I’ve recently been asked by several blog readers and consulting clients about my predictions for the economy for the next few years. Here they are, in a nutshell: The US economy will remain weak for for at least five years. Both the commercial and residential real estate markets are unlikely to recover before 2018, especially as interest rates begin to increase. Noticeable inflation should begin around the Spring of 2011 and will become uncomfortably high by 2012. If the announced Federal income tax and capital gains tax increases do indeed go into effect, they will stifle the economy for the foreseeable future. Continued financial instability in the periphery of the EU will continue to keep the Euro weak versus the Dollar, but in the end, both currencies are doomed. Global credit market chaos will probably continue for several more years, as will the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB) here in the United States. I’d say that there is a 25% chance of a Dollar Panic and devaluation in the next four years, and a 5% chance of a hyperinflationary Dollar Collapse. But regardless, some inflation is coming. Its severity is difficult to predict. The bull market in precious metals is nowhere near its end. I still predict that spot price of silver will eventually exceed $50 per ounce.

I think it’s pretty close to what I would predict. When he says “…in the end, both currencies are doomed”, while probably true, could be a decades away. I think it’s interesting he’s picking 2018 as the earliest real estate recovery date when I picked close to the same thing last night (I was a little more optimistic, thinking 2015). The inflation prediction is his earliest prediction, so I’ll be watching for his accuracy.

Here’s another “I’m not an idiot” moment. Richard Fernandez wrote this yesterday:

But Barone implies that for all the apparent flux one thing remains constant: it’s a brake and throttle world. The liberals hit the throttle and the Republicans sometimes step on the brakes. Republicans haven’t noticed the steering wheel.

Yeah, that’s just about right, IMO. This ties in with the above prediction. That pessimism is born out of not believing that either party will do anything more than delay the inevitable. People tend to operate in their own self-interest, and a vast majority of politicians’ self-interest is diametrically opposed to the country’s self-interest. And as a rule, the longer they are “serving”, the more that’s true. Later he makes a comment that’s rather apropos to a conversation I had with my wife last night:

It may take more than hard times to make a political paradigm shift thinkable.

Or planting fruit trees, for that matter. How many people just can’t imagine growing their own food? All people create their own boxes of their minds that can be very difficult to break out of. Some worse that others, of course. Limits in thinking equal limits in action, so when an action is required that requires you to think outside your little box, you freeze.

Our National Anthem

Four Stanzas

By Isaac Asimov

I have a weakness–I am crazy, absolutely nuts, about our national anthem.

The words are difficult and the tune is almost impossible, but frequently when I’m taking a shower I sing it with as much power and emotion as I can. It shakes me up every time.

I was once asked to speak at a luncheon. Taking my life in my hands, I announced I was going to sing our national anthem–all four stanzas.

This was greeted with loud groans. One man closed the door to the kitchen, where the noise of dishes and cutlery was loud and distracting. “Thanks, Herb,” I said.

“That’s all right,” he said. “It was at the request of the kitchen staff.”

I explained the background of the anthem and then sang all four stanzas.

Let me tell you, those people had never heard it before–or had never really listened. I got a standing ovation. But it was not me; it was the anthem.

More recently, while conducting a seminar, I told my students the story of the anthem and sang all four stanzas. Again there was a wild ovation and prolonged applause. And again, it was the anthem and not me.

So now let me tell you how it came to be written.

In 1812, the United States went to war with Great Britain, primarily over freedom of the seas. We were in the right. For two years, we held off the British, even though we were still a rather weak country. Great Britain was in a life and death struggle with Napoleon. In fact, just as the United States declared war, Napoleon marched off to invade Russia. If he won, as everyone expected, he would control Europe, and Great Britain would be isolated. It was no time for her to be involved in an American war.

At first, our seamen proved better than the British. After we won a battle on Lake Erie in 1813, the American commander, Oliver Hazard Perry, sent the message “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” However, the weight of the British navy beat down our ships eventually. New England, hard-hit by a tightening blockade, threatened secession.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was beaten in Russia and in 1814 was forced to abdicate. Great Britain now turned its attention to the United States, launching a three-pronged attack. The northern prong was to come down Lake Champlain toward New York and seize parts of New England. The southern prong was to go up the Mississippi, take New Orleans and paralyze the west. The central prong was to head for the mid-Atlantic states and then attack Baltimore, the greatest port south of New York. If Baltimore was taken, the nation, which still hugged the Atlantic coast, could be split in two. The fate of the United States, then, rested to a large extent on the success or failure of the central prong.

The British reached the American coast, and on August 24, 1814, took Washington, D. C. Then they moved up the Chesapeake Bay toward Baltimore. On September 12, they arrived and found 1000 men in Fort McHenry, whose guns controlled the harbor. If the British wished to take Baltimore, they would have to take the fort.

On one of the British ships was an aged physician, William Beanes, who had been arrested in Maryland and brought along as a prisoner. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and friend of the physician, had come to the ship to negotiate his release. The British captain was willing, but the two Americans would have to wait. It was now the night of September 13, and the bombardment of Fort McHenry was about to start.

As twilight deepened, Key and Beanes saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry. Through the night, they heard bombs bursting and saw the red glare of rockets. They knew the fort was resisting and the American flag was still flying. But toward morning the bombardment ceased, and a dread silence fell. Either Fort McHenry had surrendered and the British flag flew above it, or the bombardment had failed and the American flag still flew.

As dawn began to brighten the eastern sky, Key and Beanes stared out at the fort, trying to see which flag flew over it. He and the physician must have asked each other over and over, “Can you see the flag?”

After it was all finished, Key wrote a four stanza poem telling the events of the night. Called “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” it was published in newspapers and swept the nation. Someone noted that the words fit an old English tune called “To Anacreon in Heaven” –a difficult melody with an uncomfortably large vocal range. For obvious reasons, Key’s work became known as “The Star Spangled Banner,” and in 1931 Congress declared it the official anthem of the United States.

Now that you know the story, here are the words. Presumably, the old doctor is speaking. This is what he asks Key:

Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.

Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

“Ramparts,” in case you don’t know, are the protective walls or other elevations that surround a fort. The first stanza asks a question. The second gives an answer

On the shore, dimly seen thro’ the mist of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep.

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream

‘Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“The towering steep” is again, the ramparts. The bombardment has failed, and the British can do nothing more but sail away, their mission a failure.

In the third stanza, I feel Key allows himself to gloat over the American triumph. In the aftermath of the bombardment, Key probably was in no mood to act otherwise.

During World War II, when the British were our staunchest allies, this third stanza was not sung. However, I know it, so here it is:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footstep’s pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The fourth stanza, a pious hope for the future, should be sung more slowly than the other three and with even deeper feeling.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n – rescued land

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto–”In God is our trust.”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I hope you will look at the national anthem with new eyes. Listen to it, the next time you have a chance, with new ears.

And don’t let them ever take it away.

–Isaac Asimov, March 1991

So Reason Magazine comes out with a post today about Sam Brownback out of Kansas:

Kansas GOP gubernatorial candidate Sam Brownback is proposing an “Office of the Repealer,” tasked with seeking out bad or repetitive laws, wasteful programs, and archaic state agencies for elimination.

Excellent! How much of this is more smoke and mirrors? I have no clue, as I don’t follow Kansas politics at all, and I don’t know the guy. The idea, though, is fantastic. I’d love to see another pol one up Mr. Brownback with my idea above, though.

(Thanks to Instapundit for the heads up.)

It is hard to become much more influential than the doyen of the White House press corps, who is given a ceremonial front-rows seat at press briefings and press conferences. So when Helen Thomas suggested that the Israelis should leave their country and “go home” to Poland and Germany, this was not some obscure, eccentric anti-Semite, but a liberal insider who has come to enjoy iconic status and a sense of exemption from criticism.

Note that Ms. Thomas did not call for just a West Bank free of Jews. And she did not just wish for the elimination of the nation of Israel itself. Rather, Thomas envisions the departure of Israelis to the sites of the major death camps seven decades ago where six million Jews were gassed.

Read the whole thing, of course. What, you thought I’d copy and paste the whole column?

U.S. Army Cures Ebola Killer Virus
June 7, 2010: A U.S. Army research lab has developed a cure for the Ebola virus. This disease, endemic to parts of Central Africa, kills up to 90 percent of those who catch it (because of internal bleeding from infected organs). The new vaccine has one catch, however, the victim must get the injection within 30 minutes of being infected. Despite that limitation, the cure will be produced and stocked to protect people working in labs that contain Ebola virus samples. Research on an Ebola cure is also underway in other nations, and occasionally a lab worker catches Ebola.

Neat.

For the past hundred years, America has been slowly moving away from the principles of its founding. The ideals of liberty, individual achievement, limited government, and the equality of opportunity have been slowly supplanted by calls for security, class warfare, excessive regulation, and the equality of outcome. The passage of stimulus acts, bailouts, government takeovers of two U.S. automakers, and the health care overhaul prove that our movement away from 1776 has accelerated.

Read the whole thing, of course. The idea behind the piece is that we need to go much further into the darkness before we can come back into the light. I’ll believe that this country is ready to come back to the light of liberty when I see that a majority of people 50+ want to completely discontinue Social Security and Medicare. Until then, we as a people are not serious.

After reading this article, if you haven’t already, read “The Coming of the Fourth American Republic“. It describes the Special Interest State, and why our government, as it’s setup and running now, is absolutely guaranteed to fail at some point. Hopefully not for a long time, but there are way too many variables for anyone to a year on it. Hopefully we’ll wake up as a people well before that point and transition to something better instead of letting chaos dictate what our future is.

The world economy is like a person with a bad stomach flu; that horrible sick feeling keeps coming back. In 2008 it was mortgage-backed bonds and the failure of Lehman Brothers; last year it was the worst recession since the 1930s; this year it’s the European financial crisis. We still don’t know where this is going; there is plenty of good news out there. The National Association of Business Economists is upgrading its growth forecast for the US in 2010; China remains strong; the IMF is upgrading its growth forecasts worldwide. On the other hand, some of the world’s smartest investors are buying gold like there was no tomorrow, there is talk about a new global meltdown, and the world’s financial markets seem ready to plunge on the slightest whiff of bad news.

The second is a piece on Pajamas Media pointing out that the Mexican President’s pants are on fire. One thing I’ve learned through my study of history: always be very scared when politicians want to take away the citizen’s guns. It all comes down to power and money.

President Calderon’s assertion that Mexico has seized around 75,000 guns and assault weapons in the last three years — and that more than 80 percent of them came from the United States — is a bald-faced lie. It simply is not remotely connected to the truth.

“Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.”

Well, yes. Absolutely. I’m a complete optimist with regards to human progress and more importantly, science and technology, at least in the long term. The problem is our maturity as a race politically and morally, and that’s definitely a two steps forward, one step back sort of thing. That step back is going to be painful, and it won’t be directly due to specialization or science gone mad, but simply a nasty combination of greed, lack of foresight, and the disturbing propensity of humankind to whistle past the graveyard.

In the long run, though, even through any tough times that may lie ahead, the march of scientific and technological progress will continue, making things better for humankind as a whole. Progress of this sort tends towards a exponential progress, meaning the more we learn, the faster we learn, and I believe, the more unstoppable that learning is. Therefore, any major step back will be pretty temporary, and completely different than anything we’ve experienced before. We’re not going to suffer through a Great Depression like anything our grandparents did. This is a good thing. All this optimism doesn’t mean, though, that we’re not going to see hard times, and perhaps some severe ones.

This is the story that the teachers unions wish had never happened. This is the story that proves all their hysterical demands for more money are nothing but a sham. This is the story that makes the unions and education bureaucrats sick to their stomachs. This is the personal story of my daughter Dakota Root.

A quick Google search on her names shows a write up on some site called Cyberspacers. It’s a good little bio of her, detailing her successes. As an aside, fencing is cool, to boot.

Homeschooling is quite a serious commitment, and isn’t for everyone, especially in the days that two income households are more often a reality than not. So this story certainly doesn’t mean everyone should homeschool, it does show that non-public school options not only can compete but far surpass the “regular” option. Of course, this is nothing new, especially if you browse anything in the libertarian or conservative world. But it’s a good reminder. I constantly find it amazing that parents put up with public school monopolies and the threats handed down from teacher’s unions and school boards alike. It’s nothing more than a naked display of what people will do to protect their power, and damn the consequences — included your kids and your freedom. From the first article referenced — well said:

The sad reality is that teachers unions and government aren’t the solution – they are the problem. Our public schools get worse every year, yet teachers unions demand more and more money. They get their money, it gets worse yet, and they demand even MORE. That is the definition of insanity. This is “Groundhog Day.” It isn’t working- and hasn’t since the day that government took over education in this country.

I’m sure that many communities in America still share the same frustrations that plagued these local leaders over a half century ago. This is one reason why increasing Federal power is a Bad Thing: the most effective government is a local one, where it tends to be more responsive. This is something our forefathers knew well, as that philosophy is reflected in our Constitution.

It’s a simple idea: whatever can’t be handled by the individual, family, or church, the local city or county government steps in. What they can’t handle the state government steps in, and finally, the Federal government handles the rest. The last run of the ladder includes things like a post office, a currency, foreign relations, interstate commerce, and a military. So, does our modern governmental structure follow this pattern?