The Fed’s Role in the Housing Bubble

In this blog post at Pacific Research Institute, I criticize former Treasury Secretary Snow, who in a recent WSJ piece put the blame for the housing bubble on foreign savers. Naturally, I point the finger instead at Greenspan’s Fed. I think this episode is really getting other economists and investors to consider the Austrian business cycle theory.{C}It’s really so obvious that it’s hard for anyone to deny that ABCT at least plays a part in what happened.

The Real Aggressor

A sign of our time is the split-personality of the conservatives, wrote Rothbard in 1954. Many to the right of center are off on a schizophrenic pursuit of both liberty and collectivism. In domestic affairs this regrettable condition is gradually being recognized for what it is. But the time is nigh for conservative foreign policy, as well, to be psychoanalyzed in hope of a cure! Conservatives call for free trade and free enterprise, yet also clamor for absolute embargoes on trade with Communist nations. Have they forgotten that both parties to free exchange benefit from trade?

The March

Garet Garrett exarmines the critical question. If we are not marching toward socialism, traditionally and technically understood, what are we marching toward? If you say it is toward socialism you leave out the possibility that it may turn into something else. Much more than that, if you say it is toward socialism you fill the view with smoke and may fail to see clearly what it already has in common with every kind of totalitarian government we know anything about, namely, insatiability. There is no way to sate its appetite for more power. Fascist government was insatiable, Nazi government was insatiable, Marxian government in Soviet Russia and Labor government in Great Britain are insatiable — all with one lust, which is the lust for power; all alike resolved to control the people’s way of living according to a plan, and all alike creating a dependent society.

Occupational Licensing = Protectionism, part 4552

In my work as an engineering manager, I recently received a very nice letter from an instrumentation and electrical contractor that has several offices from Bakersfield, CA to Pascagoula, MS. Responding to an inquiry we had about mobilizing instrumentation and electrical craft workers to a site in the panhandle of Texas for a major revamp, he noted the following:
In September of 2004 the advent of Texas state licensing of electricians created new operating challenges in regard to trade licensing and license authentication.

The Church of Keynes

The work cumbersomely entitled, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, now commonly abbreviated as “The General Theory,” was published in 1936. Probably no other book has ever produced in so little time a comparable effect. It has tinctured, modified, and conditioned economic thinking in the whole world. Upon it has been founded a new economic church, completely furnished with all the properties proper to a church, such as a revelation of its own, a rigid doctrine, a symbolic language, a propaganda, a priestcraft, and a demonology.

Class War and Wal-Mart

The general bias against Wal-Mart extends far deeper than any generic bias against capitalism or against Wal-Mart’s success. The people who hate Wal-Mart seem to have few scruples about shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond or Target. Even if Target enjoyed a market share similar to that of Wal-Mart, it’s difficult to imagine the same culturally based disdain being directed with nearly as much passion at Target as has been the case for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has long served its low-income customers well, and it has improved the lives of many by making food, toys, tools, and clothing more affordable for millions. Being hated by the wealthy and powerful is perhaps the high cost of serving those with low incomes, and Wal-Mart will no doubt continue to encounter resistance from those who don’t need its services for some time to come.
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