Lew Rockwell on Crooked Elections, Crooked Markets, and Crooked Numbers

The Dow has wiped out its gains for the year. European stock markets in the meanwhile have been on a steady decline sincemid-March of this year, with markets in Greece, Spain, and Italy already having broken through their 2009 lows and French markets very close to breaking new ground as well.

Meanwhile, the latest slew of data, not just in the US, but around the world is pointing to a global slowdown. This is particularly alarming, as the global economy has been on life support, with central banks the world over throwing everything PLUS the kitchen sink at financial markets with negative real interest rates, quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus. What exactly is left for them to do? Buy stocks???


Now...CONTRARY to popular belief, the bailouts of 2008 were LESS about the money spent by governments, and MORE about the confidence inspired by the notion that governments and central banks could, through their open market operations and helicopter money drops, prevent - INDEED REVERSE - the economic contractionthat was then well-underway.

Now, that confidence seems to be eroding at an alarming rate. The markets have already left the equities party, looking for safety in German Bunds, US Treasuries, and Gold, while borrowing costs for countries like Italy and Spain have alreadypushed their respective governments to the point of effective insolvency, forcing the ECB's monetization engines to work overtime.

But thishasn't perturbed our global policy elite with their collective Atlas complex from going back to the monetary wishing well for more of the same medicine that has been poisoning the patient since the onset of the crisis, and well before.

When will they learn that no amount of talk or action on the part of a narrow group of bankers and politicians can solve the problems of too much debt and malinvestment? Well, it's a question we pose to our guest, economist and founder of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell. Source