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A rookies thought to the great American beer festival.
I’ve read all kinds of articles that you have to have a game plan in order to maximize the experience. I have no plan but to enjoy the frstiities. Sure i hav a few beers I will try to consume but all in all, I’m playing it by ear. Since I am attending as a brewery rep. I will not have the luxury of being a patron but there are significant advantages to being in the industry.

All access
I’ve got a passthat will allow me to come and go to all events. I can’t imagine how much the street value would be for such an item. No, I’m not going to sell my pass but I would be interested to know the street value. Tonight, Wednesday, there is a brewers reception. This is a closed door event where you get to meet your industry fellows. After the reception the rest of the festival is beer sessions at the convention.

Cons
the only con I can think of is having stand at our booth for 4 sessions. Of course I will get to get around and sample some brews but I still have to rep. Arkansas’ finest. So it’s not that bad of a gig.

Final Thoughts
This will be the furthest west I’ve been so I am very excited. I’v got a few buddies up in Denver so I know they will be able to show me the INS and outs of the city. I will take as many photos and videos as possible and share the experience.

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Fiat Money: How Else You Gonna Kill 600,000 Americans?

A few years ago on these pages, I harshly criticized an article urging New Yorkers to “eat local,” and went so far as to dub the young lady’s column, “The worst economics article ever.” I am here to report that her record has been smashed. Floyd Norris’s recent New York Times article on the greenback is hands down the worst economics article I have ever read. Not only is it jam-packed full of false history, but it uses the falsehoods to justify monstrous crimes, both in the past and present.

The reader with a strong stomach will have to click the above link to appreciate the full enormity of Norris’s accomplishment, but for those with limited attention spans I’ll detail some of its biggest problems below.

Bernanke Saved the Credit Markets?

The article opens up with claims about the health of the world economy that are misleading at best:

Six months after the financial world seemed to be coming to an end, the world’s economies appear to be recovering. Banks that seemed to be on the brink of failure less than a year ago are now able to pay back investments made by the Treasury.

It is too early to declare victory, but the world looks much safer than it did only a few months ago. Credit markets are recovering, to the point that the junk bond market will have its best year ever if it manages not to lose any money over the rest of 2009. The stock market has just finished its best six months since 1938.

If victory is to be had, it will owe a lot to the willingness of American policy makers to set aside cherished policies and simply create money. And that is one reason it is appropriate to pause and celebrate an unheralded bicentennial: The father of the greenback, Elbridge Gerry Spaulding, who was born 200 years ago, in 1809. (emphasis added)

Now hold on just a second. I want to challenge this claim that things are now recovering. Concerning banks paying back their TARP money, I have dealt with that issue here. Regarding the stock market, Norris is right: it’s way up (so far) in 2009. But I don’t remember Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, or Presidents Bush and Obama ever justifying their rescue programs by saying, “We need to do this to resuscitate the stock market.” I grant you, they may (and probably did) say that the stock market would be helped by their programs, but pumping up stock prices was never the justification given to the American public.

As I recal…

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Wired shows you how to make a kegerator

Over on the Wired How-to Wiki, they have a nice step-by-step write up on making your own kegerator.

Even a low-end commercial kegerator will run you $400 or more, and a nice one will be more than $600. If you’ve got a spare fridge, you can build a kegerator for around $200. It’s easy to do, and well worth it. We should know: This how-to is based on Wired’s own kegerator construction project.

They even have a video which I’ve embedded here.

Some day I’ll have a kegerator for my homebrew. Kegging is so much easier than bottling.

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Why Is Capitalism So Unpopular?

Henry Hazlitt once said that good ideas have to be relearned every generation. Among the intellectuals of our time, capitalism is wildly unpopular. This in spite of the fact that it is the only social system that has permitted prosperity and flourishing.

Why they continue to oppose the free market in the face of such evidence is a matter of debate. Some have argued that intellectuals dislike capitalism because they feel it doesn’t offer them just rewards for their labors. Indeed, academic books do not sell particularly well, and it is easy for the dedicated scholar to feel a degree of envy when he sees “lesser” minds like John Grisham or J.K. Rowling bringing in boatloads of money for writing relatively straightforward fiction. (And that is to say nothing of professional athletes or, those most foul of professional villains, corporate CEOs.)

I think there may be a more straightforward explanation that plays a role in their dismissal of capitalism. To a “man of system,” to borrow Adam Smith’s terminology, capitalism just isn’t that exciting. Participants in the market economy are wholly beholden to consumer wants. The academics envision a grand world, where Great Men fight Great Wars, periodically inventing Great Things or developing Great Ideas. Instead, the market provides us with incremental processes, which expend enormous piles of resources, in a quest to make better Triscuits. It is hardly the stuff of high drama, to say nothing of Great History.

Under capitalism, the common man does not need an intellectual vanguard or a group of virtuous surrogates to make his decisions for him or to defend him against the rapacity of his fellows. He can do just fine without our help, thank you very much, and would be much obliged if we would go back to our ivory towers and leave him alone.

The idea that great statesmen are not needed — to say nothing about being wanted — can no doubt be galling to many who decry capitalism for its excesses. For the people who derive their self-worth from being paternalistic, this is a sorry state of affairs indeed.

According to the do-gooders whom Adam Smith called “men of system,” the average person is like a piece on a chessboard, to be arranged at the whim of a supervirtuous planner. The planner, who ignores the fact that each of the pieces has (as Smith put it) its own “principles of motion,” does his best to orchestrate a game according to …

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