Bearish News

Fascinating interview with F.A. Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom. Towards the end of the clip, Hayek recalls warning Keynes that two of his pupils were misusing his theories with dangerous implications. Keynes replied that if inflation turns out to be worse than expected, he would “turn public opinion around”.

Hayek: ”Six weeks later he was dead, and couldn’t do it. I believe he would have been fighting the inflationary policy”.

More on Hayek/Keynes in this must-read Reason.com article:

Reason: Of your bestselling The Road to Serfdom, John Maynard Keynes wrote: “In my opinion it is a grand book…. Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.” Why would Keynes say this about a volume that was deeply critical of the Keynesian viewpoint?

Hayek: Because he believed that he was fundamentally still a classical English liberal and wasn’t quite aware of how far he had moved away from it. His basic ideas were still those of individual freedom. He did not think systematically enough to see the conflicts. He was, in a sense, corrupted by political necessity. His famous phrase about, “in the long run we’re all dead,” is a verv good illustration of being constrained by what is now politicallv possible. He stopped thinking about what, in the long run, is desirable. For that reason, I think it will turn out that he will not be a maker of long-run opinion, and his ideas were of a fashion which, fortunately, is now passing away.

Reason: Did Keynes turn around in his later years, as has frequently been rumored?

Hayek: Nothing as drastic as that. He was fluctuating all the time. He was in a sort of middle line and he was always concerned with expediency for the moment. In the last conversation I had with him (about three weeks before his death in 1945), I asked him if he wasn’t getting alarmed about what some of his pupils were doing with his ideas. And he said,” Oh, they’re just fools. These ideas were frightfully important in the 1930s, but if these ideas ever become dangerous, you can trust me—I’m going to turn public opinion around like this.” And he would have done it! I’m sure that in the post-war period Keynes would have become one of the great fighters against inflation.

The silver market is a complex, opaque one. In this clip, James Turk and Eric Sprott talk about poor man’s gold, and the opposing interests involved in its pricing. Highlights:

• Investment of the last decade was gold, this decade’s will be silver.
• Eventually gold/silver ratio will return to 16:1 (at today’s gold prices, silver would be = $100).
• Demand for silver & gold reaching near 1:1.
• Silver could explode “at any time”.
• Silver will be volatile, but at the end of the day holders should be able to “sleep at night”, and “be big winners at the end of the day”.

Also see Harvey Organ’s latest update on gold & silver, including inventory data (declining rapidly).

(disclosure: long silver/gold.)

There’s no other candidate with the record to legitimately say they’re:

• anti-war
• anti-bankster
• anti-waste
• anti-inflation

Many in the 2012 Republican race, along with Obama and potential primary challengers, will espouse similar positions. They don’t mean it. If/when they’re elected, those promises will be tossed out the window like a trucker bomb.