One of the features of a credit-driven bubble is an increasing belief in the inevitability of future price increases of the asset classes that are attracting the greatest share of the credit. Many recent articles about residential real estate highlight the trend toward increasingly leveraged mortages - zero down payment, interest-only, payment-skipping options, mortgages for more than 100% of the value of the home, negative amortization, and other “creative options”.

That venerable magazine, Publishers Weekly, ran a review of my book, Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). It is a mean-minded short little thing that looks to me was meant to bury the book, especially since Amazon.com published it in full next to where the work is described.

Here is what Publishes Weekly said:

Anyone who wants cuts in the size and scope of government should be concerned and frustrated with the policies of President George Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress. Government spending has increased enormously and the federal budget has plunged ever more into deficit.

Protectionism, regulation and government power are on the rise, and we are at war or in conflict with a record number of countries around the world. The Republican-controlled Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to below 1% while it frantically tries to flood the economy with money and credit.

Here is an email I received from Scott Flaherty. It includes a range of interesting objections to the idea of getting rid of the state monopoly on law. Maybe Rothbardian-Misesians of the world would like to have a crack at them. “During our advocacy for the privatization of law, we have come across several objections which I would like to share with you. I think you’ll find they’re not the typical ‘What if someone builds a wall across the country?’”

The Runway Objection

“The Medicare hospital trust fund will be insolvent by 2019, seven years earlier than previously forecast, if it continues on its current path, government-appointed trustees warned in their annual report Tuesday” And Social Security will be broke by 2042.

An excellent piece of analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. The finding: if you eat nothing but McDonald’s every day and stop exercising, you get fat. The (implicit or explicit) conclusion: therefore, the government should crack down on big, bad McDonald’s.

German String Section Demands Court-Imposed Raise (Independent), while a music-union spokesman makes some sense: “Of course strings are in action more than the brass... But any violinist not happy with that should have taken up the trumpet at music school.”

Part of the problem with using U.S. antitrust laws to shake down domestic corporations is that the same strategy can be used by foreign countries to implement trade protectionism and increased taxation against those same companies—as is evidenced by the current European attack on Microsoft.