Mises Daily

What is required is purging the economy of various false activities that severely undermine its ability to generate real wealth.

Neoclassical economists, and specifically monetarists, have brought us here. Keynesian theory fell apart in the 1970s, and now monetarism has followed. The Austrian School is the only remaining source of credible analysis and sound economic policy.

The SEC should be abolished, and investors should rely on private-sector watchdog groups to spot swindlers.

Paul Krugman, e.g., in The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (Norton, 2008) says "there will have to be an assertion of more government control — in effect, it will come closer to a full temporary nationalization of a significant part of the financial system."

Rather than accept either administrative law or legislation, Leoni calls for a return to the ancient traditions and principles of "judge-made law" as a method of limiting the State and insuring liberty.

Instead of permitting the necessary economic adjustments to be made in the wake of this unsustainable boom, the political classes — and their court economists — insist on even more government spending, more debt, and more destruction of the dollar.

We must become the intellectual dissidents of our time, rejecting the demands for statism that come from the Left and Right.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the long effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

The Austrians (including me) who predicted these problems based on Greenspan's low-interest-rate policy know of course that the main cause was that low-interest-rate policy, with his numerous bailouts of failed financial institutions also creating a moral hazard that encouraged risky behavior.

As always, the little guys are told to give up their way of life to preserve the high-paying jobs of corporate and union executives — along with the jobs of people who make cars no one wants to buy.