ODonnell On Politics
columnist: Jim ODonnell

Topic: Ron Paul
Ron Paul: Sugarplum Fairies Danced In His Head

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Well actually they were not Sugarplum Fairies that danced but “Dismal Science” Fairies

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by Jim ODonnell
(Libertarian)
Thursday, December 6, 2007

I am going to take the liberty of writing as if I were Ron Paul long ago because as you will see we have a lot in common.

But first I must explain the term "Dismal Science." According to Wikipedia,

"It is often stated that Carlyle gave economics the nickname "dismal science" as a response to the late 18th century writings of The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, who grimly predicted that starvation would result as projected population growth exceeded the rate of increase in the food supply. Carlyle did indeed use the word 'dismal' in relation to Malthus' theory in his essay Chartism (1839)" Dismal Science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not only is its origion appropiate but for anyone who has begun the study of economics it is indeed dismal, dense, obtuse, and often outright boreing. More on this later.

Also mind numbing is accounting as represented by the picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean carring his brief case. In Britan they call it "accountantcy" which is even more descriptive. Try reading FAS 157 and in about 2 minutes you will wish you had a gun so that you could blow your own brains out. FASB: Summary of Statement 157

Now back to how Dr Paul and I have much in common. He studied medicine and I studied physics. We both began at about the same time to educate ourselves in the dismal science of economics. We both found Austrian economics. We both had to plow through accounting, he with respect to legistlation as he serves on the banking committee in Congress, and I because it became a large part of my profession as a chief financial office for several companies. Both self educated by pressing needs.

To give just one example of my personal experience. When I begin something I always dive into the deep end of the pool. One of the first books that I read on economics was Human Action by Ludwin von Mises. Boy was I in over my head starting here. It took me constant re-reading over several months [and even now occasional reading] to learn and get it into my thick skull what the genius von Mises was saying.

Well, I will guess that we both read the same books and authors. I will list in decending order of difficulty some of the authors writing about Austrian economics: Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, F A Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Murrary Rothbard and some guy named Ron Paul. Here is a much larger listing on this link: Author List From von Mises Institute

The reason that I have gone into such detail is that "this stuff is important" to know if you want to understant what is happening to you, your family, your job and your wealth.

Now what can this fool ODonnell mean, I don't need "no stinking FAS 157." Well you may not need to know it in full detail but it determines the value on the balance sheet of companies of their credit derivitaves. Which means in your money market fund, your banks assets and the value on balance sheet of companies in which you may own common stock.

Now the real reason for this article is to inform all that I have had to revise my plan to write articles about the credit mess to inform you about things which are going to influence this election a lot. Why? Because I have been burried by an unexpected avalanche of articles on which I should comment in the past week. Things are happening so fast and to such a horrible degree that my Goolge scans on economics went from about 5 per day to about 50.

Just in the past few days I have reviewed about 500 articles and have been able to narrow them down to about 90 important ones. There is no way possible that I can comment on this volume so my dear reader you are going to have to do this yourself if you need to do this much work.

What I will do tonight is to post an article under the title of "Ron Paul Important Economic Articles." I am using the prefix Ron Paul on lt to make sure that it is picked up on many search engines as many of the articles are not about Ron Paul but will have a possible impact on his campaign.

I will begin each article will a brief summary of my thoughts regarding the separate items contained in the article. This will be followed by a long list of hyperlinks to the actual articles. You can save these and read what you may find important when you get the time. I will still do articles on ecomonic matters of very great importance as single articles on an ongoing basis. But the grunt work will now be in your lap.

I have changed my moniker from "ODonnell On Markets" to "ODonnell On Politics" and also my description which you can find under Authors on a tab at the top of this page. In this description you will find my private email address which any are invided to use and also a link to my web site about Ron Paul on which I post from between 15 to 30 articles I have found each day. These are both political and economic and often I comment as a lead in to these articles. All are welcome to join the site an receive emails of these articles as they are posted.

Good luck to us all.

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2007 Jim ODonnell, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, December 6, 2007
Last modified: Friday, December 7, 2007

The views expressed in this article are those of Jim ODonnell only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Jim ODonnell is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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