Category: Economics
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Bailouts National and Local
A post at the Wichita Eagle Editorial blog titled Either way, taxpayers will pay for failing GM illustrates how when government and business become highly intertwined, a self-sustaining behemoth is created that can’t be slain. We say an example of this locally this year in Wichita, when a taxpayer subsidy to a development turned out…
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Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever
Here’s a talk recently delivered by Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. This organization remains the best place to learn about why our economy is in such trouble. The full speech can be read at Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever. An excerpt: I report on this not so that we…
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Pat Buchanan: Comrade Obama?
Pat Buchanan’s recent column Comrade Obama? contains much I agree with, keeping me liking and admiring him, even through I disagree with a few of his positions. This column accurately describes the current political landscape, and it’s not complimentary to Barack Obama, Democrats, or Republicans. A few excerpts: Indeed, how do Republicans who call Obama…
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Some Articles Worth Reading
Making Social Security More Harmful. From the Foundation for Economic Education. “Consider first that ever since Social Security was enacted in 1935 Americans have been told that their ‘contributions’ are being deposited into their own account to pay for their retirement benefits. … The other fraudulent claim made about Social Security (again, from the very…
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The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis
Professor George Reisman contributes the excellent (and lengthy) article The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis. I’ve had the distinct honor of attending a number of Professor Reisman’s lectures at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and I’m slowly working my way through his monumental book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. Here’s…
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Beyond Bailouts Is Recommended
I recommend BeyondBailouts.org as a place to learn about the current situation in our financial markets. From their site: BeyondBailouts.org is a joint venture of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The purpose of the website is to educate about government?s role in our current financial difficulties, suggest reforms that address…
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Firms that made wrong decisions should fail
So says Anna Schwartz. She co-authored, with Milton Friedman, A Monetary History of the United States. She has insight into what’s going on right now. Read the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend interview Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War.
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Earmarks are (not) OK
In a Wichita Eagle letter, writer Prem N. Bajaj of Wichita makes the case that Earmarks are OK. But only by tortured reasoning, in my opinion. First, he states: “Earmarks finance local projects that the community is unable to support.” I ask Mr. Bajaj this question: Where, if not from community, does money for earmarks…
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Are We Angry Only Because We Were Caught?
In his column Welcome to ‘Moral Hazard’, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Daniel Henninger writes: For behind it all sat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, running mortgage liquidity into the nation’s neighborhoods like an open fire hydrant. Several years ago, when the Journal’s editorial board met with Fannie Mae’s top executives and pressed the issue…
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Our problem is the manager of our money
Think of it: Nothing is more vital to capitalism than capital, the financial seed corn dedicated to next year’s crop. Yet we, believers in free markets, allow the price of capital, i.e., the interest rate on loanable funds, to be fixed by a central committee in accordance with government objectives. We might as well resurrect…
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Dry-Cleaning Economics in One Lesson
The Foundation for Economic Education reports that an American clothes hanger company has succeeded in persuading the government to slap a tariff on its foreign competitors. Who wins? …the tariff is expected to cost some $212,765 for each of the 564 jobs saved. … The lesson is that the misguided attempt to save jobs for…
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Wall Street Crisis Fruit of Government, Not Free Markets
Radley Balko writing about the activities of the United States Government in Reason Magazine: Many commenters have blamed all of this on capitalism. This isn’t capitalism. It’s a peculiar kind of corporatist socialism, where good risks and the resulting profits remain private, but bad risks and the resulting losses are passed on to taxpayers. There’s…