promote are actually tired, reactionary ideas that harken back to when people found out there were other races. In fact, their new ideas include concepts that the right largely exorcised fifty years ago, like denying women the right to vote.

The site’s frustration lies in their view that white, male conservatives lack the courage to address issues of sex and race with a sense of superiority. “There are races who, on average, are going to be superior,” says Spencer, with implication in tow.