United States government

10
Oct
By Bob Weeks

1,000 to Protest Attack on Free-Market Principles at U.S. Capitol

I am one of these people! Amidst Market Unrest, Americans for Prosperity Gathers Citizens to Protest Big-Government Power Grab WASHINGTON – About 1,000 citizens will gather in front of the U.S. Capitol on Friday to participate in a free-market call to arms by the grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Amidst market uncertainty, and just weeks away from a crucial election, the crowd of citizens from 38 states around the nation will protest a looming big-government power grab and rally to the defense of free-market, limited government principles. The rally will kick-off at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, October 10, in…
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07
Oct
By Bob Weeks

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 come from? If you consider just two parties -- your local community and the federal government -- earmarks may seem like a great thing. Free money! Who doesn't want that? But communities across the country lobby for and get earmarks too, and they may be…
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01
Oct
By Bob Weeks

Our problem is the manager of our money

Judy Shelton makes this case in the Wall Street Journal editorial Loose Money And the Roots Of the Crisis: 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 Gosplan, the old Soviet State Planning Committee, and ask them to draw up the next five-year plan. "There are numbers of us, myself included, who strongly…
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29
Sep
By Bob Weeks

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 nothing free-market about it. Also: Bailout plan splits free-market backers
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28
Sep
By Bob Weeks

Bailout Raises Libertarians’ Market Value

"The specter of the most titanic intervention in the markets since Franklin Roosevelt started sewing the safety net has folks at the Cato Institute reaching for something strong." See Bailout Raises Libertarians' Market Value in the Washington Post. Also from the Cato Institute: Because of their quasi-governmental status, there is a market perception that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities and debt carry an implicit federal guarantee against default. Hence, the GSEs expose the federal taxpayer to an ever-increasing potential contingent liability that could ultimately cost tens of billions of dollars to rectify. When was this written? A week…
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26
Sep
By Bob Weeks

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 offer an illustration of the soundness of the Austrian theory of money, banking, and credit cycles, and Mises.org is your source not only for analysis of these events but also the economic theory that helps explain what is happening and what to do about it.…
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26
Sep
By Bob Weeks

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. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day -- and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own. In my opinion, a great danger we face is that just as the Great…
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