"Public estimation of eminence runs in reverse ratio to its genuineness," writes Mencken, anticipating Obama, "the sort of eminence that the mob esteems most highly is precisely the sort that has least grounding in solid worth and honest accomplishment."
The government can prevent market forces from operating by channeling resources into artificial channels.
"We are seeing the disintegration of the fractional-reserve banking system all over the world. It is being held together by bailouts, which are the government equivalent of bailing wire and chewing gum."
My own preference is, first to allow market adjustments to take place.
This study guide is presented to assist the reader in following Hazlitt's deconstruction of Keynes.
It's a hard truth for Americans to face that neither team in Washington is going to guard what we love the most. That is something we are going to have to face. Liberty is for the citizens to guard themselves.
The present crisis is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of state interventionism, and it is also a consequence of a mechanicist approach to economic problems.
Ubel mocks those who speak of a "nanny state"; but the real problem is not that the state officiously looks out for our best interests at the expense of our freedom. It is that the state exploits us.
Presented as part of the Mises Institute’s Brown Bag Seminar series; Auburn, Alabama, on 25 September 1996.
Instead of trying to abolish failure via bailouts, we should let markets work, let failure run its course, and be so much the wiser for it.
