impressions from berlin

As promised yesterday, here are some further impressions from Germany’s capital:

Strasse des 17. Juni, commemorating the uprising of East Berliners on 17 June 1953

Waiting for the city train

Some random bicycle

Pint of Guinness in a bar

Window meets art

sights of berlin

It has been a while since my last blog entry, mainly because I spent a few days in Germany’s capital city Berlin to visit friends. Truth be told, the city is great. But it is quite different from what I expected Berlin to be.

• First, it is not as ‘alternative’ as you might think. Yes, it is multicultural and cosmopolitan – especially young Spaniards have found a new place of residence here. But overall, Berlin is not all too different from other German cities.
• Which directly leads to my second point: Berlin is not that cheap any more. Rents have increased rather drastically and most other things cost about the same as in other parts of Germany.
• Third, Berlin’s citizens are not particularly impolite. Quite on the contrary, I have not met so many nice people in a city since my last visit to Munich. All in all, a very exhilarating experience to see that things can actually be better than expected.

To provide you with some impressions, I took a whole bunch of pictures. We start today with some of Berlin’s famous sights.

Brandenburg Gate, one of Germany's most well-known landmarks

Reichstag, meeting place of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament

Bundeskanzleramt, home of Chancellor Angela Merkel

Bellevue Palace, official residence of the President of Germany

Fernsehturm, Berlin's 368m TV tower, build in the 1960s by the GDR

Fernsehturm at night, seen from the Museum Island

Holocaust Memorial, 2'711 concrete slabs, inaugurated in 2005

 

freedom cancelled

Sad news for freedom in the United States: The other day, Fox Business Network cancelled Freedom Watch, one of the best daily libertarian news & argument shows in the history of American television. RT America reports, talking with Wayne Allen Root:

Libertarianism has two problems:

1. It is not pro-corporations and corporate welfare.

2. There is a lack of libertarian spokesmen who have enthusiasm.

Judge Andrew Napolitano is one of libertarianism’s great spokesmen. And his final statement will certainly go down in American history:

The greatest losses to our freedom have not come from someone attacking us but from the government ignoring the Constitution and the majority letting them get away with it.

 

paul’s strategy

Rachel Maddow from MSNBC discusses Ron Paul’s strategy and why currently he might be leading the race for the Republican nomination:

Delegates is the name of the game.

 

anniversary

Today, the blog celebrates its first anniversary and I just like to thank all readers and commentators. Thousands of page views and ongoing economic discussions will provide enough incentive to continue the blog. Already, there are more than 225 posts in 66 categories with about 125 comments.

Some readers told me that irregular posting is sometimes inconvenient. I am sorry for that but suggest to subscribe to this blog by entering your email address on the right-hand side. You will not receive any spam and you can unsubscribe any time. Promise.

the size of africa

In addition to the well known social issues of illiteracy and innumeracy, Kai Krause argues there should also be such a concept as immappancy, meaning insufficient geographical knowledge.

By means of a brilliant new map (high resolution), the author highlights the true size of Africa:

"True Size of Africa" by Kai Krause

This single image tries to embody the massive scale, which is larger than the USA, China, India, Japan and all of Europe…combined!

real hope and change

The other day, Judge Andrew Napolitano discussed the issue of “change” in political campaigns and in politics in general. He astutely points to the fact that Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign focused on “change” in a way that people with very different political backgrounds were able to support him. However, three years later we have to accept that this campaign was a brilliant fraud.

Moreover, this is just the tip of the iceberg:

It’s a sad state of affairs that a simple return to first principles represents fundamental change.

The dirty, little secret about change in government: Nobody in power actually likes change.

be happy

Most people believe that we should work harder to achieve something in order to be happy. But could that actually be backwards? Could it be that things work the other way around?

In a fast-moving and entertaining talk from TEDxBloomington, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity:

Every time your brain has a success, you just change the goalpost of what success looks like.

If happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there.

end the fed

Admittedly, I took me way too long to finally read Dr. Paul’s End the Fed. But the least thing I can do is to recommend it, especially if you haven’t thought much about the relationship between central banking (fiat money) and financial crises.

One of the most astounding figures in the book reveals the development of the purchasing power of gold and selected currencies (US Dollar, British Pound, DM, Yen, Swiss Franc, etc.) since 1913. You can find it here. As we see, the only fiat currency with a somewhat acceptable path has been the Swiss Franc. All the other currencies have devalued greatly, with the US Dollar having less than six percent of its 1913 purchasing power.

Ron Paul (2009). "End the Fed", Grand Central Publishing

There is no denying that the subject of gold is central to the issue of restoring sound money. That’s because gold emerged from within the structure of the market economy as the most important guarantor of the quality of money. It was not chosen by governments but by the market. The reason is easy to understand. Gold has all the qualities that we associate most with good money: divisibility, portability, high value per unit of weight, durability, and uniform quality.

liberty and the ordinary man

Professor Friedman talks about a free society in relation to the natural state of mankind:

You cannot find a date in history at which the greater part of the human race was not living in a condition of tyranny, misery and dictatorship. The bulk of the human race is not living in a free world. Can you name any date in history at which that wasn’t true?