Quote of the day, from Jeff Carter’s Points and Figures blog, a post entitled “Disrupting Government”:
Tech initially toppled major corporations. Motorola and Kodak are shells of themselves. Now, technology has the opportunity to eliminate wide swaths of government and all the cronies, cartels, employees and economic imbalances that come with them. As a society, we shouldn’t fight that. We should embrace it. Automation of government will make things cheaper for taxpayers. Elimination of old fashioned out of step government will make things better for society.
RTWT.
Jeff wrote very favorably about America 3.0.
And the “Disrupting Government” post is a very “America 3.0” view of the future, which I heartily share and endorse.
But that is not the only reason I like his stuff. Jeff is a former floor trader, angel investor involved in the start-up scene in Chicago, and all around astute, sensible and articulate observer of politics, business and the economy.
A few other good recent posts from Jeff include:
Hillary Skewers the Gig Economy,
Greece and Traditional Hierarchy,
The Third Wave, and
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But Echoes, which said, among other insightful things, “I encourage you to read a book, America 3.0. It charts a realistic way forward given the kind of government we have, and the history our country has had.”
Be sure to drop by Points and Figures frequently.
And don’t just take it from me.
Instapundit frequently links to Jeff’s blog, because it is just that good.
thanks. America 3.0 is a damn good book. People from both parties should be able to read it and see the way forward. It’s based on history, and shows us an optimistic way to move forward in America using our historical roots. There will be people that don’t like it-but they are European socialists, or worse.
From Dodd-Frank; Total Fail:
“Other costs were not so transparent. For example, commodity traders have to put up a lot more capital to trade these days. That’s created less liquidity on bid/ask spreads in some markets. Moves have been more volatile than before. Ask a grain, meat, or metals speculator about the markets they trade. Small lots can have outsize effect on market price over the short term.”
It’s impossible to understate how much Dodd-Frank has damaged our country and our financial system. In the summer of 2011 new restrictions on the trading of precious metals came into affect.
As of July 15, 2011, Dodd Frank will effectively ban the trading of most retail OTC contracts for gold, silver, and all other metals. In particular, Section 742(a) of Dodd Frank prohibits any person [which includes companies] from entering into, or offering to enter into, a transaction in any commodity with a person that is not an eligible contract participant or an eligible commercial entity, on a leveraged or margined basis. The intent of this provision was to expand the narrow so called “Zelener fix” in the Farm Bill enacted by Congress during 2008. [Previously the Farm Bill enabled the CFTC to pursue anti-fraud actions involving rolling spot transactions and/or other leveraged forex transactions without the need to prove that they are futures contracts.] The expansion of authority given by Dodd-Frank to the CFTC now allows them to regulate virtually all retail cash commodity market products that involve leverage or margin – in other words OTC precious metals.
There was a lot of debate about what this actually meant, but in the end it was decided it meant that precious metals like gold and silver could no longer be traded with leverage by retail investors. It effectively meant that trading precious metals by retail investors was outlawed. The CME followed by repeatedly raising margin requirements on option contracts, and within a few weeks gold peaked and has since lost over 40% of its value.
In the interests of protecting the markets from ‘speculators’, Congress (or whomever pulls their strings) killed gold and the biggest challenge to their loathsome takeover of our economy.
Impossible to overstate that is. The law is so bad that there aren’t enough adequate superlatives describe its monstrosities.
It also banned retail foreign exchange trading, but somehow the SEC decided it could change the law and let FX trading stand. An unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy just changed the law because they decided that part was impractical. Sound familiar? You have to pass it to read.
The worst part? I’ve been within arms length of both Dodd and Frank, if you can believe it.