Show Trials with Capitalist Defendants in Shackles

The companies bailed out expected to go on operating as private businesses, but with government money. That’s how the bailouts were advertised. But that is impossible. Once government money enters the picture, the firms are effectively nationalized, even though the outward guise and appearance of private ownership may remain. This is because their operations are no longer based on profit-and-loss considerations but on satisfying the government and whatever sectors of public opinion are loud enough at the moment to influence the government’s decisions.

Donald Tusk, Hayekian

An interesting email just arrived from Poland:

I was reading Poland’s major weekly publication “Wprost” (roughly translated “Direct”) and took note of their selection for the 2008 Person of the Year, the Polish Premier Donald Tusk. In an interview, he was asked an interesting question (I am translating from Polish):

Interviewer: “In the fight with the financial crisis, are you a Keynesian or a Friedmanite?”

The Mercantilism of Our Time

[Last in a series]

Someone handed me a book the other day--a cult classic among music geeks--and urged me to read it, and, when I had finished, sign my name in the front cover. That way I could be added to the already long list of readers in the front cover, each of whom add added his or her scrawl to the book after having read it.

How charming!

Jaguar Inflation

I am tired of hearing economists argue that government and the Fed should expand credit for the good of the economy. Sometimes an analogy clarifies a subject, so let’s try one. It may sound crazy, but suppose the government were to decide that the health of the nation depends upon producing Jaguar automobiles and providing them to as many people as possible.
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