“There’s been too much gaming of the system until it is broke. Capitalism is not working! There has been a corrupting of the system of capitalism.” - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking of mounting corporate scandals during a February 2002 meeting of the president’s working group on corporate governance. Quoted from “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill” by Ron Suskind.
Now this is getting very petty: US Ponders Plastic Bag Trade War: “The US Commerce Department has said it may impose tariffs of up to 123% on Chinese, Malaysian, and Thai plastic shopping bag producers... The Commerce Department issued its preliminary ruling after complaints from US packaging firms, including Sonoco Products and Interplast Group. They say unfairly cheap Asian plastic bags are losing them $300m in sales a year.”
Don’t miss Rockwell’s “A World Recreated“. For following LRC in general, you can go to the site directly or follow it through this feed on Mises.org.
South Euclid loses out on tax windfall since the city charter wasn’t updated to tax lottery winnings. “It’s not a good day for the city,” Mayor Georgine Welo said Monday. “We were all excited until we went to go for the money and learned that we are not entitled to it. We are very saddened by the news.”
“JAPAN’S Ministry of Finance has lost more than £40 billion in the past financial year trying to bet against currency speculators, The Times has learnt. Cabinet Office insiders admitted yesterday that the currency losses have spiralled out of control, after a renewed attempt by the Finance Ministry to prop up the dollar and talk down the value of the yen....
In response to my earlier post, Paul Craig Roberts says that “If the factors can leave, they do not specialize within the country where they have a comparative advantage. They can move abroad where there is absolute advantage.”
I can make no sense of what he means.
Many thoughtful readers, responding to my Mises.org article “Mad Socialism Disease”, have pointed out that there is not much good science out there that supports the belief that anyone has died in Brtain due to Mad Cow, and that the widely held belief that this is the case is based on bad science and bad journalism. Writes Tony Baxendale: I am in the UK meat trade, www.billfields.co.uk is one of my companies.
Adam Young’s article on the organ shortage has attracted wide attention. Lifesharers has contacted Mises.org to say that this organization offers a viable way around the restrictions on organ markets.
In an article in the New York Times on January 15, 2004, Berkeley professor of economics Hal Varian raises a fundamental question: why are the dollar bills in people’s pockets worth anything? According to Varian, there are two possible explanations for this: the dollar bills carry value because the government in power says so or because people are willing to accept it as payment.
