What is it the Justice Department wants out of the biggest credit-card associations? Is duality in credit-card membership, the freedom for a bank to be a member of both major credit-card associations in the United States, good or bad? Is it legal or illegal? Is it a system that promotes cartels or a system that results in vigorous price cutting much to the consumer's benefit?
As the world financial system entered a state of collapse, commentators said that Russia had traded the shortages of socialism for the bank runs and financial panics of capitalism. In fact, modern finance and banking are built on unstable, socialistic foundations.
Clinton and friends propose a global lending facility as a prelude to endless bailouts.
Financial instability and anti-capitalist fallacies about booms and busts.
When I received this book, I turned first to the contribution of Murray N. Rothbard, "The Gold Exchange Standard in the Interwar Years."
Winter's economic crisis in Asia was blamed on "go-go capitalism" and "crony capitalism," but those explanations don't get to the root cause. The Asian meltdown stems from structural defects deep within the world monetary system itself. These are defects that no amount of bailouts, exchange controls, IMF power, or even U.S. monetary discipline can repair.
