[Book Review: Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age by Anne Goldgar • University of Chicago Press • 2007 • 425 pages]
Modern financial history is a long series of spectacular asset bubbles followed by equally dramatic crashes. Before, during, and after, the question always arises — whether it’s stocks, bonds, real estate, or collateralized debt obligations — what is the cause of such, as it appears in hindsight, folly?
Central bankers and public regulators have been particularly reluctant to acknowledge any direct responsibility for the recent subprime meltdown and crisis in worldwide financial markets. The crisis has to the contrary been rather generally interpreted as evidence of a need for more intervention, both by public regulators and central bankers. Nevertheless the role and responsibility of central bankers and regulators with respect to the recent turmoil need to be reassessed.
These are times when you just feel like yelling at the people who write the news, particular the business press. They are happy to report, word for word, what the Fed and Treasury Department, and their message is always the same: hey, it’s not our fault; in fact, we are fixing the problem!
In “PRO-IP, Rights, and the Roots of Copyright Opposition” in the Randian “Capitalism” magazine, one “M. Zachary Johnson” cheers on the recent “PRO-IP” law, which as the always-perceptive Mike Masnick of Techdirt notes, “accept[s] the addition of a ‘Copyright Czar’ position to the White House” and “strengthened copyright laws, yet again, despite little evidence they needed any strengthening.
It’s that time of year here in Ohio: time to make a list and check it twice. Christmas gift list? Not in this instance. It’s time for county auditors throughout the state to cause the publication of their annual lists of delinquent real property taxes.
[Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President. By Thomas L. Krannawitter. Roman & Littlefield, 2008. Xv + 355 pages.]
The state takes over and corrupts many institutions and aspects of life--roads, communications, law and justice, healthcare, money, defense, police, finance and banking, and education (see, e.g., Hoppe’s Banking, Nation States and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order. In so doing they gradually infiltrate language and even our concepts with official state classifications.
Employee
Already, you can see that the political constellation is lining up in a way that is more friendly to the cause of liberty. The Democrats are up to their old tricks, which are transparently dumb and dated. The Republicans are responding with smart and sound criticisms. The government looks poised for a fantastic gridlock that will let the liquidation take place so that we can move toward a good recovery.
There is plenty to regret about Obama’s victory, but the first impressions of the political dynamic that is playing out looks like it could mean good things for the future.
Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), a French philosopher and economist, is worthy of attention as a contributor to French liberal thought in the tradition of Condillac. Tracy’s deductive methodology, his liberal approach to governmental affairs, and his subjectivism qualify him as a proto-Austrian economist who enjoyed considerable influence not only in France but also around the world.
