Utopia, you are standing in it!

Echoing remarks earlier this month to a group in Nigeria, I spoke today about fiscal economics to the 2022 Africa Liberty Camp in Entebbe, Uganda.

During the Q&A session, I was asked to specify the ideal amount of government spending. I addressed that issue in an April interview while visiting Spain.

You’ll notice that I didn’t give a specific number in the above video. Just like I didn’t give a specific number to the audience in Uganda.

That’s because there is not an exact answer. The only thing we can definitively state is that government in most nations should be far smaller than it is today.

This is illustrated by the “Rahn Curve,” which I discussed both in the interview and in my speech today.

What is the Rahn Curve? Here’s some of what I wrote back in 2015.

…it shows the non-linear relationship between the size of…

Actually all of the following things that Trump forecast for a Biden Presidency were entirely predictable, including a recession arising from all these forces, the reason being that Biden told people what he was going to do – shutting down the oil and gas industry, for example.

It’s just that Biden, his staff and his Democrat Party were stupid enough to think that these would lead to good results and refused to listen to anybody pointing out to them the perfectly logical consequences.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been beginning to think that Stuff were becoming more objective in some of the articles they have run on the Government and it’s processes. This morning stuff ran the following on which they stopped comments an hour or so ago.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/128954010/its-the-interest-rates-stupid–house-prices-and-interest-rates-create-political-pain

I commented as follows about an hour or so before they closed comments with this:`

`Interest rates, petrol prices and the economy are only part of the issues that have dragged Labour and Jacinda Ardern down in the polls.

3Waters and Co Governance are equally part of the governments problems and unless they quickly do an about turn they will be down in the mid 20’s in polls – which is where they were when Ardern took over from Little.

You cannot favour one race of people in a multi racial democracy which New Zealand has always been until 2020 and…

It has been such a volatile couple of days in the markets that you hardly know where to focus. Friday’s inflation print was 8.6% (year/year), higher than expected and the highest in forty years, showing (yet again) that the Fed’s “transitory inflation” line was always just fantasy. Despite its glacial, foot-dragging pace of response to date, the Fed will need to raise short-rates (which they directly control) faster and farther than earlier planned. The Fed does not directly control long-term rates, but they influence them by buying and selling bonds on the open markets. For years, they have been buying bonds (driving interest rates lower), but they will have to stop that and maybe go the other way, being net sellers of bonds. This will make financing government deficits much more difficult.

Anyway, both short and long term rates have gone vertical in the past few days as markets price…

Those countries out to rely on wind and solar inevitably suffer rocketing power prices and power rationing.

Australia’s self-inflicted renewable energy calamity has seen power prices double in a matter of months; the wholesale power market is in chaos, caused by rapid and total collapses in wind and solar output; and major energy users are unceremoniously dumped from the grid whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

Much of Europe is in the same boat, with wind and solar obsessed Germany suffering the world’s highest power prices, by far. [Note to Ed: Australia’s wind and solar capital, South Australia isn’t far behind]

So, it takes a fair degree of audacity to try and convince the masses that adding more wind and solar will result in falling power prices.

One with the necessary pluck is America’s hapless President, Joe Biden.

Stephen Moore – a distinguished fellow in economics…

 Well slap me sideways and call me Jolson. I’d plum forgotten Our Lord John Cleese‘s first appearance in “Life of Brian” was in Blackface.

The decision, this past week, for British cinemas to give up showing “The Lady of Heaven,” an Islamic history lesson that bent over backwards to not offend, because of protests at the theaters by British Muslims…who hadn’t seen the bloody film, had a local Archbishop having a bit of a laugh at Islam’s “‘Life of Brian’ Moment.” And it gave me a craving to see Monty Python’s big screen masterpiece again.

The idea that the Catholic man in the big funny hat is getting at is a valid one. That in a free society, examining, critiquing and even mocking of belief systems has to be fair game. Islam doesn’t tolerate criticism. And unlike Scientology, there is no call to “Lawyer Up” in the scriptures…

Julius Caesar’s own account of the civil war he fought against Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey) and his successors from 49 to 45 BC is divided into three parts. I have previously summarised parts one and two. This is a summary of the third and final part.

Part 3: The great confrontation (112 sections)

1 to 6: Caesar in Italy – Pompey’s preparations

Caesar returns to Italy where he temporarily takes the title dictator in order to carry out the legal functions of the absent consuls and senate. He oversees elections in which he is elected consul for the next year, 48 BC. Caesar adjudicates legal cases, solves bankruptcy cases, officiates at the Latin religious festivals, then relinquishes the dictatorship and hurries to Brundisium.

Here he is presented with an ongoing shortage of ships. Pompey has had a whole year in which to gather forces in Greece and Asia, which Caesar…

The Northern Ireland Protocol is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, designed to set out the legal parameters of the withdrawal of the UK from the EU.  The Government proposes to introduce legislation to unilaterally change the Protocol.  On the face of it, this would appear to place the Government on the highway to a breach of international law.  But are there any off-ramps which allow it to avoid this destination?  This blog post examines one possible off-ramp, that this course of action is consistent with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969.

Legal justification for unilateral amendment of the NI Protocol

The Foreign Secretary Liz Truss MP stated in Parliament on17 May 2022that “we are very clear that this is legal in international law, and we will be setting out our legal position in due course.”This legal position has not yet been set out.Emily Thornberry MP, the Shadow…