SuperTommy 2008?

By Tommy Leung on 07/10/2008 in Politics

Can it be?

Don Harrold July 4th

By Tommy Leung on 07/10/2008 in Politics

I’ve been watching Don Harrold’s videos on YouTube for quite a while now. He makes a lot of good videos about the markets, CNBC, Mad Money with Jim Cramer, etc. I didn’t see this particular 4th of July video until now and felt compelled to share. Check it out!

Video on Gas Prices

By Tommy Leung on 07/07/2008 in Politics

Found this video at The Freetarian blog, you might know him better as Val Venis of wrestling fame. Does a great job explaining the real reason behind why the price of gas is so high today. I’ve wrote about it but, this is a quick two minute explanation; perfect for those who don’t like to read. :)

Why Are Gas Prices So High?

By Tommy Leung on 07/02/2008 in Politics

I live in New York City so I don’t really have to drive anywhere if I didn’t want to but, I do have a car: Nissan Altima with a decent MPG. My frequency of driving has gone quite far down since prices have started spiraling out of control. The last time I filled up the tank, regular unleaded was at about $4.15 a gallon. I saw prices at almost $4.40 the other day. These high and ever-increasing prices are incredibly irritating. Even those who do not drive are affected by it because the prices of everything else will also go up as long as gas is used in the transportation or manufacturing of the product. While politicians are trying to come up with bad new policies to try and lower the price of gas, we should be asking: why are gas prices so high?

As a student of Austrian Economics, the recent increase in prices of everything did not come as a surprise. Austrian economists have been talking about the problem of inflation and bad monetary policy for years. Most people hate economics. It probably has something to do with schools generally teaching Keynesian Economics. Did you know how to pronounce that? Probably not. The Keynesian teachings are generally flooded with lots of charts, graphs, and math. I’d imagine most people get turned off by that–I certainly do. Austrian writings are a lot easier to understand and don’t turn economics into physics with a multitude of formulas, equations, and symbols.

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The American Way

By Tommy Leung on 06/30/2008 in Politics

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” – United States Declaration of Independence

We often forget what it means to be Americans and usually that means we forgot the American history that we were taught in school. Every reputable textbook on American history has a copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in it. If you were anything like me, you never bothered to read them–even though it was assigned. The schools probably could have done a better job making it more engaging and helped us better understand the older English but, they didn’t. Those documents didn’t really mean much to me as I never really understood them. There has always been an unconscious idea of American principles that I’ve carried around. Only recently have I been able to consciously express them. I place a much higher value on the Constitution and Declaration of Independence today because of its ideas and its message–also known as the American Way.

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