I'm sure many of you have already seen this as it has been spreading on the internet like wildfire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs#
He needs to come over here and say the same thing to our current administration.
Brilliant, I had never heard of this guy before. Ron Paul has done to bring liberty to the political process in the US, but imagine what could happen if he had the crisp, articulate veneer and youthful charisma of this guy. Obama would have nothing on him.
“Elections are Futures Markets in Stolen Property.” - H. L. Mencken
Except probable allegations of racism.
Under his wikipedia profile picture it reads: "The picture above is courtesy of the Mises Youth Club".
Irish Liberty Forum
I prefer Nigel Farage's incendiary criticism of him. Brown did nothing but smile the whole time.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Too bad Nigel is for debasing currency
/shrug
They're not Austrians. It'd be cool if he got on board though.
He also supports RPhttp://www.order-order.com/2009/03/rushies-co-conspirators-hannan-is-our-leader/
Base model cars of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but quarter-mile races.
Neil Cavuto had a wonderful interview with Hannan on Your World yesterday. He did mention that he loves Ron Paul and would've voted for him if he lived here. Judge Napolitano came on right after Hannan and told Neil that he was jumping for joy when he heard Hannan say that.
I'm in awe, pure awe of that speech.
Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
- Edmund Burke
Is this guy popular in the UK? If he wasn't before is he now? Great speach either way
Dondoolee: Is this guy popular in the UK? If he wasn't before is he now? Great speach either way
Not particularly, this was the first time I'd heard of him - he's a Conservative MEP (Member of the European Parliament) and they tend to have less visibility to the domestic audience. Hopefully that will all change now though, it would be so refreshing to see someone like him in mainstreem interviews, standing up for capitalism.
Hannan has masterfully got the Left in a tizz. A friend of mine sent me the following after he saw my link to the video:"wow he says things with such conviction that they sound plausible until you realise that he is making things equivalent that are clearly not equivalent, arguing against himself, confusing issues and wheeling out carefully constructed urban myths...He starts by saying that Brown says opposite things in Britain to the things he says to the Europeans and uses the example of free trade as if free trade is against British jobs for British workers, and says that meanwhile he is pouring on the subsidies to British industry... well yes that is how the French and Germans do it, subsidise their own industry and scream if anyone puts tariffs against their exports... both free trade and subsidies are exactly what Brown has been saying at home... Usually the EU is where each nation fights against the others protection of their own competitiveness and subsidies but here we have a Conservative MEP shooting his own country in the foot! The other countries must be laughing at the UK clawing at its self with party politics abroad. Treason at least! Perhaps he is being paid by the French and Germans? Riling against the "unprecedented" 10% of GDP debt as if it is some monstrous thing. Imagine you had a £50,000 a year income after tax and had a huge mortgage of... wait for it £5,000... terrible state of affairs! And unprecedented?? He obviously doesn't think people can remember back to black Wednesday! actually the recent Debt peaked under the Tories in 1994 and has been rapidly falling since and got to unprecedented low levels under this Labour continuum. Now it has shot up but less than most of the G20 countries. It was 250% of GDP in 1950. see this for the overall debt as part of GDP with time: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn26.pdf. but it gets really interesting when compared with the debt of other countries over time, then you see how the conservatives manufactured recession after recession that were only in the UK. So he could well say that it is unprecedented but only in the current unprecedentedly low national debt environment that we have seen under Labour. If this had happened during the John Major administration we would have been looking at more than 20% and after Thatcher had done so much to destroy British Industry I'm not sure if there could have been the possibility of a stimulus plan. It's so interesting how the conservatives are using the Republican trick of saying opposite and contradictory things with conviction and catch phrases for headlines. It's difficult to answer an argument that is not an argument and is contradictory at best. All of his rant is similar and it seems of very little use, me spending more time analysing but it was great that you pointed this out!"
Your friend isn't very well informed.
Our (Britain's) debt has been estimated at 140-260% of GDP, by non-governmental "experts". But this is the country's debt. Considering the governemnt is "only" responsible for 45% of the country's output here in the UK, that is more like 300-550% of the government's income The analogy is more like this: imagine a person who manages to steal £50,000 a year under threat of violence. His outgoings are generally £49,000 to £60,000 a year, and he has a debt which he estimates as £60,000 but that most of his friends put in the £150,000 to £275,000 range.
Luckily of course, this friend has a printing press with which he can write off his debts.
The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community.
I've been following Dan Hannan for about a year or so now, reading his blog and watching his youtube channel - he is the only politician in Britain to say that it was central bank interest rate policy that caused the recession, instead of whatever crappy reasons other parties claim. I'm pretty sure he's an Austrian.
As for his popularity, that video hit 1 million views in 36 hours - Ron Paul style. But he's not well known.
Brilliant video by the way, I saw it a few hours ago
Great speech! British politicians definitely have the sharpest tounges in Europe. But don't read more libertarianism into that speech than there actually is.
The European Parliament is a modern version of the Soviet Gulag, in the sense that political parties deport people with uncomfortable views to it. And a difference is of course a golden cage which makes every MEP rich with a huge tax free salary, all private expenses paid including free apartment, and pension payments inherited by their children for life et cetera.
It is a "gulag" because no citizens in Europe ever hear or care anything about what MEPs do, other than that they all get filthy rich on taxpayers money and regulate the curvature of bananas. To Europeans, the EU is a foreign country far away which they know very little about. The European parliament is also quite powerless. It is the commission, which is not elected but run by the member governments directly, which has the real political power.
That's why you can find rather libertarian views expressed in the European parliament. Their party friends don't want them to express their views anywhere where they might actually be heared or cared for by anyone.
It's not fascism when the government does it.
“We must spend now as an investment for the future.” - President Obama
Thedesolateone:Your friend isn't very well informed.
Too true. I'm crafting him a wordy Misean response. It's quite difficult navigating through his thought process sometimes though.
FreedomIsYellow:Too true. I'm crafting him a wordy Misean response. It's quite difficult navigating through his thought process sometimes though.
Please post it here too.
Sure, no problem
I'm coming bit late onto this, but I have to sau when I saw that video it was a revelation. I live in the UK and most people's economic views are either leftist, facist, idiotic or all of those. I definitely didn't think any politicians shared my view until I saw this guy.
I think the left leaning media have got very wound up by his remarks too. The channel 4 special on him was laughable and full of fallacies.
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
how is the UK media portraying him, and did it get decent coverage? Is it to early to see how many people were positivly efected by his speech?
I think the treatment is eerily familiar to that which Ron Paul initially got in America. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 did not cover him for 2 days, before channel 4 had him on their evening show. A ot of the media seems to be attacking him, which I can really only assume is a good thing.
Does anybody know if this guy is an Austrian?
Thedesolateone:Our (Britain's) debt has been estimated at 140-260% of GDP, by non-governmental "experts". But this is the country's debt.
Do you have a source I can use for those percentages? I'm pretty sure my friend is confusing the 9% budget deficit with the total debt. He's in for a shock.
Le Master: Neil Cavuto had a wonderful interview with Hannan on Your World yesterday. He did mention that he loves Ron Paul and would've voted for him if he lived here. Judge Napolitano came on right after Hannan and told Neil that he was jumping for joy when he heard Hannan say that.
This is what he said in that interview which led up to him speaking favorably about Ron Paul:
"I don't think I'm ever going to be Prime Minister. And one of the reasons why is because basically I think that governments shouldn't do things."
Those last four words alone make this man by far the closest thing the UK has to Ron Paul
And he also had some brilliant things to say about not bailing out banks.
It's definitely one to watch. Here's the second half of the interview with the above statements.
Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle in 9 steps (Soliciting comments)
Here is the full segmant with Cavuto:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sifofmgRBo
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_PMB2FvJ_s
Le Master: Here is the full segmant with Cavuto: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sifofmgRBo Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_PMB2FvJ_s
I really hope this man catches on in the UK, at least with populist support if not the media.
The statements in the Cavuto interview seem to point that way. He mentions interest rates were set too low in the boom and now we need to be saving instead of spending. He also called Keynes a "magic wand". If the shoe fits...
Here he is on Glenn Beck's show: also very good.
I really like what this guy is saying!
I bet he learned from Ron Paul (and mises.org), because he's been a MEP for four years, hasn't he? Sure some "defect views" must have made his party friends deport him to the powerless EU parliament in eternal media shadow to begin with. But now he's taken resolve and the internet somehow has caught up on it.
There's an election for EUP in June. This guy's got his campaign profile clear alright, for all British voters.
"What we're seeing now is an inexorable correction to the years of easy credit creation by these same governments which kept interest rates too low for too long. That was a political decision and not a market one. And the air that was puffed into the balloon came rushing out."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCYukD-unfo&feature=related
Le Master: FreedomIsYellow:Too true. I'm crafting him a wordy Misean response. It's quite difficult navigating through his thought process sometimes though. Please post it here too.
Here is what I wrote. I wanted to try and stay away from defending the Tories, but rather correct him where he went wrong.
Thanks for your thoughts on the video and apologies for my somewhat tardy response.
In his speech to the EU parliament, Brown said the following: "Let us not retreat into protectionism that is the road to ruin" Contrast this with his earlier "British Jobs for British workers" pander to the BNP audience, and the aforementioned subsidisation of banks and the car industry. So it's protectionism when at home, and free trade when in the EU. Here's what Hannan actually said:"You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that; who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British Jobs for British Workers’, and that you have subsidised - where you have not nationalised outright - swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks."
Hannan is rightly against spraying (freshly printed or taxpayers) money at bailing out every failing enterprise that moves. Subsidising failure will only lead to more of it in the future.
It is not total debt as a percentage of GDP that Hannan was talking about, it was the government *budget deficit* which will be running at 9% for 2009's budget alone. "We are now running a deficit that touches almost 10% of GDP – an unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary – countries where the IMF has already been called in."The actual percentage of total public sector *debt* is a different story. That link you provided shows national debt gradually falling since 1950 with a few bumps here and there, ending at around 50% of GDP by 2000. Fast forward to 2009 after 12 years of this government and the picture is rather different. Taking into account the recent bailouts the debt as a percentage of GDP is well over 100%. Considering that GDP includes government spending, the actual percentage relative to the productive sector of the economy must be even higher! Perhaps, after all, flash Gordon will be going cap-in-hand to the IMF like Callaghan in the 70s.
Here's more on the speeches.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/janet_daley/blog/2009/03/27/dan_hannan_shames_the_bbc_and_proves_need_for_broadcasting_freedom
In related news: Yes, you can be proactively dismissive! The British media have taken extensive measures to dismiss him. Just watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1bT0RftMM8
So, according to the host, this is some curious but unimportant internet phenomenon (driven by... well, you know, those capricious and stupid folks that use the internet). He does not show the speech in its entirety - but only its "choicest" parts, where Hannan delivers those well-deserved ad hominem remarks. And though he graciously invites Hannan to be interviewed -he also invites some troubled, unkempt, high-strung, stooge so that Hannan is given as little time as possible to put his wit and eloquence to use.
Fox News' mantra "fair and balanced", absurd as it is in view of their patent Christian-neo-conservative agenda, suddenly strikes me as reasonably accurate when I take into consideration what we could have instead. At least FN is unabashed about its bias. At least they do invite the lefties. At least they let them speak (albiet with lots of unpleasant interruptions).
It is a powerful speech. And short. Then, it could be a interesting tool for spreading that there is a different way to look at the crisis.
Just in case, I have uploaded a Spanish-subtitled version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd2vzEwrNMI
Ex-keynesian. http://keynesisdead.blogspot.com
What an excellent aid to my Spanish studies!
Indeed. If people think American media is bad, they should see European media.
I read a number of articles from his blog today. Hannan's prose and most of his content is enjoyable, but I do have major gripes about his overt populism and support for democracy...