Letters by a modern St. Ferdinand III about cults

Governments are in the main two things – incompetent and hypocritical. Incompetent because state policies do not usually reflect reality and ignore market pressures. Hypocritical because the state desires power and invents programs and rules to expand its purview and creating 'crises', where none exist. Oil and commodity prices, and the destruction of the US hegemon's dollar, are obvious illustrations of government incompetence and hypocrisy. And as usual, it is the little taxpayer who gets hammered.

Oil and food prices are high thanks to government meddling and stupidity. They will remain high as long as these policies are not reversed, and as long as the Americans keep their dollar weak. Once the policies which are killing the dollar are corrected, and once market forces are allowed to operate, the oil and food commodity price surge will abate.

The media and the chattering marxist class blame of course, the usual suspects for high oil and food prices. Speculators [jewish no doubt], capitalists who want to rape poor little frail mother earth, market failures, fat, stupid consumers who want to eat too much and drive too far, and the Iraq war [or by extension G.W. Bush who is to blame for any problem in the past 1000 years]. Sadly for the narrow minded socialist, statist and American-hater, none of these subjects are the real object of their ire. Government, and government alone is to blame.

High Oil:
Oil is high primarily due to supply and demand constraints and the weak US dollar.

Supply is constrained in the developed world thanks to eco-fascist legislation which prevents oil drilling and exploration as well as obstructing refinery capacity. Oil is cheap, it is clean to use, it has no effect whatsoever on the climate [only a true pagan eco-marxist believes that Co2 has any effect on the million or more variables which makes up a local climate]; and it has a proven and sophisticated distribution and retail network. We need more oil usage not less.

Add to this the obvious fact that demand has increased with worldwide GDP growth rates of 5 % or more, and the emergence of hundreds of millions of new middle class consumers in Chindia, Brazil and beyond. The poor and developing states need oil and energy. By using more oil and energy they will develop their economies, raise their GDP per capita and above $8000 or so per capita income, begin to fix, repair and protect their ecology. Poor states are not good environmental stewards.

[Note to the eco-fascists it is highly immoral to lecture Africans and Asians that they need to stay poor, ignorant and abused to save mother earth. Such a position denotes a psychotic and anti-humanist philosophy, not to mention hypocrisy and even colonial racism of the highest order. Grow up.]

US dollar:
Nothing is more absurd than the world hegemon destroying its financial status and international power base. The US has interest rates which are far below inflation and GDP growth which stimulates a dollar decline compared to other currencies. US rates are at 2 % with inflation at 5 % and GDP at about 1 %. Rates should be closer to 3 or 4%. This 50% discount means that any dollar denominated asset is losing value forcing investors to either bid up the price of US dollar based commodities or shift their assets and investments into stronger currencies and thereby reinforce the dollar's decline.

The Americans must revalue their interest rates and stop printing money. Money supply growth is about 7% per annum. It should be closer to zero, or at least closer to the official interest rate of 2%. When the money supply is expanding at 7 times economic growth, the dollar must fall dramatically since it is clear that governmental policy is focused on using inflation and cheap exports to lever the US out of its economic fragility.

In short a cheap dollar is not smart policy. A weak dollar is bad for everyone – bad for consumers; bad for businesses who have higher import costs; and bad for investors who see their real wealth destroyed. It is also bad for American geo-political power and prestige since a weak dollar destroys the advantage of seigniorage which is the excess profits a strong dollar accrues to America as the international reserve currency. That advantage is now destroyed.

Food prices:
Government idiocy in mandating corn alcohol for combustion engine usage is one obvious part of the eco-marxist scam which is literally killing people. $30-50 billin per annum is being spent on turning corn, palm oil, sugar or soy into juice to pour into a gasoline engine. It is stupidity on a massive scale. The result is that from Brazil [slave labor is a large part of the soy juice cost advantage], to Indonesia [10.000 dead Orangutangs thanks to palm tree destruction]; to the US [50% of the world's corn supply comes from America]; and to poor countries which count on either the supply of imported foodstuff, or the use of good land to grow crops, we now have a humanitarian disaster. Caused by government.

People are literally starving to death thanks to government's absurd obsession with limiting Co2 emissions. It is painfully ignorant and anti-humanist.

Add to this the $1 Trillion in rich world agricultural subsidies and tariff protection which keeps out developing world produce from rich markets and you have government sentencing poorer nations to poverty and their citizens to death. Farmers in Africa literally die each year thanks to EU protectionist policy. American and Canadian subsidies and market distortions turn central american farmers against the 'gringo', since these subsistence farmers will be confined to a life of penury, while Al Gore and his Marxist morons spit and scream about saving mother earth and the need for government intervention to turn plant material into combustible energy.

Governments have distorted the market in pricing and in supply and demand for agricultural produce around the world. From rice, to corn, to soy, to sugar, to dairy and chicken products – governments everywhere subsidise, price manage, cost control and resource allocate ensuring that prices are far higher than they need to be. But as prices increase governments holler that more must be done, and more programs created to combat the 'crisis'. A crisis they created.

On three key issues – the US dollar, food prices and gasoline prices – governments around the world are the problem. But this is not what you hear in the media. Fantastical stories about 'speculation'; 'conspiracies'; 'market failures'; or 'Iraq' causing the problems abound. Governments are very good at propaganda. And they are very good at creating crises. We need market solutions to these issues not more governmental nonsense.