I'm looking for some educated help in writing a blog post about how government is responsible for this mess, not the free market. Mainly for educating my extended family and friends. Any input would be appreciated.
This is what I've got so far, I plan to elaborate on each number.
1. There is no "free market" to blame(except maybe the internet?)
2. The Federal Reserve Act
3. The creation of the FDIC
4. The Community Reinvestment Act
5. The runaway national debt
6. The creation of Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac(or the government backing of)
7, 8, 9 10?
Watch the last few Tom Woods talks at the Campaign for Liberty and Misesmedia Youtube Channels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91OIBnrjzLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lRpJ1GLm5Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tge5Qx0jby0
That should give you a LOT of material.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
Anti-trust Laws, SEC, licencing, and corruption.
arkana: I'm looking for some educated help in writing a blog post about how government is responsible for this mess, not the free market. Mainly for educating my extended family and friends. Any input would be appreciated. This is what I've got so far, I plan to elaborate on each number. 1. There is no "free market" to blame(except maybe the internet?)
I wouldn't get into any exceptions. Even the internet has statist hands in it. If you start to nit-pick details with people that aren't really that aware of any of this, then you may find yourself falling into alot of grey areas that can be defined unless you really know what your doing and if the person you are talking with is really intellectually interested. Making expections in the beginning may open up an argument between what is more free and what is less free and how's that defined, etc..., etc... It would be messy.
My straight answer with no exceptions is this is all free market and the State preys upon all this. But then again I think the free market was in the Soviet Union under Stalin or China under Mao, but that's exactly when people that may not be even slightly intellectually curious may fall asleep. So it's easier and still honest to say this isn't a free market causing the problems. And then go into all the State/government programs that have turned this country into having a very socialist government.
"I used to see a mountain as a mountain.. Thereafter.. when I saw a mountain; lo! it was not a mountain.. yet now of final tranquillity: I see a mountain just as a mountain as I used to.." - Master Yuan; molon labe
Thanks! That's some good stuff. Let me know if you all come up with anymore.
arkana: 1. There is no "free market" to blame(except maybe the internet?)
Unfortunately, the internet isn't even free. One example that comes to mind is federal regulation of online gambling.
It was the politicians, central banks and financial authorities that created the entire crises
The best book on the crash is as yet only published in Swedish, in July the English version will be available. ““A perfect storm: How the State, the Capital, you and I sunk the world economy.” The author is Johan Norberg, author of “In Defence of Global Capitalism” and the foremost debunker of Naomi Klein’s lies and myths in “The Schock Doctrine- The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. His rebuttal in the article “The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics” Johan Norberg writes in a Swedish news paper column as follows:
[My translation] “In my [Johan Norberg] book “A perfect storm: How the State, the Capital, you and I sunk the world economy (Hydra publishers) I explain how consumers, home buyers, banks and mortgage institutions created an unsustainable housing and credit bubble. But the most provocative for left-wing economist Lars Pålsson Syll is that I also show that it was the politicians, central banks and financial authorities that created the entire environment that stimulated most of these aberrations. Let me briefly describe some of the key facts:
1) Monetary policy: To avoid a crisis after the IT bubble and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the U.S. Federal Reserve lowered key interest rate from 6.25 to 1.75 percent in 2001, then lowered it further to 1 percent in June 2003 and kept it there for a full year before it began to gently raise it. It was so cheap to borrow, new money poured into the U.S. housing sector, prices doubled in five years.
2) Capital Imports: China and a number of other major emerging economies would not allow the market to control the exchange rates and suppressed domestic consumption by political means. Instead, exported capital on a massive scale to the U.S.,that further drove down interest rates and inflated the credit bubble even more.
3) Housing: Even when fighting one another both Republican and Democratic politicians argued that more and more people should own their homes. This was put into effect by a battery of rebates, subsidies, mortgages and diverse guarantees. Both the Clinton and Bush administration tried to ensure that more and more loans were given to people who the market did not previously regard as creditworthy. The single most important factor was the huge, government-sponsored mortgage institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 2004, when the bubble expanded at its worst, the Bush administration mandated that the proportion of loans that should go to low-income earners should be increased from 50 to 56 percent.
4) Housing Bonds: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac launched synthetic mortgage backed securities, which contained elements of several hundred loans, which in its turn were resold to investors. Wall Street banks became increasingly interested in these risky products when credit rating agencies Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch said they were almost risk free. But these institutions became deceptive to accommodate well paying clients. They could get away with it and still maintain their position because they had been given a monopoly by public regulators - banks was forced to have more capital if they purchased securities that had received poor ratings these institutions and many mutual and pension funds were by regulators banned from buying any at all, so everyone who wanted sell securities had to go to the major credit rating agencies. No matter how badly they misbehaved, they had retained their monopoly.”
Norberg sounds like a Swedish Tom Woods.
Johan Norberg is a fellow at the CATO Institute.
I read your post about Tom Woods. I had to copy and paste the link.
If i may make a sugggestion. If you use Firefoc you can add an extension called ScribeFire. It is a blogging tool that allows you to easily do new posts to your blog. It has a bulit in HTML editor, very easy to use. BUT it also gives you a tool for using HTML in blogposts as this. You write teh blog, do your HTML links and quotes, copy it and paste it in the Mises blog post you are writing.
Overinvestment in the stock market through tax-sheltered retirement accounts (401k, IRA)
Tariffs and barriers to entry don't help either, not to mention the US has one of the highest corporate income taxes in the world.
the US pays 2-3 times more for sugar than any other place in the world...how sad.
Combine that sugar quota with subsidies to corn producers, and that's the reason Soda companies use crappy high fructose corn syrup (which, according to quite a few, has quite a few health detriments) instead of sugar...and thus why Mexican-made Coke tastes better than American-made.
Resident Christian Minarchist.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5503
good read
1) It exists.
To darkness I condemn you...
Jon Irenicus:1) It exists.
2) It continues to exist.
3) It refuses to stop its existance.
Schools are labour camps.
Good stuff, thanks for the help!
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