Interventionism

The state both caused the problem and prevented people from protecting themselves from the resulting violence.

Forty years ago today, on the morning of Sunday, August 15, 1971, the US president, Richard Nixon, declared the inconvertibility of the dollar into gold. It was to be the great liberation that Keynesians and governments had dreamed of for decades. The results, however, have been catastrophic.

If the Keynesian talking heads were right, there should have been an increase in the pace of recovery in 2010.

Private organizations can set their own policies and allow customers to decide for themselves whether they want the service on those terms. But something more than customer policy is happening with all the latest demands for real names; the state is pushing this.

Imagine, for just a moment, that US government debt were rated in the same way that municipal bonds or regular corporate debt are.

The entire Keynesian/government approach to stimulus has been a catastrophic failure.

Bad ideological trends will result in the complete cessation of any voluntary saving and capital formation on the part of individual citizens. 

What once was believed to be a city of destiny (paradise on earth) is being destroyed by government looting.

Now that the debt "crisis" is over, we can explore two of the wackier proposals that emerged during the panic. 

After three-plus years of floundering around, a consensus has finally arrived that we are back in recession. Growth is not happening. The meager statistical growth of the past few years — no one dared claim it amounted to full recovery — was probably illusory.