Jobarama: Obama’s “Investment”
With all of the talk of how charismatic Barack Obama is, or of his oratory ability—and especially given his recent presidential victory—it is time to engage in a deeper economic critique of Obama’s actual policies. Once we see the true effects of his policies and the incentives they create, we will see that his leadership skills and abilities make him more of a threat to freedom than if he were less articulate.
Obama Transition Team Member on “Optimizing” the Patent System
As noted here here, one of Obama’s transition “team members is Reed Hundt, who was Bill Clinton’s FCC Chair from 1993 through 1997. Hundt is slated to work on the agency review team in charge of international trade and economics agencies.” In a 2006 Forbes op-ed, Hundt had various suggestions for patent reform. They are not all terrible, but they continue to miss the point by struggling to find some way to make the system work better.
I.O.U.S.A. Misses Point
[This essay originally appeared on LewRockwell.com.]
Employee “Free Choice” Act
I just received an ominous (but informative)
Economics and Its Opposite
One of the fatalities of publishing at a rocket pace is that some amazing treasures get overlooked. So this column, perhaps the first of a series, covers some titles in the Mises Store that have not received much attention in the praiseworthy swirl of mania over Rothbard’s Mystery of Banking and America’s Great Depression, and Mises’s Causes of the Economic Crisis, titles which speak directly to the moment. I’ll start with an unlikely title here, a book by an author you have never heard of.
History Is Clear
[This article originally appeared on LewRockwell.com.]
It is often said “there are no atheists in a foxhole.” The other week, as world financial markets melted down, CNBC go-to wise man Art Cashen put a market spin on that familiar line drolly saying, “there are no libertarians in a market crash.”
The Hypocrisy of State Collusion
Recent headlines speak volumes about the hypocrisy of the state. On the one hand, we have state persecution of private firms for collusion, price-fixing, monopolization, etc., e.g.
Book Review: The Case Against the Fed
[Book Review: The Case Against the Fed by Murray N. Rothbard • Ludwig von Mises Institute]
After 80-plus years of inflation and devastating booms and busts, how do we get rid of the cause of these economic cancers? “The only way to do that is to abolish legalized counterfeiting: that is, to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and return to the gold standard,” answers Murray Rothbard in his book The Case Against the Fed.
Book Review: Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt
[Book Review: Principle & Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt by Herbert E. Sloan • Oxford University Press • 1995 • viii + 377 pages]
In his History of Economics classes, Murray Rothbard told us that it was important not just to study what policies and theories held sway during the past, but to examine why certain economists or politicians advocated the policies they did.
