Imagine an America when a writer occupied the rarified air in the public consciousness that movie stars and athletes do today. A man who believed first and foremost in freedom, writing: “I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.”
If that investor idiot savant Warren Buffett has anything to do with it, we’ll have eight more years of rule by the Bush and Clinton clans (1989 to 2016). Supposedly he’s the king of capitalism, but he’s stumping and raising millions for Hillary.
Our dear friend Larry Sechrest, professor of economics at Sul Ross University, and a long-time writer and speaker for economic liberty, died this morning (October 30, 2008). He was born in 1946. The cause was heart failure, and he died with his wife Molly by his side.
Over at LRC, Michael Rozeff has a surprising analysis where he lays out a few convincing arguments that gold prices are too high right now, relative to other prices. He concludes that gold is “overvalued” and that its downward trend may very well continue.
[Rescuing Justice and Equality. By G.A. Cohen. Harvard University Press, 2008. Xvii + 430 pages.]
Last week a jaundiced-colored Ben Bernanke graced the cover of BusinessWeek amidst a background of flaming hues that had me scanning for a hammer and sickle. “The current financial crisis — perhaps the biggest since the Great Depression — has turned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke into a reluctant revolutionary,” Michael Mandel and Peter Coy write to lead their story of how the central bank will save our collective bacon with the creation of more dollars.
Boom, bust and dust: That was the story of what my parents always referred to as the “dirty thirties,” or the Dust Bowl. The Great American Dust Bowl steeled the resolve of a generation of Midwesterners. The hard-earned lessons they learned have been passed on to their baby-boomer prodigy but have been forgotten. Unlike the New Orleans floods, there was no FEMA to house the victims in trailer cities: only days on end of coating ones nostrils with Vaseline to filter the dust and try to breathe.
Making the case for settling just for Mr. Good Enough, rather than a soulmate or Mr. Right, Lori Gottlieb, insists that what women really want are children and someone to help support them. Forget all that feminist rhetoric about independence, self-sufficiency, career goals and that “I am woman, hear me roar” stuff, the best-selling author and NPR commentator tells women — especially in their 30s — to “Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection.
