Since the 2008 election battles are already well under way, pressures toward protectionism to steal from others to line constituents’ pockets are intensifying. Through their patrons in Washington, industries and unions are pushing even harder for what amounts to delegated government taxing power over their consumers, using the offer of election year resources as a lure.

A correspondent on the LRC blog refers to the

“....ominous growth in dollar denominated debt instruments held by foreign central banks and foreign investors ...the impact...when foreigners finally decide to shift their massive dollar holdings from...monetary debt instruments to goods of a non-monetary nature. When this process begins...[it] would provide...an additional education in economic reality.”

An interesting case of the failure of micro-central planning comes from Shaliuhe, China, as reported in the Economist. This rural area has the misfortune of being ruled by local bureaucrats who believe they know more than the price system, and so picked a sure investment for the locals: cows. They looked West and saw Beijing with its rising demand for milk products and figured that here was the key to the future.

The two birds: My wife’s desire for additional landscaping; and, your carbon guilt. It’s really simple. You go to The CarbonNeutral Company website and calculate the amount of the carbon emissions resulting from your daily commute. Note the estimated values for carbon mitigation. You then go to PayPal and send me one of the amounts shown. Don’t worry, I’ll accept whichever amount you select.

The ancient transgressions of murder, pillage, bestiality, thievery, and rape still shout from the headlines. O Tempora, O Mores, as the ancients proclaimed in dismay a couple millennia ago: meaning what crummy people, what crummy times. They ought to read this morning’s paper — they’d yearn for ancient Rome.

Once again, Penn and Teller hilariously explode the myths and superstitions about capitalism with a healthy contempt and a plethora of curse words, so use discretion.

Here’s Wal-Mart Hatred is Barbara Streisand.

By the way, one of the anti-Wal-Mart subjects of the show is Joe Moore, who’s on Chicago’s city council. He claims that Wal-Mart pays slave wages, destroys families, and is responsible for all kinds of evils.

I have written in several mises.org articles — see here, here, and here — of the great imbalances of the US economy. Yet in all of my previous articles on the subject I have been unable to pinpoint when these imbalances will result in a bust.

Bob Greifeld, the President and CEO of Nasdaq, was once a great critic of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), citing the anti-competitive drag that SOX helped to foist upon his industry. How charming it is, then, to see that Nasdaq has recently brought Michael Oxley - one of the co-founders of SOX - on board as a Vice Chairman at the exchange.

In contrast to older historians who regarded World War I as the destruction of progressive reform, Murray Rothbard was convinced that the war came to the United States as the “fulfillment,” the culmination, the veritable apotheosis of progressivism in American life. He regarded progressivism as basically a movement on behalf of Big Government in all walks of the economy and society, in a fusion or coalition between various groups of big businessmen, led by the House of Morgan, and rising groups of technocratic and statist intellectuals. In this fusion, the values and interests of both groups would be pursued through government. World War I brought the fulfillment of all these progressive trends. Militarism, conscription, massive intervention at home and abroad, a collectivized war economy, all came about during the war and created a mighty cartelized system that most of its leaders spent the rest of their lives trying to recreate, in peace as well as war.