Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis, William Bonner and Addison Wiggin, John Wiley & Sons, 370 pages

-

Two hundred years ago, when the United States was a modest commercial republic, the president could take a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue—by himself—and talk to anyone who approached him. If he wasn’t on a walk outdoors, he was most likely at home, and you could speak to him by knocking on the door of the White House and presenting yourself.

Via the Economics Focus[Not available online for non-subscribers] of the latest The Economist I found out that the Bank of International Settlements, which is a international organization for central banks, have published a working paper which is surprisingly good, considering who published it.

The freedom to change one’s mind is a human right, and we can only celebrate when someone rejects moral error in favor of truth. For that reason, we can hail the crowd of intellectuals and politicians who are turning from their support of the War on Iraq toward skepticism and rejection. I’m thinking in particular of Reps. John Murtha and Norm Dicks, and other leading Democrats as well as lower-ranking Republicans who are inching toward the dissenting camp. They are not “surrendering to terrorists” as Bush’s mouthpiece said.

Last Friday, as the puppet leaders in Iraq were arguing about what is going to be the Iraqi constitution, they had to speak especially loudly to be heard over the explosions and bombs outside. These are not ideal conditions under which to forge a new governing authority, especially one purporting to grant liberty and rights. The first ambition of the state will always be to exercise power. And if there were ever a constitution designed to enhance government power, this is it.

The evangelical movement in America—the one that put Bush in the White House and continues to constitute his most dependable base of support—has been whipped into a frothing frenzy over the idea, promoted by the newshounds with too much air time to kill at Fox, that someone, somewhere is waging a War on Christmas.

What? Is the government, some government anywhere, actively preventing Christians from celebrating Christmas, as in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China—or, the egregious case of Massachusetts Colony in the 17th century (we’ll get to that)?

Sometime in the 1960s, when the left was crushing the right in public opinion polls and politics, the right came to believe that it needed to do a better sales job. But there are good and bad ways to sell ideas. In the good way, you can work to make your ideological product more appealing to various market segments, from academics to regular voters. In the bad way, you can take money in exchange for which you will say anything.

If you read the financial press, and are watching Iraq news, the warnings are quite ominous.

Writes the LATimes: “Iraq’s government has sharply raised the price of fuel and other petroleum products this month, sparking discontent and protests and worrying international observers who say the increases could hurt millions of poor Iraqis and throw the country into further turmoil.”

So those scurvy bums at Wal-Mart are finally getting what is coming to them! The state of Maryland will force all companies with more then 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health insurance. Lots of companies have that many employees, but only one falls under the 8 percent threshold, which is you know who.

In politics the greatest evil often comes from sources people least suspect. Conservatives and Republicans, for example. They are now responsible, through the most sly and underhanded means, of putting the federal government in charge of certifying the rigor of the nation’s public high schools – an unprecedented power grab.

These are the people who say they want to reduce government control over the country, they trust the people to manage their own affairs, leave matters to the states, and the rest of the malarkey we’ve been hearing for about sixty years.