The Case for Legalizing Capitalism

Chapter 11:

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Political Quotes and News Blurbs

Armed with the knowledge we’ve learned, it should now be easier for the reader to interpret the real meaning behind government policies taking shape in the world today. Let’s take a look at some recent news headlines and make sure that we understand the real story behind the news. It should soon become apparent that almost everything happening in society is dictated by government control, but that government leaders are not fit to “lead” anyone.

“Amazon pays $1,500 in daily fines in defiance of French law”

The French government is attempting to make Amazon.com’s free shipping illegal. Why would a government intervene in the voluntary trade between two private parties and prevent its citizens from receiving free services from a bookseller that they obviously value? To protect local, independently-owned French booksellers, of course. Had French citizens cared as much about the book sellers as does the government, they would have chosen to purchase from independent stores instead of from Amazon. Who wins? The inefficient booksellers, the government, and those who support the independent stores. Who loses? All other French citizens.

“Bush: US is Not Headed into Recession”

This one speaks for itself. Not only do politicians (nor their economic advisors) not understand that they cause recessions, but they have no clue when and whether recessions (or recoveries) might come about. Bush also said the strength of the dollar was fine during the time it was plummeting between 2002 and 2008. Though the dollar has fallen against most major currencies for the last 50 years or more, Treasury officials always state that the current administration supports “a strong dollar policy,” at the same time they are actually printing money and devaluing the currency.

“Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism”

Ok, this is not about government or politicians, but such comments as Gates’ will necessarily call for government intervention. Gates does not understand that the very wealth his company created has helped the poor in numerous ways, the very least of which — by a mile — is in giving jobs directly to receptionists, janitors, parking attendants, and the like. To the extent that any poor person who wants to advance is not doing so is because they are being prevented by government. What Gates is really calling for in wanting to help the poor, but does not realize it, is for the legalization of capitalism.

“Some Chavez Allies Slow to Shed Luxuries”

As would be expected, Venezuela’s socialist leaders don’t practice what they preach. The Associated Press reported that some of Chavez’s cabinet ministers were caught living it up in the same way that Paris or Lindsay would (from their supposedly meager socialist government salaries). Chavez’s buddies wear $180 Louis Vuitton ties, $500 Gucci shoes, drive luxury cars, and wear red Tommy Hilfiger jackets (financed by the poor, of course), all while denouncing capitalism.

Justice Minister Pedro Carreno, upon being put on the spot with accusations of hypocrisy, after stumbling, argued, “It’s not contradictory because I would like Venezuela to produce all this, that way I could purchase things produced here instead of 95 percent of what we consume being imported.” And Luis Acosta, the pro-Chavez governor of Carabobo state, stated last year that authorities can purchase expensive cars without sacrificing their revolutionary ideals. He said, “Is it that we revolutionaries don’t have the right to have a Hummer...? If we make money, we can do it.”

Obama: “China is rising and it’s not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors.”

“Peru’s Fujimori gets 25 years prison for massacres”

“German City Wonders How Green Is Too Green”

Consumers and home-owners of the world have demonstrated that they don’t want to pay the real cost of going green, by way of not voluntarily switching to higher-cost materials and energy sources. But the town of Marburg, Germany is forcing its citizens to use alternative energy against their will in dictating that residents must install solar panels on their homes or pay at least $1,500 in fines. This government force (along with property tax) completely violates private property rights. One can bet that if the law passes and a homeowner fails to install the panels, the government will do more than fine them $1,500; it will probably send them to prison or take away their home until they comply.

As should be expected, the citizens of Marburg have stated that they are much less concerned about the law being applied to office buildings. People of the town don’t mind things being forced unfairly on others, only themselves. Additionally, people don’t understand that if office buildings (or factories) are forced to go greener, it is they, as consumers, workers, and taxpayers who will pay the price.

(As an opposite scenario, consider the following. On an online community message board for my condo building, one resident proposed having solar panels installed on our roof. He stated in his online proposal: “I wonder if we could get [the city]/ the government to pitch in if we ever did any green improvements around here. I know they are too expensive to do with our budget, but we have a big roof that could be great for solar, wind, etc. technology.” Examples abound of individuals wanting others to subsidize their lives.)

“Many doctors plan to quit or cut back: survey”

A survey of 12,000 general practice physicians revealed that 60 percent of respondents would not recommend medicine as a career due to the long hours, stress, and paperwork. 78 percent of doctors surveyed believe there is a shortage of primary care physicians. Yet none apparently pointed to the AMA as the reason. This is likely because they don’t understand that it is the AMA’s policies of limiting the supply of doctors in the name of “safety” that causes the shortage and their stressful lives. Nearly half of all doctors plan to cut back on how many patients they see or quit medicine entirely (which will drive medical costs higher). A common reason cited is the amount of paperwork they must comply with. In other words, regulation is harming them and will harm their patients even more than it currently does when they reduce the number of patients they will see.

“Putting money in the hands of unemployed families... will create economic growth in America”

With this quote Durbin claims that confiscating the incomes and savings of those who are producing wealth for society and giving the money to others to consume will somehow create additional real goods and services. With this logic, politicians could say — and they do — that virtually anything creates wealth. In fact, politicians, and economists, often argue that having a hurricane destroy a city creates wealth (due to the spending involved in replacing all the wealth destroyed), that spending on unprofitable investments creates wealth (green energy, etc.), and that forcing citizens to purchase goods they don’t want to purchase — like the solar panels above — creates wealth.

Also in this article was the quote that “economists put the positive impact at $1.64 for every dollar spent on jobless benefits because the money helps sustain other jobs and restores consumer confidence.” These mathematical “economists” obviously believe the fallacious Keynesian notion that merely spending money to consume current goods without producing more goods to replace them somehow creates more goods (more wealth). They have astutely calculated that spending $1.00, while producing nothing, can create 64 cents of additional wealth. The truth is that it simply wastes a dollar and reduces our ability to produce increased economic growth.

“FDIC warns US bank deposit insurance fund may tank”

We have seen that government is fully in bed with the banks (and having tons of nasty sex). We have also seen that allowing the government to permit and even encourage the banks to print trillions of fake dollars is what causes banks themselves to go bankrupt and collapse (after they cease or slow their previous rate of printing). We have seen that the government responds by bailing them out and insuring bank deposits with FDIC insurance, thus encouraging people to continue to trust these inherently bankrupt institutions. But there is enough FDIC insurance to protect only a handful of banks at a time, not the entire banking system. Since so many banks have gone under in the last year, it should be no surprise that the FDIC itself is on the verge of being bankrupt. If citizens finally lose all their money from collapsing banks, maybe they will finally see that government not only causes these problems but is also incapable of protecting us. Who am I kidding? People will continue to believe that our problems are caused by free markets and that government can fix the problems.

“Fed plans new rules to protect future homebuyers”

The subtitle of this article reads “Fed plans new rules to protect future homebuyers from dubious lending,” and the writer states that “The rules will crack down on a range of shady lending practices that has burned many of the nation’s riskiest ‘subprime’ borrowers.” Yet the primary rules proposed by the Federal Reserve in the article were largely aimed not at any wrongdoings by the lender, but by the borrower, because it knows the borrowers were the guiltiest party. They are as follows:

• Restrict lenders from penalizing risky borrowers who pay loans off early
• Require lenders to make sure these borrowers set aside money to pay for taxes and insurance
• Bar lenders from making loans without proof of a borrower’s income
• Prohibit lenders from engaging in a pattern or practice of lending without considering a borrower’s ability to repay a home loan from sources other than the home’s value.

The first proposed rule changes the structure of the loans that the borrower would have willingly agreed to. The lender’s penalizing loans that are paid off early might enable them to charge lower interest for the loans. I don’t know exactly what their business model is, but this practice does not involve misleading or cheating the borrower unless this term is not laid out in the contract, whereupon the borrower should not be responsible for honoring the term. The other rules simply involve putting the onus on the lender to act like a mother to the borrower, stopping the borrower from freely and willingly making possible irresponsible decisions. If people with bad credit — people who don’t honor their debts — who make stupid choices should not be allowed to make their own future decisions, how can they be trusted to make the right decisions in voting for a politician to run our entire economy? They can’t; but we can bet they will vote to take money from the rich so that they can buy more stuff they can’t afford.

“The Real Scandal: How Feds Invited the Mortgage Mess”

PERHAPS the greatest scandal of the mortgage crisis is that it is a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards — done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.

At the crisis’ core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards — no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.

Most people instinctively understand that such loans are likely to be unsound. But how did the heavily-regulated banking industry end up able to engage in such foolishness?

From the current hand-wringing, you’d think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards — at the behest of community groups and “progressive” political forces.

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining” — claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications — but the overwhelming reason wasn’t racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

Yet a “landmark” 1992 study from the Boston Fed concluded that mortgage-lending discrimination was systemic.

That study was tremendously flawed — a colleague and I later showed that the data it had used contained thousands of egregious typos, such as loans with negative interest rates. Our study found no evidence of discrimination.

Yet the political agenda triumphed — with the president of the Boston Fed saying no new studies were needed, and the US comptroller of the currency seconding the motion.

No sooner had the ink dried on its discrimination study than the Boston Fed, clearly speaking for the entire Fed, produced a manual for mortgage lenders stating that: “discrimination may be observed when a lender’s underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants.”

Some of these “outdated” criteria included the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, credit history, savings history and income verification. Instead, the Boston Fed ruled that participation in a credit-counseling program should be taken as evidence of an applicant’s ability to manage debt.

Sound crazy? You bet. Those “outdated” standards existed to limit defaults. But bank regulators required the loosened underwriting standards, with approval by politicians and the chattering class. A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with “100 percent financing... no credit scores... undocumented income... even if you don’t report it on your tax returns.” Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted.” That lender’s $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

Who was that virtuous lender? Why — Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, recently in the headlines as it hurtled toward bankruptcy.

In an earlier newspaper story extolling the virtues of relaxed underwriting standards, Countrywide’s chief executive bragged that, to approve minority applications that would otherwise be rejected “lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit.” He’s not bragging now.

For years, rising house prices hid the default problems since quick refinances were possible. But now that house prices have stopped rising, we can clearly see the damage caused by relaxed lending standards.

This damage was quite predictable: “After the warm and fuzzy glow of ‘flexible underwriting standards’ has worn off, we may discover that they are nothing more than standards that lead to bad loans... these policies will have done a disservice to their putative beneficiaries if... they are dispossessed from their homes.” I wrote that, with Ted Day, in a 1998 academic article.

Sadly, we were spitting into the wind.

These days, everyone claims to favor strong lending standards. What about all those self-righteous newspapers, politicians and regulators who were intent on loosening lending standards?

As you might expect, they are now self-righteously blaming those, such as Countrywide, who did what they were told.

“Giuliani offers health care plan”

During presidential campaigns politicians always come out with their healthcare “plans.” They each have their own ideas of central planning for the healthcare industry. And most Americans embrace one plan or the other — as though one is much different the next — while simultaneously believing both that free markets exist in healthcare and that government officials should manage markets by way of their “plans” so that markets won’t be too free and dangerous.

It was explained in Chapter 4 that healthcare costs rise so dramatically today because of a continually increasing healthcare demand arising from the printing of money and from corporate and government-subsidized insurance chasing a limited supply of healthcare services. So what was Rudolph Giuliani’s plan in 2008? To have government give people yet more money to spend on healthcare. Giuliani claimed that as people buy more healthcare plans insurers will drop their prices. This is the opposite of the truth: healthcare prices will rise, not fall with more money thrown at the system.

The irony of Giuliani’s proposed government handouts is his statement that “Government cannot take care of you. You’ve got to take care of yourself.” Yet what he was proposing was for government to take care of people’s healthcare costs while continuing its strict regulation of the healthcare industry. Letting people take care of themselves would involve the government going away all together and letting the marketplace work on its own.

“Edwards promised to crack down on wealthy Americans who skirt paying their share of taxes”

The quote above is from an article noting how presidential hopeful, John Edwards, pledged to crack down on offshore tax havens and on the rich engaging in tax evasion. It has been demonstrated that it is the rich who the rest of society milks for their wealth redistribution, and that they pay a majority of all taxes paid. Many rich people are so fed up with the rest of us stealing from them that they rightfully attempt to protect their assets. When they do, politicians and society call it not paying their “fair share.” They also make it a crime for one to keep property that is rightly theirs to begin with.

But if all rich people would hide their assets offshore, there would be much more capital available to provide us with increased productivity, jobs, and incomes. We should cheer tax havens and tax evasion — these things are highly patriotic, as they are the means by which society is best served by the rich.

The U.S. government has become militant about such things as hiding assets (i.e., trying to protect one’s property from being stolen). The U.S. has strong-armed so many nations into squealing on those hiding assets (and those not hiding assets) that it now has extradition treaties with over 135 countries. It is also legal for the U.S. to kidnap accused American tax evaders from other countries. And, the I.R.S. imposes so many regulations on international financial institutions that most of these companies will no longer deal with American citizens. Most Americans keeping money overseas do so legally, and they do so mainly because they want to 1) keep their money in a currency whose government does not devalue it and 2) keep their money in a banking system which is less liable to collapse and 3) have an increased amount of investment alternatives. These three things mostly cannot be done in America because the government 1) prints too much money and does not allow competing currencies, 2) has a more unsound banking system due to its printing of money and government-run financial system, and 3) imposes so much regulation and tax-oriented restrictions that it is either illegal or unprofitable for American firms to provide the investment choices other countries do (such as annuity insurance wrappers, hedge fund mutual funds, multi-currency money markets, etc.).

The U.S. continually and increasingly makes its citizens financial prisoners. For citizens of most countries there is always the option of moving abroad and taking up tax residency elsewhere. That is not possible for American citizens, who are subject to U.S. taxation no matter what country they move to. Due to this country’s extremely high personal and business tax rates, many citizens decide to leave the country all together. That option has now been made almost impossible or at least too expensive to be feasible. President Bush signed into law an exit tax on wealthy U.S. citizens and long-term green card holders who expatriate from the U.S., making it too costly to escape punitive taxation. John Edwards supports this Gestapo-like regulation, whose purpose is theft, simply because he had votes he needed to buy and the rich have the money that he could use to pay for the votes (via wealth redistribution programs).

“N. Korea’s Kim Jong Il Makes Rare Election Pitch”

Even dictators have to try and appease their citizens periodically for fear of possible revolution and rebellion. Communist North Korea’s strongman had to tell the types of lies to his impoverished people that are customary to regular western politicians. He stated: “I will live up to the expectations of the entire electorate by devoting my all to the prosperity of the country and happiness of the people.” Instead, of course, he has devoted his all to his own prosperity while his people live miserable, suffering lives, and periodically starve to death.

Similarly, Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, who has almost completely destroyed a once prosperous country by redistributing farmland from the rich to the poor and causing hyperinflation, among other things, is now at risk of being overthrown by his impoverished people. Thus, he is making campaign promises in order to stay in power — in addition to killing opposition supporters. He has handed out over 450 cars and promised to buy houses for doctors, all with the monies he stole from his citizens and from foreign aid organizations. Politicians of any country will exchange other people’s property for votes as much as needed to keep themselves in office; to hell with the economic consequences.

“I stand with the writers. The Guild’s demand is a test of whether corporate media corporations are going to give writers a fair share of the wealth their work creates or continue concentrating profits in the hands of their executives. I urge the producers to work with the writers so that everyone can get back to work.”

Little needs to be said of Obama’s support of striking writers in 2007 considering all that I have explained about the evils of coercive unions. Obama here displays the typical Marxist argument that workers are not getting their “fair share.” But as we now know, market forces dictate that workers are paid in accordance with the market value of the work they produce. But not only will Obama talk Marxist, he, like most politicians, will create more pro-Marxist, anti-capitalist laws that reduce productivity, employment, and salaries, all in the name of doing the opposite.

“Oui-Ha! France brings line dancing craze under state control”

Leftists want to regulate anything and everything, and to control the lives of as many as possible. In regulating line dancing, the French government believes its people need to be “protected” from foreign cultures and... and something else — I don’t know what. But surely, they believe, people can’t be trusted to act in their own best interest and enjoy their lives as they please. Government officials who are somehow superior must “lead” them.

Under new regulations, line dancing instructors must be taught by the government how to teach dancing (and one can bet that other regulations, such as limiting the number of dance studios, are included in the law). This will cost instructors about $2,500 for 600 hours of lessons for professionals and about $700 for 200 hours of training for amateurs. Such forced instructions include subjects like “the mechanics of the human body” and teaching dancing to the elderly (who as we know, are already taking over the club scene). Most of the costs, however, will be paid by taxpayers, not instructors. Thus, French citizens will be deprived of yet more of their incomes and will suffer a lower quality of life. Surely, if given the freedom to do so, French people would have chosen to spend their earnings in a different fashion than paying for line dancing regulations which aren’t needed to begin with.

“South Korea’s ‘prophet of doom’ indicted”

South Korea’s economic bust has paralleled the bust of every other developed world economy, since all developed economies are intimately connected via the various world central banks’ coordinated monetary policies, and since their bubbles largely stem from our trade deficit. Yet South Korean officials have blamed and arrested an unemployed blogger for causing the decline in its economy, currency, and stock market because the blogger correctly forecasted most of these events (as did most free-market economists). The South Korean government charged the blogger with “false information” (even though it was far from false) and prosecutors said he hurt the local economy by posting incorrect information online.

So much for freedom. So much for stating opinions. It is now illegal in South Korea to forecast the negative results of the government’s policies. Korean officials could have at least blamed the free market and a lack of regulation as other countries have — blaming a single blogger for disrupting the economy will not as easily fool even the ignorant public. Still, people are convinced that we need more of this regulation and government control.

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Ideally, we should all seek 100 percent capitalism, but such a proposal, which includes such notions as private ownership and control of things like roads and schools, is hard for most to swallow. Thus, I am happy proposing and settling for “95 percent capitalism,” which, in my definition, would consist of government providing such basic services as law enforcement, road-building, etc., but having absolutely no influence whatever on the way in which individuals and companies operate, providing that they cause no physical harm to others or their property or person.

This author’s case for the use of two dominant sources of information can easily be defended. The goal of this chapter is not to present contrasting views of environmentalism and to compare them, as the dominant pro-environmentalist view is omnipresent. The intent here is to present the little-mentioned alternative views, which this author strongly believes in. Since the alternative view can be found in robust form from two major sources, and since these two sources are a mirror representation of other sources of alternative views, efficiency of research material is the primary consideration. These two sources mostly fully encompass the anti-environmental concerns and subject matter, and are sufficient for presenting the alternative case to the public.

395 Most of the changes in velocity are affected by changes in the money supply. Velocity does not, as most people believe, have a life of its own unrelated to other factors.

396 While economists believe that deflators wipe out all excess increases in prices except those which account for new goods and services, the fact is that they do not.

397 GDP ≈ National Income; National Income ≈ profits + wages + interest; profits + wages + interest ≈ total business sales revenues – (total business costs – wages). Total business sales revenues minus only capital goods costs leaves profits, wages, and interest. Thus, GDP approximately equals total sales revenues minus only capital goods costs. This means GDP has capital goods costs subtracted out, leaving only (mostly) expenditures for consumer goods (mostly consisting of wages). Therefore, the greater the amount of capital goods expenditures, the more that is subtracted from GDP and the lower is GDP.

398 This, and the next six sections are largely paraphrased directly from George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996).

399 This statement is true with regards to most economists’ mathematical models.

400 E. Ray Canterbery, A Brief History of Economics (2001), p. 220.

401 Though government intervention in the labor market is really Marxist-based, these are socialist policies nonetheless, and Keynes himself clearly promoted socialism.

402 John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), p. 378.

403 As stated by Murray Rothbard, America’s Great Depression (2000).

404 Reisman has shown that profits are the difference between sales revenues and costs; net investment is the difference between productive expenditure (which is almost equivalent to sales revenue) and costs.

405 John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).

406 Keynes formulas, as pointed out by Hans-Herman Hoppe, The Misesian Case Against Keynes (1992): “Income = consumption + investment; saving = income – consumption; therefore, saving = investment.

407 In the second case, one has to produce real wealth in order to obtain money. In the first case, one is simply handed money without first producing something to exchange for the money.

408 In a free market there would also not be a push to save at the expense of consuming. How much was saved and invested would be determined by individuals and their personal desires.

409 It should be noted that almost none of the free-market economics relayed in this book was taught to me in the seven years I spent in universities learning economics. Instead I was taught pro-government economics.

410 As an investor in our current government-manipulated economy, I, too, benefit from central bank policies of inflating and have incentives to cheer on these policies. But as one seeking increased standards of living for everyone, I abhor them.

411 In fact, many of them abhor economic progress.

412 Jeffrey Tucker, “Crazy Economists Still Believe in the Free Market,” http://blog.mises.org/9559/crazy-economists-still-believe-in-the-free-market/..

413 Thomas E. Woods, “Supporters of Capitalism Are Crazy, Says Harvard,” http://mises.org/story/3379.

414 As a side note, it should be pointed out that this is exactly what happened in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Iraqi banknotes were no longer produced, and the currency quickly began to outperform all other currencies. But then the Americans forced the U.S. dollar to be legal tender instead, so that Iraqi citizens would have no choice but to accept a depreciating currency that the U.S. government could print more of at their expense (the wealth redistribution effect).

415 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1963), p. 850.

1 Victoria Shannon, “Amazon.com is challenging French competition law,” The New York Times (January 14, 2008).

2 David Jackson, “Bush: U.S. is not headed into a recession,” USA Today (February 28, 2008).

3 Robert A. Guth, “Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism,” The Wall Street Journal (January 24, 2008).

4 Christopher Toothaker, “Some Chavez Allies Slow to Shed Luxuries,” Fox News (December 14, 2007).

5 Foster Klug, “China becomes popular issue in 2008 race,” USA Today (August 14, 2007).

6 Individual Chinese companies might compete with American companies in the same industry, but this misses the larger point.

7 Teresa Cespedes and Terry Wade, “Peru’s Fujimori gets 25 years prison for massacres,” Reuters (April 8, 2009).

8 William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2006), p. 160

9 Ibid, p. 160.

10 Nicholas Kulish, “German City Wonders How Green Is Too Green,” The New York Times (August 6, 2008).

11 “Many doctors plan to quit or cut back: survey,” Reuters (November 17, 2008).

12 Jim Abrams, “Congress extends jobless benefits, stocks sink,” Fox News (November 20, 2008).

13 “FDIC warns US bank deposit insurance fund may tank,” Agence France-Presse, (March 5, 2009).

14 “Fed OKs Plan To Curb Shady Home Loan Practices,” CBS News (December 18, 2007).

15 Such as Anthony Snowball.

16 Stan Liebowitz, “The Real Scandal: How The Feds Invited the Mortgage Mess,” The New York Post (February 5, 2008).

17 Written by Stan Liebowitz, the Ashbel Smith professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of Texas at Dallas.

18 Holly Ramer, “Giuliani offers Health Plan,” USA Today (July 31, 2007).

19 “Edwards’ plan would raise taxes,” The Associated Press, MSNBC (July 26, 2007).

20 Kelly Olsen, “North Korea’s Kim Jong Il Makes Rare Election Pitch,” ABC News (February 18, 2009).

21 “Paul’s November 5 fundraising push,” CNN (November 5, 2007).

22 Adam Sage, “Oui-Ha! France brings line dancing craze under state control,” The Times Online (May 31, 2008).

23 Jack Kim, “South Korea’s ‘Prophet of Doom’ Indicted,” Reuters (January 22, 2009).

• 1—January 14, 2008
• 2—February 28, 2008
• 3—January 24, 2008
• 4—December 14, 2007
• 5—August 14, 2007
• 6As we have learned, China is not a threat or a competitor. It is an economic partner no less than a co-worker is. This assertion applies to the people and the economy, not to China’s politicians, who will naturally want to be at odds with our own politicians. And as we also learned, Obama will likely turn China into an enemy who must be dealt with in the name of security and patriotism.
• 7—April 8, 2009
• 8Alberto Fujimori was a ruthless dictator who was found guilty by his own people of carrying out military death-squad massacres, and was previously condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Americas and State Department Human Rights reports. No matter that he was heavily funded by the United States by way of numerous military advisers and trainers, Navy Seals and Green Berets, along with a slew of arms and equipment, surveillance flights, radar stations and more. The official explanation for supporting him and his civil war, where nearly 70,000 people died, was that America was fighting the war on drugs. This was the alleged explanation even though many people in Fujimori’s administration were directly engaged in the drug trade. Even Fujimori’s closest advisor, Vladimir Montesino, was a drug kingpin, and was on the CIA payroll for many years.
• 9Alberto Fujimori was a ruthless dictator who was found guilty by his own people of carrying out military death-squad massacres, and was previously condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Americas and State Department Human Rights reports. No matter that he was heavily funded by the United States by way of numerous military advisers and trainers, Navy Seals and Green Berets, along with a slew of arms and equipment, surveillance flights, radar stations and more. The official explanation for supporting him and his civil war, where nearly 70,000 people died, was that America was fighting the war on drugs. This was the alleged explanation even though many people in Fujimori’s administration were directly engaged in the drug trade. Even Fujimori’s closest advisor, Vladimir Montesino, was a drug kingpin, and was on the CIA payroll for many years.
• 10—August 6, 2008
• 11—November 17, 2008
• 12—Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., November 20, 2008
• 13—March 5, 2009
• 14—December 18th, 2007
• 15The media and the man on the street constantly blame evil greedy lenders for causing the subprime crisis and thus poor homeowners to lose their homes. In the small minority of instances where lenders were clearly guilty of wrongdoing, homeowners could rightfully sue the lender in court for damages. But most cannot because their predicament is their own fault. Yet few people want to admit this reality. We hear and read stories about people, and most of us personally know people, who were convinced that housing prices would always only go higher, and bought houses they couldn’t afford because they thought they could make up the difference when the house appreciated, which, they thought, must surely happen.
• 16—February 5th, 2008
• 17In light of the previous headline, and considering how much blame supposed evil lenders and free markets receive for the current crisis, it is well worth presenting this legitimate article. As it would be difficult to summarize the details or to re-write the article in a better way, the entire article is presented here in its original form as it appeared in the New York Post:
• 18—July 31, 2007
• 19—July 26, 2007
• 20—February 18, 2009
• 21—November 5, 2007
• 22—May 31, 2008
• 23—January 22, 2009