Coincidence, Correlation, Causation, Conspiracy

Back in January we saw two fairly well-known gun-makers killed in two days.  It seems odd, but things happen.

Now we have the murder of SEAL Sniper Chris Kyle at an event at a gun range.  Supposedly Kyle was murdered by an Iraq War veteran with PTSD issues.  It is funny they knew about the PTSD right away. 

One the great errors of modern "scientific research" is muddling correlation with causation.  A high correlation between events does not mean that one causes the other.  Trees put out new leaves in the spring.   Severe weather is likely to occur during the spring months.  Obviously leaves cause tornadoes.

For something to "happen", it must happen "in time".  There are always going to be events happening that are rather independent of one another at roughly the same point in time.  Two events can be completely unrelated -- not causing one another or sharing a common cause.  They simply coincide in time because everything has to happen some time. 

These recent deaths appear to be unfortunate and tragic coincidences.  So far, I say.  Many things we take as being related are simply common happening that are publicized because the media has become aware of a category of events that they had previously ignored.  That may well be a contributing factor here. 

Still, I find the events noted above to be disturbing.  This is especially the case with the circumstances surrounding the death of such a prominent and heroic veteran as Mr. Kyle. 

Authorities have arrested 25-year-old Eddie Ray Routh, a former Marine who police say may have been suffering from "some type of mental illness" when he allegedly killed Kyle and the SEAL's neighbor at gun range in Texas. The motive today was still unclear.

Emphasis mine.  I would, however, note that this is not the first murder of service men and women in Texas in recent years -- the Fort Hood terrorist attack was carried out by a cowardly and despicable Muslim terrorist who also happened to be a Major in the United States Army on November 5, 2009.  He murdered thirteen of his fellow soldiers methodically and in cold blood and was stopped only by a police officer with a firearm.  That goat-loving SOB's motive is also rarely made "clear".      

I do not like to deal in conspiracy theories, but I don't mind raising questions. 

Vietnamese Throw Rocks

The Communists in control of Vietnam decided to confiscate some land.  People were unwilling to sell.  So:

Faced with a group of farmers refusing to give up their land for a housing project, the Communist Party officials negotiating the deal devised a solution: They went to a bank, opened accounts in the names of the holdouts and deposited what they decided was fair compensation. Then they took the land.
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"We are working together to build a more prosperous Kim Son," said Vu Van Hoc, chairman of the local people's committee.

He said the project used land that had been owned by 852 families, and that less than 10 percent of them disagreed with the government's compensation rate of around $6 per square meter. He said just seven families were continuing to refuse the deal.

Villagers now allege the land has been resold for $310 per square meter. Hoc denied that, saying the land had yet to be sold.

He said he hoped that by depositing the money into bank accounts in the villagers' names, "the issue could be resolved." He dismissed the protest in late December as the work of "village extremists who had managed to persuade others" to join.

Notice that Mr. Hoc did not deny the price, just that the deal was finalized. And it's always those damn extremists.  Probably Vietnamese "teabaggers".

Video of the protest was recorded by people on their cellphones and posted on the Internet by dissident groups, which seek to capitalize on the public anger generated by the conflicts.

For two minutes, police cowered behind riot shields as young men hurled rocks and bits of concrete at them, but officers eventually regained control.

State media reported that 12 people were arrested. The police chief refused to identify them, or to say whether they were still in detention weeks later.

Good thing they took all the guns away.  That could have gotten ugly.

Read the whole thing.  The government's lines are pure propaganda, yet sound somehow vaguely familiar.  We have already had the Kelo decision, and we have property taxes, so I'm not sure we are any better than serfs on the manor.

But we are better armed.

It's always the same, though.  Somebody knows better what to do and how to manage than does the individual.  We always have to consider the greater good.  The government can always find a handful of intimidated, bought-off peasants to glowingly endorse the tyrants' decisions.

We have no excuse if we let it happen here.

Egypt, Bread and Islamic Circuses

Spengler defends against his critics.

I can vouch for the fact that Goldman called the North African uprisings "bread riots" right from the start.  He never saw it as a move toward democracy but rather as a cry of desperation.  That the situation is deteriorating in Egypt and Libya indicates that he called it correctly.

The monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Japanese Central Bank, along with growth in demand from India and China, has put upward pressure on food prices while decreasing the available supply in the poor and barren regions of North Africa.  

Islamic militants have taken advantage of the situation to unseat western-friendly strongmen and "democratically" replace them with their sharia-sympathizers, but the basic cause of the unrest remains outside of the militants' control.  The rather naive support of NATO and the U.S. has given the militants access to additional weaponry.  The situation will remain unstable where the nation does not devolve into an outright authoritarian, Taliban-like Islamic "republic". 

In essence we are in the process of creating a whole tier of Afghanistans with the potential to wage effective war on Israel while threatening Middle Eastern oil supplies. 

This may not end well.

GDP Decline

Via Denninger, Gross Domestic Product declined by 0.1% in the 4th quarter. 

This really isn't too surprising, except that it has taken so long to show up.  You can prime the pump all you want, if the well has run dry, nothing is coming out.

Metals and bonds seem more in touch with reality than the equity markets -- so far.  The lack of a plunge in stocks makes one wonder if the markets are manipulated or just hysterically desperate. 

Defense spending decreased in the fourth quarter, but, overall government outlays increased over third quarter expenditures -- over $900 billion between 10/1 and 12/31 versus a little over $800 billion in the previous three months.  Do not be fooled by the BS the media will be spewing which will focus on Hurricane Sandy or the DOD.  The Treasury chart is here.  It's pretty scary when you look at the massive deficits every month except for April and September -- April being income tax month and September being the end of many corporate fiscal years.  

Losing the Will to Live

Rebecca Costa gets to the root of the problem. 


Our philosophy really does influence how we live.  Though I am a Christian, this is not the blog where I spend a lot of time advocating for a Judeo-Christian worldview or offering messages and encouragement from a purely Christian perspective.  The reason I try to be less evangelical here is because I believe I have allies for the cause of liberty among non-Christians, nominal Christians, atheists and agnostics. 

However, even the most ardent atheist benefits from having been born into a culture with a positive, spiritual worldview.  The anti-Christian progressives who would love to suppress or at least subsume all religious allegiance to the supremacy of the State derive whatever moral values they possess from the very foundations they seek to undermine.  When the anti-tradition, antichrist cultivation and indoctrination -- especially via the educational system -- has gone as far as it has here in the West, it is not surprising that we should see some of the bad seeds sown begin to bear fruit.  One of those prolific and poisonous vines is nihilism.  

Our children are preached to from the secularist pulpits of government schools.  They are denounced if they believe in the Bible, if they pray over their school lunches (and we all know if any food needs sanctifying it would be a school lunch), if they profess to believe in a higher power than the all-mighty State.  They are told that they are simply animals -- animals whose very presence somehow destroys the "balance of nature" -- though nature alone produced these aberrations through evolution. 

A fairly large percentage of children, frankly, are dull enough to accept the contradictions and confusion of a government indoctrination without protest.  They pursue their simple animal pleasures, get fat, get pregnant, and get high.  Others get angry and express it through violence, especially in the context of gangs where meaninglessness is felt less poignantly in the framework of the new tribalism. 

But what about the loners and outsiders who never seem to quite find their place, who cannot quiet their consciences and the voiceless, wordless longings of the human soul?  They accept the vain and pointless philosophy because they seem to have no other choice; yet they have an intellectual capacity that exceeds that of the dumb cohort.  They see the implications of meaninglessness, of emptiness, of an existence for existence's sake.  They lose the will to live. 

Gang members, thugs, the criminal class in general -- they are a problem that we have always had.  But the nihilists are truly dangerous, and they are the express and highest creations of a decadent and dying culture.  Welcome to your brave new world.

The Reasonable Compromise

I kind of hate to link to Claire Wolfe because she's probably on some list, but she suggests that the banning of private sales and universal background checks will be offered as a reasonable compromise.  She explains why this is not reasonable.  Both the article and the comments are worth the time to read. 

I suggested, with much less wisdom and eloquence, something similar a few days ago.

It seems to me that these police-state politicians are way too eager to know who has what kind of gun and how many.  The "reasonable" attack may be via pressure on Congress to close the "gun show loophole", to "encourage" checks for private transactions.

It is also possible that Congress will yet go tell Obama to pound sand.  If they do, Obama will attempt.to circumvent the law.  How will he do that exactly?  He will find a regulatory way to put pressure on manufacturers of guns and ammunition through the Department of Labor, the EPA, the Justice Department, banks, etc.

They are not going to give this up.  In the minds of the police-state totalitarians, we must be disarmed.

Oh, look here, Breitbart's Hawkins speculates on Holder's push for new rules:  ... the third measure "would authorize the FBI to retain records on denied firearms transactions in a separate database for longer than 10 years."

Some of the comments on Breitbart are indicative of the kind of "reasonableness" that Wolfe fears.  What could possibly go wrong with the federal government creating a "no-buy" list of American citizens?  For one thing it is illegal and useless.  For another, without any legislation being enacted, it could easily become an "enemies' list" maintained by the ATF (of course we can trust the murderers of children at Waco and the creators of Fast and Furious). 
 

Bond Rates Continue to Climb

Even Apples are subject to gravity, though AAPL is up over 1% today. 

Thirty-year U.S. bonds are up to 3.16% today.  Ten-years are threatening 2% at 1.98.  Crude is up.  Inflation is becoming a reality to everyone, and "core" isn't fooling those who have to go to the grocery store.  People will buy food even when the price escalates, as it is right now. 

I see people talking about housing making a comeback -- and it could be in some regions -- and, more to the point, in some kinds of housing.  But as the working population continues to decline, there will be less demand on the upper end of housing.  People stuck with all the upgraded, over-sized homes on tiny lots with homeowners association dues and restrictions will likely be stuck for a while.  There are always fluctuations, seasonal and otherwise.  We may see a spurt of home-building, but I am wondering if it will not be more in multi-family dwellings. 

The market climb is a response to the last round of QE.  With the Dow approaching 14,000, how can we be in a recession?  Right?  That's basically what the Fed has been counting on, and it has worked, with the cooperation of an addled and distracted media more focused on celebrity gossip and scandal than economics doldrums or corrupt politics. 

Bond rates will check QE at some point.  It has to.  But a crash in equities would check bond rates.  And there are multiple central banks playing -- with Japan now gaming in earnest.  There's simply no way for anyone to know what will happen in the next six to twelve months.  But I would figure on a very bumpy ride.