The Free Market 26, no. 5 (May 2005)

The Free Market 26, no. 5 (May 2005)

Our times are much like the 1930s, when it was widely assumed that there were only two viable ideological positions: communism or fascism. Liberalism of the old school was considered to be a failure, and not even worth considering. In the name of anticommunism, and lacking a full faith in the workings of freedom, many weak-willed old liberals turned to fascism as a viable alternative.

The Free Market 26, no. 5 (May 2005)

The Austrian economists—Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek most prominently—were not alone in predicting the baneful effects of central banking and paper money. More than 25 years ago, former US central bank chairman Arthur Burns (who was also Murray Rothbard’s faculty adviser until he took a position at the Fed) gave a shocking speech at the meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Belgrade, on September 30, 1979, entitled “The Anguish of Central Banking.”

The Free Market 26, no. 6 (June 2005)

Economic downturns are precipitated by credit expansions and contractions but monetary policy cannot alone account for the length, breadth, and shape. This is inspired by other factors.

The Free Market 26, no. 6 (June 2005)

In his newly-released federal budget, President George W. Bush promises to reduce farm subsidies. Predictably, on the day the budget was made public there were well-choreographed “protests” by all the usual suspects, mostly millionaire corporate farmers camped out at the Mayflower or Four Seasons hotels in Washington, DC for a few days.

The Free Market 26, no. 6 (June 2005)

The Free Market 26, no. 7 (July 2005)

Did you have to write out a check to the IRS for $5,581 this past April 15? If you had to do such a thing next year, would you think of it as your civic duty or would you consider it a crime that only the government could get away with?

A Typical Taxpayer

The Free Market 26, no. 7 (July 2005)

The Bush administration has wrapped up yet another big campaign to bolster support for its Social Security proposal. The latest development is Bush’s suggestion to index benefits for wealthy retirees to prices (rather than wages), which is effectively a cut in promised benefits.

The Free Market 26, no. 7 (July 2005)

The 20th century was a time when the world sang the praises of despots and despotism. The more wars government leaders fought, the more they centralized their control, the more they hobbled the economy, the more liberty they stole, the more they cut off trade and exchange with other nations, the more their gain was our liberty lost, the more these very government leaders have been celebrated by historians and pundits of all stripes.

The Free Market 26, no. 8 (August 2005)

The US Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision overturning the obstruction of justice verdict against Arthur Andersen Company comes too late to save the firm or the jobs of thousands of employees who found themselves out of work when the government destroyed the firm three years ago.