To those who know this most peaceful of nations intimately, the question is bound to sound bizarre. Boasting attachment to the rule of law and democratic government, the English have not had a revolution since the 17th century.
Nevertheless, these days it is hard to be in the company of Englishmen without hearing talk of the need, indeed the imminence, of revolution.
The inimitable Vodkapundit, Stephen Green, put up a post on investment and speculation yesterday. He makes two very important points:
1. All investment is speculation.
2. The secondary market makes the primary market possible.
The first point is easy. You invest, but there’s risk. The higher the risk, the higher the reward sought. Everybody knows that one. You also should bear in mind that no matter how risky (or safe) an investment might be, you always always always seek to minimize that risk. That’s not just the invisible hand or whatever, that’s human nature. And it’s a good thing.The second point is a little more subtle, but nothing difficult to understand. And it applies to both stocks and bonds. When you buy a newly-issued bond from GM, you’re the primary market. If I buy that bond from you, I’m the secondary market. And if I didn’t exist, you would never buy bonds from anyone.
If you have any money in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, REITS or any other investment vehicle at all you are a speculator. If you ever buy a lottery ticket, you're a speculator (and not a very smart one).
Our president has taken to demonizing "speculators" and has justified turning established law on its head by depriving investors of their lawful rights to essentially confiscate their lawfully obtained property and redistribute it to his favored political constituencies, namely the United Auto Workers Union. This is a very slippery slope he has started us down and the people you would think would start taking him to task on this our esteemed fifth column fourth estate, the mainstream media are either silent or actively cheerleading for him. Until they decide to do their jobs, he's going to keep getting away with this and soon, we will have no property rights left. And property rights are the foundation of all our other rights.
Go read all of Steve's post.
"In most of the developed world, the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood—health care, child care, care of the elderly—to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. Hillary Rodham Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. It's supposedly an African proverb—there is no record of anyone in Africa ever using this proverb, but let that pass. P.J. O'Rourke summed up that book superbly: It takes a village to raise a child. The government is the village, and you're the child. Oh, and by the way, even if it did take a village to raise a child, I wouldn't want it to be an African village. If you fly over West Africa at night, the lights form one giant coastal megalopolis: Not even Africans regard the African village as a useful societal model. But nor is the European village. Europe's addiction to big government, unaffordable entitlements, cradle-to-grave welfare, and a dependence on mass immigration needed to sustain it has become an existential threat to some of the oldest nation-states in the world."
The problem in the Western world is that governments are spending money faster than their citizenry or economies can generate it. As Gerald Ford liked to say, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And that's true. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give Phil from Cathedral City everything he wants isn't big enough to get Phil to give any of it back. That's the stage the Europeans are at: Their electorates are hooked on unsustainable levels of "services," but no longer can conceive of life without them.
