Last December Meredith Whitney told a 60 Minutes audience that a municipal bond meltdown was coming. Ms. Whitney has been under attack ever since.
All year long financial commentators have been asking Meredith, “show us the defaults!”
A destructive myth has wrapped itself around laissez-faire capitalism. It is the erroneous notion that the free market harms the “vulnerable” within society; specifically, it is said to harm women and children by cruelly exploiting their labor. The opposite is true. Laissez-faire capitalism offers the one element that the vulnerable need most to survive and to advance: choice. The most liberating choice individuals can have is the ability to support themselves and not be dependent upon anyone else for the food going into their mouths.
From Hammer of Truth:
This is inspired by examples I’ve seen in Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s principles book and the supplementary blog.
Over the weekend, I flew US Airways from Memphis to DC and back. On Friday, I took a plane that stopped in Charlotte and continued on to DC. I didn’t even get off the plane in Charlotte before proceeding to DC.
The “free trade” agreement that was just signed between the US and South Korea is simply another managed trade agreement. Don’t let the name fool you; read the agreement, as I did. A real free trade agreement would take no more than a paragraph or a page at most.
