New Mises Article, Why Ron Paul is Really Winning, and the Funniest Take on Middle East Non-Peace Ever

Got a new article over at Mises Daily today entitled "Where Google Gets Its Power."  An excerpt:

Google wasn't the first Internet search engine, but it has progressed the industry far beyond its humble beginnings. Through the development of a unique algorithm called "PageRank," Google has become the world's leading Internet search engine. Its success and nearly 30,000 employees should be celebrated, not demonized and treated as a target by easily manipulated politicians.

Yet the congressional scrutiny Google is facing is nothing new. The US government's enforcement of "antitrust" law has consistently fallen on those companies who excel at lowering prices, innovating their products, and expanding their customer base. What every rational businessman strives to accomplish is essentially what the government attempts to slow down.

Some place blame on the state's parasitic need to control; I place it on the politicians' desire to live vicariously through bullying those whose success outshines their own accomplishment of deceiving more voters than their opponents on election day. It's no better than the schoolyard bully, whose reign is enforced by the threat of violence, forcibly taking the newest fad in electronic devices from another classmate.

I am hoping my next Mises Daily blows everything out of the water, stay tuned.
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If they want to really change things, the first person to fire is Bernanke, who is a disastrous chairman of the Federal Reserve. The second person to fire is Geithner. 

Everybody -- everybody in the media who wants to go after the business community ought to start by going after the politicians who have been at the heart of the sickness which is weakening this country and ought to start with Bernanke, who has still not been exposed for the hundreds of billions of dollars.

And I'm going to say one last thing. I want to repeat this. Bernanke has in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out one group and not bailing out another group. I don't see anybody in the news media demanding the kind of transparency at the Fed that you would demand of every other aspect of the federal government. And I think it is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that kind of secret power.

----Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich

This was arguably the most important statement uttered during last night's otherwise pitiful GOP debate.  And it is because of this glaring admission of reality that it has become plainly obvious that Dr. Ron Paul is winning the primary contest for the presidential nomination.  Just take a look at the latest candidate poll positions from Reuters:

Romney was backed by 23 percent of Republicans in the October poll, up from 20 percent in the most recent comparable Reuters/Ipsos poll carried out in June.
Cain, a businessman who has emerged as a surprise front-runner after proposing a radical tax reform, nearly tripled his support among Republicans in the same period, leaping to 19 percent from 7 percent four months ago.
Texas congressman Ron Paul was third with 13 percent and Texas Governor Rick Perry fourth, with 10 percent.

To further drive home the point, see the latest candidate face time measurements from the last three presidential debate from Talking Points Memo:

Ron Paul has consistently polled in third place in most major sources yet has the least amount of speaking and face time compared to other candidates.  Despite his outside-the-conservative-mainstream views on foreign policy and drug legalization, Paul recently won the Values Voters straw poll.  He came, in the words of Jack Cafferty, "within an eye lash" of beating Michele Bachmann in the major Ames Straw poll.

This is all from a man who was, and is continually, regarded as an impossibility in the sphere of being a major contender.  Yet here he is consistently making the top tier in every poll while influencing the topics of discussion of every debate.  Four years ago, who in the world would have predicted Newt Gingrich, the man who rallied an offense of impeachment against Bill Clinton while cheating on his bed-ridden wife, would be issuing such a pointed and critical attack on an institution that was hardly mentioned in the confines of conventional policy discussion?  Political pandering or not, Gingrich tirade is the direct result of Paul's decades long endeavor to put the Federal Reserve directly in the limelight of mainstream talk.  Chairman Ben Bernanke can't utter one word without the talking heads of CNBC dissecting its meaning and consequence for hours on end.

Gingrich has admitted as such judging by this recent tweet:

"there is no question ron paul was the first serious national leader to take on federal reserve history will recognize him”

Bringing scrutiny to an institution that has operated almost a century in the dark is quite an accomplishment. And it's all due to Paul's unwavering drive to move the discussion from not limiting the growth of government but to stop it in its tracks and put the clutch in reverse.  The GOP presidential primary contest will ultimately come down to Mitt Romney vs. Ron Paul. Romney will get the financial backing of the banksters and K Street crowd.  If he goes on to face President Obama in the general election, America will be choosing between two shades of the same candidate.  It won't be an election but a continuation of the status quo.

Paul has an uphill battle to win the Republican nomination, but as far as making history and changing how millions of people view their government and equally corrupt financial system, he has already won.

Not too shabby for a country doctor.

Alright, enough about the only presidential candidate who matters.  Let's take a look at what the Fed is gearing up to do next.  From the latest FOMC minutes:

• SOME FED OFFICIALS SOUGHT TO RETAIN OPTION OF QE3, MINUTES SAY
• SOME FED OFFICIALS SAW QE3 AS 'MORE POTENT TOOL' TO SPUR GROWTH.
• TWO FOMC MEMBERS FAVORED `STRONGER POLICY ACTION' LAST MONTH

And remember Golidlocks:

• MANY FOMC MEMBERS SAID INFLATION RISKS `WERE ROUGHLY BALANCED'
• FOMC MEMBERS SAW `RELATIVELY LITTLE RISK OF DEFLATION'
• FOMC MINUTES SAY LABOUR MARKET COSTS REMAIN SUBDUED

Meanwhile, Geithner is trying to strong arm Europe into doing the same thing.  The printing presses will start up again (more than now anyway) soon.
I will end with two hilarious videos (as if imagining Geithner throw his weight around isn't hilarious as a mental image in itself).  First is a great take on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:

Next is the near future of China:

If you haven't checked it out yet, see Kel Kelly's fantastic Mises Daily on the upcoming property bubble bursting in China.

Update- Ha! This was easily predictable, on the supposed Iranian assassination attempt:

The key to understanding just how fake this story is can be found in the New York Times report, which informs us:
“For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’”
Translation: the whole thing is phony from beginning to end.
This is another one of US law enforcement’s manufactured “anti-terrorist” triumphs, where the feds set somebody up, fabricate a “crime” out of thin air, and then proceed to “solve” a case that never really existed to begin with. This has been the general pattern of our “anti-terrorist” operations in the US since the beginning – because finding and catching real terrorists is much too hard, at least for our Keystone Kops. Instead of going out and actually, you know, looking for the Bad Guys, and then apprehending them, they lure some unsuspecting Muslim immigrant into a trap, and spring it when the time is right.
The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says “If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ‘em!”