Once lauded in congressional love-fests and accorded rock-star-like status by legions of stock market investors, Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan is increasingly being attacked by critics.1 A previous generation of promoters blamed Greenspan for raising interest rates in 2000 and causing the bear market.
In a recent article for Slate, Steven Landsburg explains that he and his colleagues at the University of Rochester teach in one of the top-ranked economics departments in the world. He then makes the amusing admission that “somehow last summer, we managed to spend a week in a state of collective befuddlement, obsessing over a seemingly impenetrable conundrum that came up over lunch: If people stand still on escalators, then why don’t they stand still on stairs?” For the average reader who mig
With the recent guilty plea of former Enron executive Michael Kopper, it seems that the floodgates are now officially open in the government’s war against American business. Democrats are demanding something just short of summary executions, while Republicans and President George W. Bush are trying to outdo the Democrats in their anti-business rhetoric, and the mainstream news media outlets are playing the role of Joseph Goebbels in helping to stir the whole pot of hysteria.
The idea of resorting to work and entrepreneurialism as a means to material well-being has historically become a poor second to the idea of acquiring resources through theft. This robbery is always most effectively perpetrated when disguised and when legally underwritten by the threat of political violence–-i.e., when it is committed by the State.
There is something about monetary phenomena that make them a particularly misunderstood aspect of economic life. Deflation is no exception. There seems to be little understanding as to what it is, what causes it, and whether or not it is something that should be prevented. The effects of deflation, like the quality of drinking water, cannot be considered without regard to its source.
The main political divide of our time is between those who trust the state and those who do not. We can argue without end about economics, regulation, trade, and war, but we have not touched the core issue until we address the questions: what is the state, and how much, if any, faith should we put in it? Alberto Mingardi is our guide through the literature.
At a time when the foundations of freedom are again threatened by collectivist hysteria, we need more books like the new one by Ed Younkins, that do away with the fallacies and reaffirm the tenets of a “just and proper political and economic order that is a true reflection of the nature of man and the world properly understood.”
The Scana Corporation is a government-created monopoly that provides electricity to most of the state of South Carolina. Like all regulated corporations, it is pressured by regulators to promote politically correct causes and policies--or else. Thomas DiLorenzo highlights the absurd results.
