Any editorial that starts with “Karl Marx was right about at least one thing …” deserves close examination, especially when it appears in Kansas’ largest newspaper and is written by that newspaper’s former editor. The thrust of Davis Merritt’s article is that the theory of free markets hasn’t worked: “We’re painfully experiencing right now the [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Economics'
Pragmatism Must Recognize Reality
November 18th, 2008 · No Comments
Tags: Economics
Joe Scarborough: Please Stop Saying Laissez-faire
November 17th, 2008 · No Comments
I’m listening to Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, and he says: “Laissez-faire capitalism is a wonderful thing except in this case …”
I’ve heard stuff like this over and over the past few months: A politician says “I’m a big free-market guy, but …”
What’s sad to realize is that these people think that what we have in [...]
Tags: Economics
United States Government Spending (dot com)
November 14th, 2008 · No Comments
I recently discovered usgovernmentspending.com. It seems like a great place to get data not only for the federal government, but for the states, too.
Tags: Economics
Bailouts National and Local
November 14th, 2008 · No Comments
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 to [...]
Tags: Economics
Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever
November 3rd, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Pat Buchanan: Comrade Obama?
November 2nd, 2008 · No Comments
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 a socialist [...]
Tags: Economics
Some Articles Worth Reading
October 28th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis
October 25th, 2008 · 2 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Beyond Bailouts Is Recommended
October 23rd, 2008 · 2 Comments
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 those [...]
Tags: Economics
Firms that made wrong decisions should fail
October 19th, 2008 · 1 Comment
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.
Tags: Economics
Earmarks are (not) OK
October 7th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Are We Angry Only Because We Were Caught?
October 2nd, 2008 · No Comments
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 of [...]
Tags: Economics
Our Problem is the Manager of Our Money
October 1st, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Dry-Cleaning Economics in One Lesson
September 29th, 2008 · No Comments
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 domestic hanger [...]
Tags: Economics
Wall Street Crisis Fruit of Government, Not Free Markets
September 29th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics · Uncategorized
Bailout Raises Libertarians’ Market Value
September 28th, 2008 · No Comments
“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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Rotten Paper, Toxic Paper
September 26th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Pat Buchanan’s take on the current financial crisis. See Day of Reckoning.
Tags: Economics
Free market economists weigh in on Paulson’s plan
September 26th, 2008 · No Comments
Reason Magazine asks free-market economists their opinion of the proposed bailout plan, and collects their results. Click here to read this excellent article.
Tags: Economics
The Bailout Reader
September 26th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Lure of Earmarks Impossible to Resist, Even in Crisis
September 26th, 2008 · No Comments
Bill Smith of ARRA News Service reports on earmarks worming their way in the agreement to end the current financial crisis. This agreement may have imploded on itself, but the lesson is clear. See the post Major “Earmark” in Democrat Bailout Agreement .
Tags: Economics
Ron Paul’s Wisdom on the Current Financial Crisis
September 26th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Laissez faire in Washington? On what planet?
September 19th, 2008 · No Comments
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. White [...]
Tags: Economics
Drug Runaround: Solved by Universal Health Care?
July 13th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Where’s Leadership on Oil Speculation?
July 13th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Economics
Price Controls Will Harm Iowa
June 25th, 2008 · No Comments
In the article Price Controls Create Man-Made Disasters we learn that although the Iowa attorney general has imposed Iowa’s anti-price-gouging rule (Price-gougers beware, Attorney General says), the likely effect will be “shortages of needed supplies, long lines, delayed repairs, and, perhaps, increased incivility.”
The price system is very good at allocating scarce resources. That’s certainly [...]
Tags: Economics




