The Free Market 19, no. 8 (August 2001)

The Free Market 19, no. 8 (August 2001)

Widespread panic set in this summer when the party of King Simeon II won a majority in Bulgaria’s recent elections. There were ominous warnings about this being the first East European state to take a step toward restoring monarchical figures to power. So many people associate democracy with freedom and monarchy with tyranny that any attempt to revisit pre-democratic systems of government is regarded as evil.

The Free Market 19, no. 8 (August 2001)

The Free Market 19, no. 8 (August 2001)

One thing that has achieved Holy Writ with economists and politicians is the Consumer Price Index, or the CPI. Each month, people from Alan Greenspan to traders at the New York Stock Exchange to the economist in the Economics 101 prison await the latest announcement from the US Department of Labor that tells us the change in “consumer prices” from the previous month.

The Free Market 19, no. 9 (September 2001)

One of many pastimes of government bureaucrats is forcing foreign banks to cough up tax information on US citizens. This is a disaster for the cause of privacy, the right of contract, and freedom itself. If the campaign, which has been going on for years, finally succeeds, it will mean the end of bank privacy for Americans. It will also devastate foreign economies that see a comparative advantage in offering secure banking to people from around the world.

The Free Market 19, no. 9 (September 2001)

By the standards of the Left, Adolf Hitler would have been deemed a “great statesman,” had he died before he started the war (or if he had won it). That’s because the left tends to measure greatness by the amount of land and number of people under one man’s thumb. By that standard, Hitler was a great socialist-which is precisely what he and his part aspired to become.

The Free Market 19, no. 10 (October 2001)

The single greatest obstacle to creating a free society is government’s control over education. Government dictates that children attend a school, and taxpayers pay enormous sums to subsidize “free” government schools. The frightening result is that the vast majority of citizens--nearly 90 percent--end up sending their children to government-subsidized schools.

The Free Market 19, no. 10 (October 2001)

The Free Market 19, no. 10 (October 2001)

One of Franklin Roosevelt’s many schemes to “save capitalism from itself” in the 1930s was the creation of the Federal National Mortgage Association, known today as Fannie Mae. Created in 1938 as part of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Fannie Mae’s original mandate was to purchase Federal Housing Administration loans.

The Free Market 19, no. 11 (November 2001)

“Many foolish things have been said and written about luxury.” --Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism.

There is so much nonsense written about luxury. Yet, Ludwig von Mises has put forth what has to be one of the most cogent, elegant, and sensible theories of luxury ever penned by an economist. It was written more than 70 years ago in his book Liberalism, a timeless exposition of the classical-liberal political philosophy.