Peter Schiff: The Backstory to My Appearance on the 'Daily Show'

'The Daily Show': Intellectually Dishonest about the Intellectually Disabled
By Peter Schiff

When I accepted “The Daily Show”’s invitation to be interviewed about my opposition to a minimum wage increase, I knew that I was walking into a trap. But given how counterproductive I know that such an increase would be to those the law proposes to help, I took the risk anyway.

Of the more than four hours of taped discussion I conducted, the producers chose to only use about 75 seconds of my comments. Of those, my use of the words “mentally retarded” (when Samantha Bee asked who might be willing to work for $2 per hour – a figure she suggested) has come to define the entire interview.

I'm now receiving hundreds of angry e-mails and am being described in the media as a hateful bigot.

The irony is: I'm not a hateful bigot. And there's something I discovered while taping my interview: If anyone's insensitive toward the intellectually disabled, it's "The Daily Show" itself.

For the full story, please read my latest column below:

How to Get a Job on Wall Street (Or anywhere else)

This post discusses getting a job on Wall Street, but the basic principles apply to whatever your area of interest is.

An EPJ reader sent this email to me earlier today:

Tomorrow morning I plan to go knocking on doors at different PE firms in the Houston Area. Those firms do not have a career section on their website, so I have decided to go the old fashion way and knock at their door. Basically, I want to get an entre level analyst position and start from there. Today, I am starting an online MSc. in Corporate Finance, so I hope that could help me.

My question to you is, what tips would you suggest me when I go tomorrow morning? would that strategy work?

I receive many emails like this. Early in my career, at one point, I actually went door to door and managed to get a job on Wall Street that way, but it is extremely difficult. You have to be prepared for lots of rejection, you have to know, going in, everything about the job and firm that you are attempting to get an interview at. You have to be clever, pushy and lucky to get past the receptionist and you then have to make your points, powerfully and succinctly, as to why you would be a good fit for the firm. Then you have to be prepared and have answers to any objections. Did I mention accomplishing all this is not easy?

An alternative might be to contact smaller firms by email or phone, contact the partners, and tell them you are willing to work for free for 6 months to prove yourself. Be a pest.

I also like the idea of working for a temp agency. Befriend someone at a agency and tell them that you are willing to work as a temp in the PE industry, hedge fund industry etc., whatever it is you are interested in, because you want to get in the door. Once you are in the door, you can be judged on your skills. Be a pest at the temp agency, so that you are on their mind.

Another strategy is to start a blog, not an opinion and policy blog like mine, but a blog that shows your skills in the field you would like to enter. If you want to get into the PE industry, write one or two analytical posts per month that analyze sectors of the economy and why it may make sense for the PE industry to get involved in those sectors (or why they should be avoided). If you consider yourself, say, a good stock analyst, then start a blog where you post one or two detailed stock research reports each month. Email links to your posts to the people you would like to work for. I know of two analysts that got their starts this way.

When all is said and done, it's about being clever and focused and knowing well the person/firms you want to work for, so that you can show them the skills you have that can help them.

I found the profile of Tracy Britt Cool in BusinessWeek fascinating. She clearly had been thinking about working for Warren Buffett for a long time and she went about in a methodical way attempting to get a job with Buffett. And, got it! BusinessWeek writes:

When Warren Buffett bought half of a commercial mortgage finance company in 2009, he hired a 25-year-old fresh out of business school to keep tabs on the investment[...]Now 29, Cool is one of Buffett’s most-trusted advisers, traveling the country to assist a constellation of companies too small to command her boss’s direct attention[...]

“When I first met her I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this girl’s scaring me, she’s so professional,’” said Teresa Hsiao, a classmate at Harvard College. “Her idea of fun may not be what we consider fun, like looking at 10-Ks,” the annual reports filed with securities regulators.

Cool, who declined to be interviewed for this article, met Buffett through Smart Woman Securities, the group she and Hsiao founded while Harvard undergraduates. SWS aims to educate members about everything from compound interest to preparing a pitch to prospective investors.

Cool and Tiffany Niver, a Harvard classmate from Nebraska, wrote to Buffett and asked if members could visit. He agreed. The pilgrimage has become an annual event for the group, which has expanded to 17 chapters[...]Cool was inspired by Buffett’s value-investing principles when she built SWS, Horne said. “I don’t think that was unconscious,” she said. “She clearly had Warren in her sights.”

While at Harvard Business School, Cool wrote in an essay: “My goal is to work with a great investor, who even more importantly is a wonderful teacher and mentor.”

Think about this. She set her sights on working for Warren Buffett and accomplished that! How many people would kill to get a job next to Buffett? A lot. But she did it. Why?  Because she did many things that others don't do. She had a methodical plan. She developed her skills that would make her valuable to Buffett and then she developed a plan to get in front of Buffett so that she could demonstrate her skills.

Go forth and do likewise.

The Squeeze Begins: Prosecutors Say Bitcoin Needs TIGHTER Regulations Than Banks

Bloomberg reports:

Virtual-currency firms should face regulations that are tougher than those for established financial-services providers because of their ability to hide criminal activity, according to law enforcement officials.

“Without stronger government oversight, we are allowing cybercriminals, identity thieves, traffickers of child pornography, and other malevolent actors to operate in a digital Wild West,” Cyrus Vance Jr., the district attorney for Manhattan, said at a hearing yesterday about possible state regulation of digital currencies[...]

“One aspiration with Bitcoin is for it to be a main artery of the commercial world,” Zabel said. “Its intrinsic qualities mean it needs to be treated differently.”

The prosecutors cited illegal activity linked to digital currencies, the potential for tax evasion and technologies that can be used to obscure transactions as dangers for law enforcement. They dismissed industry arguments that their successful investigation of several criminal networks demonstrates that criminal activity is under control[...]

Vance endorsed the idea of requiring digital currency firms to obtain state money-transmitter licenses, while warning that such “action in and of itself may not be enough.” He said businesses that swap Bitcoin for traditional currency, for example, should have to conduct “enhanced due diligence” on customers.

As a first step, as I predicted, expect tumblers to be outlawed. From Bloomberg:

Vance and Zabel harshly criticized the use of Bitcoin “tumblers,” which accept a Bitcoin payment, and return the same amount with a new digital trail, obscuring its source. The process, which some virtual-currency enthusiasts embrace for privacy reasons, is sometimes called a “Bitcoin laundry.”

“In the cases I have seen they serve no other purpose than automated money laundering and identity concealers,” Zabel said.

Zabel also raised the possibility that Bitcoin could promote tax evasion as people use it to conceal dollars.

“The currency itself could become a form of tax haven, both for businesses and individuals,” he said.

Both Vance and Zabel dismissed objections raised by investors at the previous day of the hearing that recent prosecutions of alleged money-laundering efforts involving digital currency demonstrate law enforcement can handle the industry’s emergence. “It proves the opposite: this is a problem,” Vance said.

RomneyCare Result: It Takes More Than Two Months to See a Specialist Physician in Boston

Well, surprise, surprise. The city at the heart of the most government interventionist healthcare system has the highest wait times to see a specialist than any other place in the country.

 A survey of physicians nationwide found the average wait time for a new patient is nearly 19 days, according to FOX DC. But the longest wait time is in Boston, Massachusetts at 72 days.

Massachusetts is the home of RomneyCare, which is the precursor to ObamaCare. If ObamaCare is fully implemented, expect medical service shortages and wait times to soar. At some point, life expectancy in the United States is going to fall dramatically. That's the nature of government intervention poorer service at a higher price.

The Lincoln Cult Smears Against Me

Thomas DiLorenzo writes at LewRockwell.com:

How to Become a “Neo-Confederate”

After my book, The Real Lincoln, was first published in 2002 the Lincoln cult became very frustrated over the fact that every time they attacked me personally, lied about the contents of the book, denied plain, well-documented historical facts, and I responded to them on LewRockwell.com, my Amazon.com sales ranking skyrocketed.  It was #2 in sales on Amazon at one point.  So their Plan B was to simply engage in even more name calling by labeling me (and others associated with the Mises Institute) a “Neo-confederate.”  Of course, what they were attempting to do was to call us “slavery defenders” without saying so explicitly.  The New York Times happily continued this practice, as have the lying libertine losers who call themselves “cosmopolitan” libertarians.

So I thought it would be useful to review just exactly what I wrote about the Confederacy inThe Real Lincoln.  As can be determined by looking at the index, it is mentioned on exactly four pages of my 333-page book:

1.  On page 8 of the Introduction I wrote that “the Confederate Constitution outlawed both protectionist tariffs and internal improvement subsidies . . .”

2. On page 240 I covered the same ground by writing that “protectionist tariffs were outlawed by the Confederate Constitution,” and then I quoted the relevant passage from that document.

3. On page 251 I wrote that “The Confederate Constitution was incompatible with Lincoln’s (and the Republicans’) economic policy objectives.”

4.  The final mention is on page 273 where I once again mentioned tariffs and internal improvement subsidies, and added that “the Confederate Constitution . . . eliminated the General Welfare Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

So there you have it.  That is the sum total of my “defense of the Confederacy” in The Real Lincoln.  Two pages after entry #4, at the top of page 275, I wrote:  “The one unequivocal good that came of Lincoln’s war was the abolition of slavery.”  But don’t expect the Lincoln cult, the totalitarians in the media, or the phony “cosmopolitan” libertines to ever mention such facts.

The Real Lincoln has now been in print for almost exactly twelve years.  To my knowledgenone of my critics has ever mentioned that the great Walter E. Williams wrote the foreword to the book.

WARNING Protect Your Savings: Stay Away from Obama's New MyRA Program

It's a trap. It will make your savings highly visible to the government, very vulnerable to future special taxes and it drives investments in the direction of financing the government with your savings, rather than the productive private sector. That's what myRA is all about.

Here's how Treasury Secretary Jack Lew explains myRA:

You will be able to start saving with an initial deposit of as little as $25 and contribute as little as $5 each payday.  If an employer chooses to participate, contributions are made through automatic payroll deductions, making them hassle-free.

There are no fees—100% of any contribution goes into the account and is invested in a Treasury security.  That means it will be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, will earn the same interest rate that is available to federal employees for their retirement savings, and the balance will never go down.

The interest rate on myRA is going to be the same as the one paid by the Thrift Savings Plan Government Securities Investment Fund. The TSP itself admits about this interest rate:

The G Fund is subject to inflation risk, or the possibility that your G Fund investment will not grow enough to offset the reduction in purchasing power that results from inflation

In other words, it's a terrible investment. The US is on the edge of bankruptcy and the only way they can avoid bankruptcy is to print more money. Thus, a loan to the government (which is what this is), and without major protection against inflation, is a terrible idea. And it is going to be run by a crony Wall Street firm. A private-sector money management firm is going to be chosen by the Treasury to run the program.

Think about this.

Do you really want to place your money in the hands of an Obama-Lloyd Blankfein type money management team?

The President signs the presidential memorandum directing the Treasury to create myRA.

Bernanke's Highlight Reel

• The Federal Reserve jumped in and bailed out "too big to fail" banks that made bad business decisions.
• The Fed continued to buy Treasury bonds in order to keep interest rates down.
• The Fed openly acknowledged that their policies force seniors to put their life savings at risk.
• Around 25% more baby boomers and Generation Xers will not have enough money because of Fed policies.
• The Fed is creating a stock market bubble that will eventually burst.
• Bankers are making record profits and paid out record bonuses for 2013.
• Bernanke left behind a 100-year money supply that is continuing to double annually.

(From Miller's Money)

Just What I Feared: Republicans Have an Obamacare Replacement

Republicans aren't about free markets, they are about central planning that favors their cronies over Democrat cronies.

Here are highlights from a WaPo report:

Republican Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) released Thursday what is arguably the most complete Obamacare replacement plan offered by their party to date.
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The replacement plan has structural similarities to Obamacare.
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Both Obamacare and the replacement plan include tax subsidies for low- to middle-income Americans, although they're structured a bit differently. The Republican replacement plan would let Americans use tax credits to purchase insurance coverage if they earned less than 300 percent of the poverty line (about $36,000 for an individual). Subsidies in Obamacare go up to 400 percent of the poverty line. The Republican plan envisions anyone below 300 percent of the poverty line qualifying for these subsidies, whereas Obamacare has those who earn less than 133 percent of the poverty line (about $15,000) become eligible for Medicaid.
---
 The biggest, most significant difference between Obamacare and the replacement plan is about financing -- how you pay for all those insurance subsidies. The replacement plan repeals a whole slew of industry taxes that had the insurance companies, hospitals and medical device makers all helping to foot the bill. Those are gone. In their place is a limit on the the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored insurance.

Right now, the federal government does not tax health insurance when it is provided to an employee by an employer. The Republican plan would limit the tax exclusion to 65 percent of the average health insurance plan. Any amount of a premium beyond that amount would need to be paid with post-tax dollars. There's no estimate on how many people this would effect and how much more they would pay for premiums, but Republican Senate aides do say it's true that people who receive more robust policies from their employers would pay more for premiums.
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People -- especially the 56 percent of Americans under 65 who get their insurance through their employer -- tend to hate the idea of ending this health insurance tax exclusion because it means the same exact health benefit package they get right now could get a whole lot more expensive.

The full report is here.

What The Hell Is Going On With Germany's Gold Held by the NY Fed?

Rick Rule tells it like it is with regard to the multi-year delay before Germany will be able to get all its gold back to its home country that is now being "stored" in the United States at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

During an interview with King World News Rick Rule asked the big question and made some very important points:

 “Every time I see something about gold in the mainstream media I’m afraid we haven’t hit a capitulation point yet.  But the questions they are asking about the gold market are good questions.  I can’t help but wonder why it takes them seven years to get delivery when the Germans want 1,200 tons of gold that they’ve already paid for....

“When the Chinese go into the market and buy gold, they get delivery of 1,120 tons of gold in one year.  This doesn’t make any sense to me.

The most obvious explanation is that the gold  stored for the Germans has been hypothecated or lent (and already sold into the market).  So the US Fed has to receive it back from its loans before they (the Fed) can give it back to the Germans.

It is interesting to me as an American citizen, and by the way a substantial taxpayer, that the government doesn’t think I have a right to know this.  They don’t think that I have a right to understand anything with regard to the gold that is allegedly stored in Fort Knox on my behalf as a US citizen.

I would prefer to know that and I’m sure German citizens would prefer to know that.  But for some reason the Fed has chosen not to make that information available to us.  I think questions like that are big enough questions and obvious enough questions that they are even of interest to the readers of major metropolitan dailies.”

Read more here.

Listen to my recent in-depth interview with Rick Rule here.

A New Even Messier Ending to Paul Krugman's Babysitting Co-Op Theory of Economics

By Robert Wenzel

I have discussed several times the misinterpretation by Paul Krugman of the babysitting co-op story, a story which is, according to him, at the foundation of his understanding of how economies work,

See:

 Now Krugman on Mises Monetary Mental Disorder

The Krugman Economic View Built on a House of Babysitting Coupons

In Review: Paul Krugman's New Book

But, it turns out there is even more damaging news about his co-op story. Tim Harford in his new book, The Under Cover Economist Strikes Back, hunted down the original telling of the story, which ends differently than the way Krugman leaves off the story and shows what a sneak Krugman is. I'll let Harford tell the story:

Ahem.Well, it's time for that twist in the tale I promised you. Unfortunately, this parable is a little bit messier than Professor Krugman's most recent telling suggests. In his book End This Depression Now! he neglects to mention how the story ends. Alas, the ending is not a happy one. The co-op botched their monetary reform.They lurched from a situation where the scrip was too small and shrinking, to a situation where the stock of script was just perfect--but growing. As the Sweeneys put it in their original article, "After a while, it naturally followed there was too much scrip and more people wanted to go out than to sit." 

When once nobody had been willing to go out, now nobody was willing to stay in. The end result was the same: a babysitting recession, in which fewer evenings of babysitting were exchanged than co-op members would have wanted. Burned by their botched experiment with printing more scrip, the co-op committee refused to countenance further monetary approaches to the problem, and turned to crude legalistic tactics. As the Sweeneys dryly commented in 1977, "A truth squad is envisaged to find out why indivividuals aren't sitting enough."

I point out in my earlier posts that the babysitting coupons aren't money, but, there is another lesson here in Harford's expanded telling of the story, centrally planned coupon printing goes on to lead to more interventions.

In others, what occurred in the babysitting coupon adventure is what Ludwig von Mises warned about with regard to all interventions, when he wrote: "It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process." One intervention begets another. The co-op goes from a botched centrally planned coupon printing scheme to resorting to legalistic tactics, i.e., more interventionism. Curiously, Krugman, the sneak, leaves this part of the story out, so it becomes difficult to understand how great a mess the coupon printing escapade was from start to finish.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.comand Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bankand most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.

Millionaire Asked Ex-Wife to Stay on as Housekeeper

A businessman asked his ex-wife, after their divorce, if she would stay on as his housekeeper when he installed another woman in the home, a High Court judge was told, reports the UK's Telegraph.

The man could not understand why his former wife became “so aggressive” when he informed her of the new arrangements, the court heard.

On Wednesday Mr Justice Bodey ruled that she was entitled to nearly half of her former husband’s £13.6 million fortune.

The Telegraph did not name the businessman and only reported that the man is in his 70's and that it is understood he has "interests in a portfolio of property in London."

Is It Time for Paul Krugman to Start Reading Serious Austrian Economics Literature?

Joe Salerno says, "Yes," here.

Murray Sabrin Considering Run for US Senate

Occasional EPJ Contributor, Murray Sabrin emails:

I am considering seeking the GOP nomination  to take on Cory Booker [in New Jersey].  I will make a decision in the next couple of weeks.  

 http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/01/ramapo_college_professor_murray_sabrin_considering_us_senate_run.html#incart_river

[...]  If I do it, I want to create the grand coalition, Rs, conservatives, libertarians, independents and pissed off Ds.  The platform would be free enterprise, not cronyism, uncompromising support for the Bill of Rights, a noninterventionist foreign policy and no more legal counterfeiting.  

I replied:

 Murray,

This is a great idea, if you are considering using such a platform to advance hardcore principled libertarianism. If you go Rand Paulian on us and hedge your views in the hope of getting elected, it is a terrible idea.

Best,
Bob

For my take on running for office, see: How to Run for Office Like Ron Paul

UPDATE

Murray responds to my email:

Thanks Bob.  I am going to let it rip if I enter the race.  Antiwar sentiment is high in NJ as is support for civil liberties.  Unfortunately, there is too much support for economic intervention even among Rs.  I will lay down my conditions with GOP party leaders in the next few days.  

Regards,Murra

Bezos Launching Major Expansion at the Washington Post

WaPo reports on itself:

The Washington Post has significantly increased its budget and plans to make dozens of newsroom hires under its new owner, the Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, the paper’s executive editor, Marty Baron, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Mr. Bezos has closely consulted with The Post’s leadership in plotting its growth strategy and the moves represent Mr. Bezos’s “first mark on the paper,” Mr. Baron said.

The Post will introduce several initiatives this year, Mr. Baron said in a memo to his staff on Wednesday. There will be five new politics reporters as well as photo editors, data visualization specialists, news desk staff and web designers. It will add a breaking news desk and a Sunday style and arts section, as well as a revamped Sunday magazine that will be “bigger in dimension and in the number of pages, with a new design and a range of new features.”

RELATED COVERAGE

The Media Equation: As I Was Saying About Web Journalism ... a Bubble, or a Lasting Business?JAN. 29, 2014
The plan will be executed quickly — interviews for new hires began weeks ago — and represents “a substantial expansion of the budget,” Mr. Baron said, though he declined to provide precise figures.

Shortly after Mr. Bezos bought the paper, Mr. Baron and other senior staff were “asked to come up with ideas for what we wanted to do,” Mr. Baron said. In late October, he and several colleagues flew to Bellevue, Wash., to meet with Mr. Bezos and present the plan. There were also conference calls and email exchanges, as well as in-person meetings at The Post’s offices in Washington.

Mr. Bezos would “just challenge our assumptions, cause us to rethink things,” he said. “He’s spent his entire life and his entire career thinking about where the consumer will be in the long run, and where the technology will be in the long run.”

The crucial question, and the one that preoccupies Mr. Bezos, Mr. Baron said, is, “How do we produce growth?”

“And obviously our growth,” said Mr. Baron, “as well as the growth of institutions like The New York Times is likely to come from the digital arena.”

There has been fervent speculation about Mr. Bezos’s intentions since August when he announced that he was paying $250 million in cash to acquire The Post. Many hoped he would try to reinvent the ailing newspaper business just as he had revolutionized retail at Amazon.com.

Mr. Baron said he believed that Mr. Bezos “was purchasing The Post in order to make more of it, rather than make less of it.” That became clear in their discussions about the paper’s initiatives. “His entire business history is oriented around growth,” Mr. Baron said.

Mr. Bezos has not weighed in on individual hires, Mr. Baron said, but his involvement has been more at a strategic level, discussing the paper’s priorities and goals.

“He hasn’t been passive,” Mr. Baron said. “He’s heavily engaged, keenly interested in what our ideas are. He offered his own thoughts and expressed a willingness to invest.”

The key here will be who WaPo hires for the new reporting slots? Will it be more of the same, establishment mouthpieces?

Walter Block: How NYT Mischaracterized My Views on Slavery (And What I Tried To Do About It)

Reply to the Scurrilous, Libelous, Venomous, Scandalous New York Times Smear Campaign
By Walter Block

The “Rand Paul problem” from the point of view of the New York Times and other such “progressives” is that he is far too clean. He does not shut down traffic lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge. He has no mistresses nor any love children. He has not stolen vast amounts of money; heck no money at all. He has not put his foot in his mouth regarding witches or rape or “read my lips” or anything else for that matter.

These people greatly fear a Rand versus Hillary confrontation in 2015. The former could “out-left” the latter on war, imperialism, victimless crimes, and “out-right” her on economic liberty, the second amendment and private property rights. Rand has a better shot at beating Hillary than any other plausible Republican candidate, and, it would appear, the time to grease the skids is now upon us.

What is to be done, then? Why, defame Rand directly of course, but also besmirch him not for anything he has done, but line up a bunch of people who could in any way be associated with him, attack them, and imply that Rand is somehow responsible for their actions. The not so hidden agenda here is that, really, Rand agrees with all of them, although he is too sneaky to come out and say this. The candidates for this operation? Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Lysander Spooner, Hans Sennholz, Ayn Rand, Karl Hess, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods, Jack Hunter, Gary North, Alex Jones, and me. My only surprise is that Tanenhaus and Rutenberg, the authors of this disgraceful hit piece did not dig deeper. I am sure that if they had, they could have come up with some dirt on Rand’s plumber, or baby sitter, or gardener, or grocer, etc. Surely, one of them, or a family member or a friend of theirs, did something reprehensible that can be pinned on Rand, with just a little body English, for which the New York Times is justly famous.

Tanenhaus and Rutenberg have delivered themselves of an outrageousattack on Rand Paul, the Mises Institute, and several Austro-libertarian scholars associated with both. In this response, I shall focus only on the injustice perpetrated on me; the other (living) targets are fully able to reply, if they wish to do so, on their own. (For Lew Rockwell’s incisive response in behalf of the Mises Institute, go here. Bob Wenzel’s responseis also excellent.)

If I had to summarize their essay in the form of a syllogism, at least as it refers to my small part in it, it would be this:

a. Rand Paul is a libertarian

b. Walter Block is a libertarian

c. Walter Block says that slavery was “not so bad.”

Therefore

d. Rand Paul believes that slavery was “not so bad.”

This attempt to smear Rand Paul’s possible campaign for the presidency of the U.S., to say the least, is an invalid form of argument. It is worse than silly, no? And, yet, it would appear, that is the conclusion the New York Times is attempting to draw. To see the invalidity of this mode of argument, try this one on for size:

a. Rand Paul is a libertarian

b. Walter Block is a libertarian

c. Walter Block says that Mozart was the best music composer and Ayn Rand the best novelist.

Therefore

d. Rand Paul believes that Mozart was the best music composer and Ayn Rand the best novelist.

While I have no problem with premises (a) and (b) above, here is what I actually published about slavery not being “so bad,” and precisely what I was trying to convey to Mr. Tanenhaus in the several hours of interviews I did with him in an effort to explain libertarianism to him:

The Top Ten Ron Paul #SOTU Tweets

The terrorists want to attack us because we are still killing civilians with drones… - RP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

Sanctions are an act of war and is a dangerous policy. -RP #Iran #SOTU
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

Education is not a responsibility of the Fed. govt. It is a responsibility of parents. -RP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

He sure can't accomplish peace by propping up Al Qaeda in Syria… - RP #SOTU
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

Looks like the global war on terror will continue w/ troops remaining in over 100 countries - this is where our problem is. - RP #SOTU
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

Price controls always lead to shortages and rationing - it has already started and will only get worse. - RP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

The applause on foreign policy is bipartisan and that is not a good thing… - RP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

The only real solution is to get rid of the income tax and repeal the 16th amendment. - RP #SOTU
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

But how many millions have lost their insurance since Obamacare went into effect?? - RP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

There is no oppritunity without liberty! - RP
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 29, 2014

Bitcoin Civil War: Moneyed Interests Are Taking Over the E-Currency and Dumping the Libertarians

The result will be government regulation of Bitcoin.

Rob Wile at Business Insider has the important story. It seems that Even Fred Ehrens of CoinBase is throwing the libertarians under the bus. To the degree Bitcoin survives, it is going to be a government regulated instrument. Here's Wile:

A civil war is emerging between Bitcoin's earliest and most libertarian adopters, and a more moneyed wing seeking to embrace regulation as a means of legitimizing Bitcoin commerce.

The divide came into focus this week with two key events events. One was a hearing on Bitcoin regulation by the New York Department Of Financial Services. The other was the arrest of BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem on money laundering charges.

Until the moment of his arrest, Shrem, 24 had been something of a darling in the Bitcoin venture capital community — the Winklevoss brothers were one of BitInstant's earliest investors, and Shrem was scheduled to co-headline a Bitcoin conference in Miami this past weekend. 

But on the first day of hearings about the future of Bitcoin regulation convened this week by the New York Department of Financial Services, a panel of VCs were quick to disavow Shrem as an example of a more immature wing of Bitcoin. The Winklevoss twins said they were gratified the Department was discussing ways to help legitimize Bitcoin commerce. Their Bitcoin ETF is awaiting regulatory approval from the SEC.

Bitcoin was founded as a "currency" free from any central authority, and quickly gained popularity among internet idealists and anti-government types, many of whom were the digital version of goldbugs. 

Perhaps it is not surprising that this ultra-libertarian faction was not represented at this week's hearings.

But it could be seen at the NYC Bitcoin Center on Broad Street in Manhattan — where a follow-up cocktail party was held Tuesday to discuss "fallout" from the first day's hearing — and online, where this faction railed from afar against regulators.

  

These individuals may seem extreme, but, until recently, they represented the core of Bitcoin evangelism.

But their influence seems to be fading. The division may come down to those whose businesses run on Bitcoin, and those looking merely to advance its decentralized spirit.

Fred Wilson — whose Union Square Ventures spearheaded a $5 million investment round in Bitcoin wallet firm Coinbase — comes the closet to straddling both worlds.

On Tuesday, Wilson warned against anything but the lightest-touch regulations, comparing the dangers Bitcoin startups would face to what happened to early-stage music streaming platforms, which were inundated with lawsuits from record labels. Should Bitcoin startups be subject to similar legal scrutiny from financial regulators, he said, they would be snuffed out before they even had a chance to bloom.

Wilson's views were countered by no less than Fred Ehrens, Coinbase's co-founder, who told  DFS regulators Wednesday, "Although I love Fred Wilson, there's probably some minimal requirements and procedures that should be put in place if you're facilitating that kind of exchange." 

Barry Silbert's Bitcoin Investment Trust is now worth 10s of millions of dollars. In an email Wednesday, he said he agreed the crypto-anarchists who dominated the digital currencies earliest incarnations were getting left behind.

"There are certainly a handful of folks that are hardcore libertarians (some anarchists) that believe that bitcoin should be completely unregulated, but I believe they are in the minority and, as a percentage of bitcoin believers, is shrinking very quickly.  I respect their viewpoint, but unfortunately, don’t see how there vision is viable in today’s society."

More here.