A Jewish Batman? A female Robin? The Dynamic Duo battling on behalf of truth, justice, and Austrian economics? Are we in a parallel universe or what? We are indeed if we are reading The Batman Chronicles, the Winter 1998 issue, devoted to "Elseworlds," in which "heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places."
While American "liberals" tend to view Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton as their political and philosophical idols, conservatives at the Weekly Standard magazine and elsewhere have begun touting Henry Clay as their first political icon.
In fact, the Roosevelt legacy is not individualism; it is certainly not liberty. His continuing legacy is one of unprecedented government intervention. Roosevelt crushed property rights. He constructed huge public works projects. He also helped lead the U.S. into its disastrous slide into imperialism and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in numerous foreign conflicts (and millions of foreigners). In reality, the leviathan state in all its evil owes much to TR.
It's time to start thinking of the stock market as a giant S&L. Money continues to pour in, despite a bounty of evidence that the extraordinary gains of the last few years cannot be enjoyed in the near future. The perception has never been stronger that the stock market is the right place to be for your long-term investment needs.
Scrooge came in the form of government last year. The company Bill Gates built into the planet's leading money machine is still the target of a federal probe and a senate inquiry. The charge: anti-competitive behavior.
The dispossession of the Indians—culminating in the late 1880s with the surviving tribes of the West being herded onto reservations—was the result of a corrupt and immoral relationship between certain Northern industrialists, particularly government-subsidized railroads, and the federal politicians whose careers they financed and promoted.
Today's antitrust enforcement reduces tragedy to farce. A federal judge recently upheld the Federal Trade Commission's charge that Toys R' Us conspired to prop up the price of Mr. Potato Head. Why? Because the retail outlet liked to make exclusive deals.
China is undergoing one of the great economic transformations in human history. It has moved from communism toward what it calls "market socialism" at breakneck pace, and enjoyed double-digit economic growth as a result.
When the IMF declares a country an "economic miracle," look out. A financial crisis cannot be far behind.
