Much like the US's decision to save Bretton woods by coercing South African gold sales, today's governments will resort to ever more authoritarian measures rather than allowing their pet institutions to fail.
"If carbon dioxide is classified as a pollutant, then every breath we take can be regulated by government." That sums it up perfectly.
Paul Samuelson is the one who laid the theoretical foundation for this systemic anarchy. Milton Friedman then provided the emperor's new clothes, dressing it in the garb of neoliberalism. That is how these two leading figures in American economic thought were united in unleashing on the world community the system that has now collapsed.
Given how many Keynesian economists predicted a return to depression conditions when World War II spending came to an end, and that what we instead got was the single most robust year the private economy has ever seen, isn't it a little strange that not one of these economists went back and reexamined his premises?
The Austrian arguments, to repeat, are deductive. They are not statistical.
In sum, the "change" that Obama promised his mesmerized supporters in the election campaign, and is now in process of actually delivering, is nothing more than change from dumb to dumber and from bad to worse.
The Black Book of Communism is a standing rebuke to any living soul who claims that economic understanding doesn't matter.
Regardless of mantras of change, politics is unlikely to change unless President Obama heeds the lessons learned from the inaugural ceremony. His first move should be a drastic reduction in the government's size and scope.
I’ve always been perplexed by the dichotomy that often divides people’s avowed beliefs and their actions.
Economic depression is good for the state. Even if the state knew how to end it, why would we suppose that it has the incentive to do so?
