The latest economic data indicate that the prospects for a sustained economic recovery have been further delayed, writes Frank Shostak in a wide-ranging review of the current economic moment. The low interest rate policy of the Fed remains the major factor behind the continued deterioration.
The accusations against Wal-Mart are many, and they include: paying overseas workers too little; not paying benefits to part-time workers; refusing to sell items that don't fall within its criteria for being "family-oriented"; not giving enough back to the community; and discriminating against women. Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds respond.
Contrary to Keynesian dreams, there are several undeniable realities of a recessionary environment, writes Lew Rockwell. Wages tend to fall. Businesses tend to be liquidated. Resources are withdrawn from investment and put into savings. Consumers spend less. Stock prices fall. All of these tendencies may seem regrettable but they are necessary to bring all sectors back into realistic balance with each other.
Do deficits cause interest rates to be higher than they otherwise would be? Supply Siders, armed with historical data, say no. Unfortunately for them, writes Christopher Mayer, the conventional wisdom is closer to the truth. Deficits crowd out private investment, fritter away savings, and rob the public of valuable capital.
To the extent additional safety comes at a higher cost, it restricts the ability to make provision for other needs and wants, including safety, in other areas of life, writes George Reisman. And this remains true even when the higher costs of safety are initially imposed on business firms rather than directly on consumers.
The cry of the Wall Street reformer is always the same: Let's have more regulators and regulations to correct the problem of prior regulators and regulations! Gregory Bresiger reviews Arthur Levitt's new book.
Coercive transfers are wasteful, inefficient, and inequitable. The Left uses Demand-Side Dogma to instill false legitimacy into these policies, writes D.W. MacKenzie. The Right, including the Bush administration, plays along with this rhetoric all too often.
The litany is familiar to anyone who knows of the history of the Great Depression: miscalculation, overtaxation, keeping wages and benefits high, prevent the liquidation, boost consumer demand, run up public debt. Fritz Machlup said that this is the path to impoverishment, notes Sean Corrigan.
The Spitzer settlement is a travesty of justice. If it is true that individuals in the securities industry perpetrated fraud in order to garner investment banking fees, they should be criminally prosecuted and punished. Only a corrupt politician would ignore possible crimes in return for an industry’s support in future political campaigns. The liberal New York democrat helped himself, not investors.
Rothbard makes sense of these complex events in American banking history--power struggles, recessions, foreign relations--wielding the principles of monetary theory and Austrian business cycle theory, which he explains very well, on the run. Joseph Stromberg reviews A History of Money and Banking in the United States.
