When discussing the secession of Quebec from the Rest of Canada (ROC), many Anglo-Canadian economists become doomsday preachers of apocalyptic scenarios. They predict social calamities such as poverty, mass unemployment, civil war, and mass exodus.
They should settle down, try to be rational, and focus on the only real issue: the long-term economic well-being of Quebecois and Canadians.
Steve Stockman, among the best of Washington's freshmen Congressmen, holds a daily prayer session that staff members attend voluntarily. Last year, nobody could have stopped it. But thanks to the "Contract With America," Congress now has to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
"Business ethics" is mostly used to promote social policy that is incompatible with the profit and loss system. The argument of the business "ethicists" is simple. They say corporations neglect their social obligations because they are focussed on making money for selfish stockholders. Government must prod businesses to give back to society what they have taken. It is the corporation's penance for capitalist sins.
After two years of pretending to be for free trade, the Clinton administration, backed by the Republican leadership in Congress, finally 'fessed up. In their dealings with China and Mexico, they shredded two centuries of economic wisdom, repudiated every principle of sensible economic relations, and kicked taxpayers and consumers in the teeth.
Performance budgeting (PB) is the newest strategy to make the public sector work. Yet as with other similar strategies, PB is fundamentally flawed. Without a system of profit and loss, a bureaucracy not only has trouble motivating its employees; it can't determine the value of what they are doing in the first place.
If you thought the end of the Cold War would mean the death of "defense" socialism, or even the shrinking of the massive Pentagon bureaucracy that has been choking off and diverting the productive sector of the economy since World War II, then think again.
Four in five Americans opposed the $50 billion Mexican bailout, but they were powerless to stop it. When the central bank says it's in charge—as it does in every financial upheaval of this magnitude—we are supposed to hold our tongues and leave it to the experts, even if their actions generate only uncertainty and volatility.
Americans are rightfully skeptical of "economic development." From India to Egypt to Brazil, it has meant Aswan Dam-size government projects that have failed to raise living standards while generating pollution and cultural instability.
Free-market economic development is entirely different.
The intellectual achievements of Murray Newton Rothbard (1926-1995)—eminent scholar and friend—are monumental. He is the author of 25 books and thousands of article in scholarly and popular journals. His work covers the entire spectrum of the social sciences: pure economic theory, history, sociology, philosophy, religion, languages, and politics.
In 1994, bondholders lost hundreds of billions, thanks to Clinton's monetary escapades. What happened? It's a sad story of interest rates and their manipulation by government planners.
