Contrary to popular thinking, the velocity of money doesn't have a life of its own. It is not an independent entity, hence it can't cause anything, let alone offset the effect of an explosion in the supply of money on prices of goods and services.
While many pundits are fond of declaring that capital drives up medical costs, they simply are not being truthful. As one with even a rudimentary understanding of economics knows, capital has the effect of reducing unit costs. It would make no sense to acquire capital, otherwise.
While it is perfectly clear that an individual capitalist or speculator may make losses on the stock exchange, it is very doubtful whether "society" can make such losses. The question with which we are concerned here is whether an individual's losses from domestic stock exchange transactions represent a loss to the society to which that individual belongs.
Free trade is premised on the idea that human relationships should be voluntary and based on mutual consent. It is grounded on the understanding that the material, cultural, and spiritual improvements in the circumstances and conditions of man are best served when the members of the global community of mankind specialize their activities in a world-encompassing social system of division of labor.
Why is there so much religious passion in the tone of the Microsoft critics? Why is it so difficult to understand that the marketplace is a far better evaluator of Microsoft's product than a federal judge who tries to synthesize, express, and enforce the whims of 20 million consumers whom he's never talked to?
Robert Kaplan's newest book seems to be, bottom line, a briefing book to justify the switches and turns, contradictions, and conflicting rationales for American foreign policy and the domestic political control to which it is tightly bound, while freeing the government to to do anything it wants, anywhere in the world it wants.
The policies the Fed cooked up during the mid-1990s that brought on the unsustainable boom (mistakenly called the "New Economy") are also the policies that Greenspan employed in the last year, ostensibly to give us a "soft landing." The government is now engaged in a number of foolish regulatory ventures that certainly will make economic life more difficult as we seek to climb out of this latest downturn.
Can there be a right to freedom of speech without that right being firmly based on property rights?
The idea of the steel tariff is to help one inefficient, bloated, and pampered industry at the expense of all U.S. consumers of steel, including U.S. businesses, and all producers in Europe, Asia, Brazil, and Australia. This brazen protectionism is deeply harmful all around, not to mention morally repugnant.
A quarter century ago, there was a gasoline crisis--caused more by gasoline price controls than OPEC--which convinced Congress that Americans were not competent to make their own automotive choices. Thus, CAFE standards were born. They were intended to force us to get better mileage by imposing harsh penalties on any automaker whose fleet did not meet rising fuel economy standards. The Senate rejected an increase but what about existing rules?
