Britannia Radio

The Daily Reckoning Weekend Edition Saturday, March 26, 2011 Villa Gesell, Argentina ------------------------------------------------------- The fear that dare not speak its name, but which every American knows, Government love...enforced at the end of the barrel of a gun, Plus, all the week's reckonings, archived for your Fernet-soaked weekend reading... ------------------------------------------------------- Ex-Lawyer Invents Method for Making 1,329% Four-Day Gains in the Market Now you can use his method for the chance at gains like 178% in four days, 369% in 48 hours - even 545% and 1,329% gains in less than a week! Get started right now with this new video presentation. ------------------------------------------------------- Joel Bowman, checking in briefly from Villa Gesell, Argentina... Your rambling editor rambled right on by Buenos Aires on his way back from Salta this week...right on down to the southern coastline of the capital province. We had hoped to get a few good days reading done in the office but, alas, the country took a(nother) long weekend off and sent us packing for the holiday. Now we're being forced (forced, Fellow Reckoner!) to sit on the beach and drink Fernet and Coca with the locals. Imagine! Fortunately, there are parts of the world where work is still being done...like Baltimore, where our friends over at Whiskey & Gunpowder dug up this gem of a column earlier in the week. So, while your editor struggles along here at the beach, we invite you to enjoy Mr. Don Cooper's thoughts on a fear that dare not speak its name. American Fear By Don Cooper Whether they realize it or not Americans live in a constant state of fear every day. I'm not referring to the fears of everyday life like losing a job or having an accident of some kind, but rather a more sinister and devious fear; a fear that Americans only dare talk about around the water cooler or at cocktail parties so as not to be taken seriously; a fear they try to mask with a with a whimsical tone of sarcasm or indifference. Whether Americans want to admit it or not, it's the single greatest fear in their lives: fear of the government. Right about now there are those reading this thinking: Don Cooper is a drunk. To which I reply: what's that got to do with it? Maybe more people should drink if that's what it takes to sober up and confront what they are really afraid of. In their defense, I'll admit that reality is scary. No argument that living in delusion is warmer, safer, cozier, and easier. Pretending is always more fun than reality, that's why we go to the movies. But fear of the government is a fear that invades a person's soul and - since the government intervenes in every aspect of our lives - it affects every move we make every day. Fear of the government is hard to recognize and acknowledge. It's a fear that we are taught early on in life and to which we become accustomed. We inevitably end up tucking it away in the far reaches of our minds in order to function "normally" every day and live our lives. But just as a car backfiring will trigger a sense of fear from a shell- shocked veteran, so too can the State trigger that sense of fear they've instilled in us. One need only ask: when you see a cop in your rearview mirror with his lights on, do you feel a sense of safety and comfort or do you get a shot of adrenaline from your body's "fight or flight" reflex? Do you immediately start asking yourself what he could possibly pull you over for, other than the fact that he was abused as a child, bullied at school and his mother didn't love him, and now he's going to whittle away at that chip on his shoulder by abusing you. As you search for your proof of government permission to drive (i.e., your license), and your government permission to own the car (i.e., your registration), and your proof of government mandated insurance, do you do so calmly and with a smile on your face and with gleeful anticipation of speaking with someone who gives of himself to serve and protect you, or do you do so nervously, fumbling through your papers hoping everything's up to date and acceptable to him for fear of being detained for whatever reason and having it affect your job, your family, and every aspect of your life? And when it's all over, do you feel glad that it happened or are you just glad it's over? Later that evening do you recount the story to others with a sense of pride, or do you do so with a sharp tongue and kick yourself for all the things you wish you would have had the presence of mind to say at the time but didn't? Do you feel happy that you have to pay $150 to the government because you were driving down the street faster than the government allows you to, or are you angry? And in the end, do you send the money to the government even though you don't agree with it? Even though you feel it's unfair to have to pay so much money yet you've harmed no one? Of course you do. And why? Because you're afraid of what the government will do to you if you don't. In the end, you'll retreat back into your cubby-hole of delusion in order to justify paying the fine by convincing yourself that what you did was wrong, the government was right, and you deserve the punishment. My favorite delusional argument from those still attached to the matrix is that they pay their taxes voluntarily. To these people I ask: when you do your tax returns, do you take as many deductions as the government will allow you? Of course, the answer is always yes. Then I ask them that if they could take enough deductions such that their tax liability was zero would they do so? Again, not surprisingly, the answer is yes. I then ask them that if their preference is to pay zero taxes then why don't they simply refuse to pay taxes. Inevitably, that's where their train of thought always runs out of track. Of course everyone knows the answer: because they're afraid of what the government will do. I challenge everyone to ask themselves: when was the last time you even thought about the possibility you might be robbed, your house broken into or shot at? Can you even remember? Now ask yourself when was the last time you were afraid of doing something that could be deemed "illegal" by the government and for which you could be fined, detained or arrested? Something like not wearing a seatbelt, speeding, making a U-turn, going through a yellow light, not crossing the street at the cross-walk, riding a bike on a sidewalk, forgetting your license at home, taking too many deductions on your taxes, talking on your phone while driving, not allowing strangers to touch you or your children at the airport, cutting down a tree on your own property, owning and transporting a gun, collecting rain water and the list goes on. I would wager the answer is: daily! The first word out of everybody's mouth when asked a normal, completely benign question these days is: "Well legally..." It's first and foremost on our minds, and why wouldn't it be, there are 76,000 pages to just the federal register alone. Some argue that everyone commits at least three felonies every day! Ignorance is a dangerous thing, and it must be stopped in our lifetime, fo' it kill somebody. At the end of the day, all government mandates are enforced at the end of the barrel of a gun, and that scares the hell out of everyone, as it should. But if we truly believe we are free then we have to start acting like it. It's time we cared about something bigger than ourselves. It's time we stopped living our lives in fear. Having said all that, I'm not holding my breath. It's proven to be difficult to convince people that freedom is more important than the real housewives of New Jersey. And that's why I drink! Regards, Don Cooper for The Daily Reckoning ------------------------------------------------------- The (common sense) Truth about Inflation... If you think inflation is good for the economy, why isn't Zimbabwe the wealthiest nation on earth? In Chris Mayer's brand new video presentation he destroys the popular myth that inflation stimulates the economy and create jobs. He also reveals the sickening truth behind Washington's endorsement of runaway money printing. Please, don't do anything else until you've learned the TRUTH... Click here to watch your FREE presentation now. ------------------------------------------------------- ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning... The Sage of Saxtons River By Chris Mayer Gaithersburg, Maryland In 1992, I stumbled on a little book with the title The Art of Contrary Thinking by a man I knew nothing about, Humphrey B. Neill. I was only 20 years old, but it would make a lasting impression. Even today, I still have that same book, which I pull out and browse through when I feel the press of mass opinion wearing me down. Angry Over Oil Price? Demand a Change in Fed Policy By Charles Kadlec The price of oil has shot up over $100 a barrel, and the price of gasoline is headed to $4 a gallon. True to form, the call has gone out to "round up all the usual suspects." Channeling the orders of Captain Renault of Casablanca, the Congress and the press go after speculators, "greedy" oil companies and Arab sheiks, profligate American consumers, and the ever-handy Chinese. Why is the price of oil going up - driving up the cost of gasoline, heating oil and many other products you rely on every day? The Muni Minefield By Frederick Sheehan A.M. Hillhouse, author of a splendid study of municipal bonds - Municipal Bonds: A Century of Experience, 1836-1936, analyzed the US municipal bond market across that century. He concluded: "[T]he major portion of overbonding by municipalities arises out of real estate booms... There will be no justification for a city's coming forward [in the future] with the excuse that...its revenue has dried up in times of falling property values... [T]he cause of the debt trouble [must be regarded] as an unwarranted failure of the city to adjust its borrowing program to certain known facts." Exactly How Does This Turn Out? By Byron King Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania "It's hard to know exactly how this turns out," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this past Sunday, in answer to a question about the US-French-British-et al. aerial assault on Libya. Oh, really? Best Economy in Latin America? By Chris Mayer Leon, Nicaragua - Bogotá, Columbia Today, though, Colombia may be the best economic story in Latin America. The drug violence has been mostly rooted out. Bogotá, the capital, is now safer than Miami, Washington or Atlanta. The economy is growing 5% per year and has a large middle class. In just the last six years, foreign investment in Colombia has gone up fourfold, and exports tripled. ------------------------------------------------------- WARNING: This is Controversial. It Offends "Gloom and Doomers" Here's why it's NOT the end of America... Shocking new presentation reveals epic opportunities - viewer discretion advised for thin-skinned fear mongers. Watch the presentation right here. ------------------------------------------------------- The Weekly Endnote: We're down here at the beach with a few friends. One of them, a young Columbian fellow, just returned from a semester of study abroad, in Holland, if memory serves. Chatting about travel and far off lands, we asked him what the strangest, most foreign country he, as a Colombian, had ever visited was. His answer surprised everyone at the table...especially the porteños. "Argentina," he said, hardly having to think about it. "You know, I thought it would be very similar to Colombia here. I thought, 'Hey, at least we'd have the same language.' But that's not even really the case. Mostly it's different because Argentina has been actively going backwards for the past ten years. Longer, arguably. Colombia, meanwhile, has had a fantastic decade. I mean, we still have problems there, like any place, but things are moving forward. Down here, they're getting worse. Crime is growing...the government is killing its best industries...people feel less and less safe, less and less optimistic that tomorrow might bring something better for them. "A lot of people still think of Colombia as a cocaine-centered mob town. That might have been true in the past. Now, not so much. Colombia has a bright future. Each day is better than the last, and the people there know it. They save and invest because they know there will be payoffs next week, next month, ten years from now. The kids go to school because they know there will be a job if they try hard and do well in class. I'm optimistic about the future of Colombia." Our friend's thoughts resemble closely the impression Chris Mayer got on his recent field trip to Colombia, about which he wrote earlier this week. They got us to thinking, too. What happens to a population that believes tomorrow will be worse than today? What if they actually know it will be? Everything in life marches forward, lockstep with time itself, because we hope for and aspire to a better future. We invest - time, energy, money - because we want to create and live in a better world. But there are places that are measurably worse today than yesterday. Argentina, for example, enjoyed one of - if notthe - highest standard of living in the world a century ago. Now its slums swell at the cities' edges, the poor spilling from them into wide, tree-lined streets where the rich of yore used to live. We have no idea if this trend will continue, or if Argentina will pull itself up by the bootstraps, fire its government and march forward to a brighter future. It's about time for a better tomorrow. We just don't know if the people are ready to want it. Enjoy your weekend. Cheers, Joel Bowman Managing Editor The Daily Reckoning ------------------------------------------------------- Here at The Daily Reckoning, we value your questions and comments. If you would like to send us a few thoughts of your own, please address them to your managing editor atjoel@dailyreckoning.com The Daily Reckoning - Special Reports: Gold: The Truth About Gold Fiat Currency: Using the Past to See into the Future Have You Heard of the OTHER Government Backed "Pension Program?"