The US government is attacking capitalism under the guise of cracking down on “corporate criminals.” Corporate CEOs are being demonized and blamed for the collapsing stock market Bubble. Exploiting the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcies, Washington DC has imposed the most sweeping accounting and securities laws since the 1930s.
There are those who want to believe that a market economy is itself unstable, prone to periods of excess and in need of stabilization by some outside authority. As Jeff Madrick wrote recently for the New York Times, “government itself is a necessary bulwark against recession.”
As the markets continue to wallow in bear territory, and as consumer—and, more important, investor—confidence falls, writers and commentators of all stripes have weighed in to give their two cents’ worth concerning the key question: who or what is at fault?
Uncle Sam wants you, even if you are still in diapers. Incredible as it may sound, the Washington, DC, city council is considering a bill that would extend mandatory school attendance laws to very young children—even some 2-year-olds. Bill 14-261 requires all children who turn three before December 31 of an academic school year to be schooled.
The Federal Reserve System may have run out of room to maneuver. Facing a looming recession, it resolutely lowered its discount rate and frantically expanded its credits. Eager to stimulate the sagging economy, it enabled and encouraged businessmen to invest more and consumers to go ever deeper into debt. Yet the specter of recession refuses to fade away.
Does business run on greed?
More than a few commentators are saying so. Reacting to the corporate accounting scandals and the bursting of the Internet stock bubble, some pundits are claiming that recent business events are symptoms of a larger crisis. “Capitalism itself is corrupt,” the pundits say. “The spirit of enterprise is nothing more than the spirit of greed.”
Many of the same people who debunked Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, and ridiculed its failures, are enthusiastically backing George W. Bush’s War on Terror. Both are big-government programs. Why back one and not the other?
As details of the 2000 Census emerge, commentators across the country are spinning “somebody done somebody wrong” economics to describe the US economy in the 1990s. Their recurring theme is that rich Americans got richer because poor Americans got poorer.
