Using changes in the margin regulation as a stick to beat the stock bubble does not work, fails to solve the underlying problem, and further injures investors by restricting their choices. What Fed Chairman Greenspan didn't know is something that the young Greenspan and his mentor Ludwig von Mises did: that monetary freedom is the way to end market bubbles once and for all.
Is it any wonder that under the leadership of a supposed conservative administration, the alleged nemesis of the tax-and-spend liberal democrats in government, we are now seeing increases in all varieties of bureaucratic budgets and the creation of new federal projects and even of federal agencies? If there is money to be gotten for cheap, public officials will go for it, never mind their alleged commitment to public service or their oath of office or what have you!
It is the widespread view in academia that John Maynard Keynes was a model classical liberal in the tradition of Locke, Jefferson, and Tocqueville. But if Keynes was such a model champion of the free society, how can we account for his peculiar comments in 1933 endorsing the social "experiments" that were going on at the time in Italy, Germany, and Russia? And what about his strange introduction to the 1936 German translation of General Theory, where he writes that his approach to economic policy is much better suited to a totalitarian state such as that run by the Nazis?
Freedom needs no help from the state—which is its natural enemy, not its ally. Freedom promotes natural order, inequality, and the decentralization of enterprise, wealth, and culture.
The American nation state has effectively served as the church of this religion in the United States. The American "Vatican" is Washington, D.C., also a unique governing jurisdiction within the boundaries of a nation-state, like its Roman counterpart. Led by its economic priesthood, the American government administers the affairs of the nation to achieve a secular salvation for all its citizens--the attainment of a new heaven on earth.
No government can live up to its billing as a semi-divine problem solver. Government intervention is not an alternative to the market; it merely creates a different kind of market full of con men selling very sour lemons.
Contrary to popular thinking, economics is not about GDP or CPI or other economic indicators as such, but about human activities that seek to promote people's lives and well-being. So what are the tools that economists and financial experts utilize in their assessments of the economy? What is the basis of their framework of thought?
The state has a monopoly on higher education, and those who work for it tend, in part accordingly, to favor the state in most every respect. Having higher education managed, ultimately, by the state is one of the most corrupting aspects we find in these institutions.
For too long,we libertarians have allowed our misguided opponents to monopolize the banner of equality. We have more right to that banner than they do. The time has come to seize it back.
Economists of the Austrian School not only understood that markets can fail if measured by an unrealistic and unrealizable standard. Ludwig von Mises emphasized the "uncertainty inherent in every action."
