The Magic Printing Press

John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute, writing in the WSJ, on avoiding nationalization by destroying the dollar:
In my view, the least bad option is for the Federal Reserve to print money to help stabilize housing prices and financial markets. Yes, use reflation to soften the pain for Main Street and Wall Street.

Fed Considers Unconventional Measures

During the Great Deflation Scare of 2002 -- you remember, the brief interlude between the collapse of the stock market bubble and the rise of the housing bubble -- researchers at the Fed authored a series of papers exploring “unconventional measures”. These studies and other musings were reported in speeches by Bernanke and papers published on various regional Fed web sites (in an earlier piece,, I identified 14 such papers and speeches).

Mises’s Apriorism Against Relativism in Economics

The positivist-empiricist doctrine, which forms the core of today’s mainstream economics, is not only an intellectual failure; it also encourages — actually provokes — social relativism, thereby opening the door to anti-free-market policies, which, once set into motion, are difficult to reign in. In that sense, positivism is, if put into practice, an anti-capitalist doctrine.

Hoover’s Attack on Laissez-Faire

If government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, wrote Murray Rothbard, its only valid course is laissez-faire -- to leave the economy alone. Currently fashionable economic thought considers such a dictum hopelessly outdated, yet it is the policy dictated both by sound theory and by historical precedent. But in 1929, the sound course was rudely brushed aside.

Please, Not Another FDR

Harold Meyerson, writing in the Washington Post, calls for a new New Deal. The old one worked just fine, and current times call for some of the same medicine. Harold says it, and he’s not alone. FDR’s nanny-like visage has been showing up on left-liberal and neocon publications -- web and print -- by folks who don’t understand that their favorite New York patrician-president is the reason for this economic season.

The Institute for Justice on the Wonderful Congress of 1866

I’ve criticized libertarian centralists such as the Institute for Justice in the past. Granted, they are helping some individuals defend their rights; and there is nothing wrong with using whatever arguments or tactics are available to defend yourself. Even if it’s unconstitutional for the federal courts to strike down certain state laws, it’s perfectly justifiable for an innocent victim to try to do this.

Inflation and the Public Consciousness

When central bankers blast central banks for being reckless, you know the problem is serious. Indeed, it seems that everyone suddenly really cares about inflation. Everywhere you go, this is the talk, at the grocery, the gas station, among your neighbors. Price increases have been persistent in major sectors such as medicine and education for decades, but today the trend is conspicuously hitting the stuff that people buy everyday. So the reminders are ubiquitous, and public anger is growing. FULL ARTICLE
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