Essays

What Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty.

"Given the preponderance of housing in bank assets, household wealth, and the perception of wealth, the key policies of Central Planning largely revolve around housing: keeping interest rates (and thus mortgage rates) low, flooding the banking sector with liquidity to ease lending, guaranteeing low-down-payment mortgages via FHA, and numerous other subsidies of homeownership. At least three aspects of this broad-based support are historically unprecedented." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhat Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty.

Former Fed Banker: Debunking the Myths About Central Banks

"Pursuit of price stability is the one goal that nearly everyone agrees is a central bank responsibility. Yet it is the one on which the Fed and other central banks have failed miserably. Since the Fed's founding in 1913, consumer prices have increased by a factor of 23 times. If the U.S. can extricate itself from fiscal deficits, price stability would be an attainable goal for central banks. Otherwise, central banking is nothing but mythology." Continue reading →

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“The Government is US?” Not Unless We’re Citigroup

"The supposed 'countervailing power' of Big Government against Big Business turned out to be as genuine as the conflict between 'good cop' and 'bad cop' interrogators. Historian Gabriel Kolko showed that the primary force behind the much-vaunted 'progressive' regulatory agenda at the turn of the 20th century was the regulated industries themselves. Major portions of the New Deal regulatory/welfare state were backed, even drafted, by the most powerful factions of corporate capital. Don’t fall for the line that state functionaries 'work for us.' Take a look at where they worked before they entered 'public service' and watch where they go back to afterward." Continue reading →

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America’s Great Depression Quote of the Week: A Visit with ‘Dr. Hoover’

"The recovery in the early 1920s is an example of an economy rapidly recovering as government spending and taxes were cut. Another example is 'The Austerity of 1946', which despite Keynesian economists’ predictions of doom and gloom, was in fact was a period of rapid return to relative prosperity following the massive reduction in government spending which followed the end WW II. Given how poorly the economy has fared following the ‘treatment’ proscribed by Dr. Bernanke and Dr. Obama isn’t it time to try a Dr. Rothbard’s natural cure?" Continue reading →

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Economic Fascism and the Power Elite

"The state—the organization of the political means—is the institution that allows an idle, unproductive class of parasites to live at the expense of ordinary, working people, whose means are industrious activity and consensual exchange in the marketplace. We ought not assume, however, that the indigent segment of society, those who receive social welfare aid from the state, are necessarily foremost among the parasites of the political means. Rather, free-market libertarians have demonstrated that in the statist economy of theft and wealth redistribution, it is the elite—powerful, entrenched commercial players—who most benefit." Continue reading →

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Paul Craig Roberts: The Missing Recovery

"The recovery exists only in the official measure of real GDP, which is deflated by an understated measure of inflation, and in the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate, which is declining because it does not count discouraged job seekers who have given up looking for a job. No other data series indicates an economic recovery. Neither real retail sales nor housing starts, consumer confidence, payroll employment, or average weekly earnings indicate economic recovery. Neither does the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. The Fed’s expansive monetary policy of bond purchases to maintain negative real interest rates continues 3.5 years into the recovery." Continue reading →

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Red White: Why a Founding Father of Postwar Capitalism Spied for the Soviets

"In the 1930s, internationalists in the U.S. Treasury Department were determined to resolve the flaws in the international economic system once and for all. In the words of Harry Dexter White, a then little-known Treasury official who became the unlikely architect of the Bretton Woods system, it was time to build a 'New Deal for a new world.' Working with his British counterpart, the revolutionary economist John Maynard Keynes, White set out to create the economic foundations for a durable postwar global peace. Despite having never held any official title of importance, White had by 1944 achieved implausibly broad influence over U.S. foreign and economic policy." Continue reading →

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The Criminology of Firearms

"In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and some empirical research of its own about guns. The Academy could not identify any gun restriction that had reduced violent crime, suicide or gun accidents. Why don’t gun bans work? Because they rely on voluntary compliance by gun-using criminals. Actual research results—as opposed to unsupported opinions—pose a question embarrassed gun prohibitionists invariably try to evade: why ban guns to ordinary owners, i.e., people who never commit gun crimes?" Continue reading →

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Americans – Like Nazi Germans – Don’t Notice that All of Our Rights Are Slipping Away

"More and more commonly, the government prosecutes cases based upon 'secret evidence' that they don’t show to the defendant … or sometimes even the judge hearing the case. The government uses 'secret evidence' to spy on Americans, prosecute leaking or terrorism charges (even against U.S. soldiers) and even assassinate people. And see this and this. Secret witnesses are being used in some cases. And sometimes lawyers are not even allowed to read their own briefs. Indeed, even the laws themselves are now starting to be kept secret. And it’s about to get a lot worse." Continue reading →

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Wendy McElroy: Only Places Have Rights?

"The queue of 'rights that depend on geography' is growing. Texting while walking has become the new social sin. Portland, Oregon just made it illegal for a man to whistle on public streets unless he keeps walking and, so, distributes the noise pollution. Bloomberg's ban on donations of food to homeless shelters because the city could not guarantee the salt, fat and fiber content. Bureaucrats want to yank rights out from under individuals and make them a matter of place, not people. All you need to do is be in the wrong place, and you have no rights. Speak out, drink a large soda, hand out literature, walk your dog, or whistle too long in one place…crime is everywhere." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWendy McElroy: Only Places Have Rights?