Tag: Economics
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Rotten Paper, Toxic Paper
Pat Buchanan’s take on the current financial crisis. See Day of Reckoning.
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Free market economists weigh in on Paulson’s plan
Reason Magazine asks free-market economists their opinion of the proposed bailout plan, and collects their results. Click here to read this excellent article.
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The Bailout Reader
The Ludwig von Mises Institute has compiled The Bailout Reader, a collection of articles relevant to the current situation. Not all these articles are from the past few weeks, as Austrian economists have long understood the dangers of government interventionism, the fruits of which we see today. The events taking place in the financial market…
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Ron Paul’s Wisdom on the Current Financial Crisis
Ron Paul writes My Answer to the President, noting that the “financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.” He introduces a quotation from Hayek this way: F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks? manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar.…
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Laissez faire in Washington? On what planet?
Sheldon Richman of the Foundation for Economic Education contributes analysis of the current economic situation in the article Government Failure. A few quotes: Laissez faire in Washington? On what planet? Governments at all levels have regulated the financial industry from the time of the founding. … At the Division of Labour blog, economist Lawrence H.…
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Wind Power: Why Special Tax Treatment?
A recent article in USA Today (Renewable energy firms clamor for tax breaks) reports on the uncertainty of whether the U.S. Congress will extend the tax credits that subsidize solar and wind power investment. From the article: Some $500 million in investment and production tax credits will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress renews them. Without…
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Kansas Climate Change Mitigation Will Be Costly
A recent presentation in Kansas revealed that fighting global warming in Kansas will be quite costly, and will harm lower-income families most. The Wichita Eagle article Business leaders hear climate talk reports that The National Association of Manufacturers calculated that cap-and-trade proposals before Congress would cost the average Kansas family $304 per month in the…
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Pickens’s Slim Economics
An article from the Foundation for Economic Education warns us to be cautious when considering the plans of oilman T. Boone Pickens: Pickens?s commercial no doubt causes FEE readers? classical-liberal antennae to stand at attention. The word “plan” alone rightly provokes worries of coercive schemes. The notion of being independent of energy or any other…
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Efforts to Regulate ‘Wild West’ Markets are Long Overdue
A Christian Science Monitor article Efforts to regulate ‘Wild West’ markets are long overdue contains a number of misstatements. For one thing, characterization of the American West as “wild” in the sense that mayhem prevailed, and that life and property were not safe, is not correct. An article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies titled…
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Drug Runaround: Solved by Universal Health Care?
A letter writer in the July 12, 2008 Wichita Eagle has issues with his health insurance coverage, and wants us to discard our present system in favor of universal health care coverage. Mr. Ronald Voth of Halstead (a candidate for the Democratic party nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives for the fourth district of…
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Where’s Leadership on Oil Speculation?
In the July 12, 2008 Wichita Eagle, Kenneth James Crist of Wichita blames oil speculators for ruining the U.S. Economy, writing that politicians should “do something positive to halt the rampant speculation in the stock market and oil futures that is really driving these runaway prices. All it really amounts to is tremendous greed on…
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The Threat of Social Progressives
In the July 5, 2008 Wichita Eagle, a Mr. Chet Syres of Hutchinson contributes a letter promoting the virtues of liberalism, proponents of which he now wants us to call social progressives. I remind Mr. Syres that leftists stole the terms “liberal” and “progressive” from the classical liberals. From For A New Liberty by Murray…