Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Chairman: I hope you all had a pleasant lunch. These hearings of the United States House Committee on Financial Services are now called to order. Mister Benjamin Levine, thank you for coming here. Are you The Wandering Jew? Levine: Depends. Barney Frank (D-MA): Mister Chairman, please insert into the record that The [...]
M. Stanton Evans once said, in defense of free markets, “It all depends on how prosperous you want to be.” Prosperity, most of us would agree, is generally a good thing. The Western World has been quite good at it, although prosperity has often required that we compromise on the important things that got us [...]
Last week in Kansas, President Obama laid out his vision of economic history. In example after example drawn from the last hundred years, he showed that interventions on the part of the federal government in the form of taxes and regulations have proven to bring the free-market system to its optimal best. Restraint on taxes [...]
There is little new in this latest cycle of economic boom, panic, and bust. All of these cycles are linked to the life and death of the unstable post–World War II Bretton Woods monetary system. First came the crisis-ridden gold-dollar system from 1944 to 1971. Then came the rise of floating exchange rates and [...]
(apologies to Henry Hazlitt) The following economic data, provided by Société Générale, lists the “official” government debt versus what is “off the books” but…still…there. Analysis by Mr. Wilkins Micawber, care of Mr. Charles Dickens: […]
Who invented money and free trade, then screwed it up with Quantitative Easing and inflation? Yep. Guys in togas again. Professor Eamonn Butler, of London’s Adam Smith Institute, identifies a most promising grass-roots outfit called Friends of Classics, and their new magazine soon to be available online, “Ad Familiares.” In the ASI weblog, he summarises [...]
The following essay is adapted from the book Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism, edited by Thomas E. Woods Jr. (ISI Books, 2011). We are perhaps apt to forget that during the Cold War, it was generally conceded that the Soviet Union had a higher rate of economic growth than the [...]
The following essay appears in the final chapter of Russell Kirk’s textbook Economics: Work and Prosperity (Pensacola, Fla.: A Beka Book Publications, 1989), pp. 365–368. Some people would like to separate economists from politics, but they are unable to do so. Another name for economics is political economy. As we mentioned in earlier chapters, a [...]
For Heaven’s sake, calm down and pour yourself a stiff drink. I know…I know…that John Maynard Keynes is the father of Quantitative Easing, or government effectively printing money to supposedly stimulate economic growth. I know that as he debates the immortal FA Hayek in the two brilliant, modern rap-videos, Lord Keynes enters the room to diabolical [...]
One of the more amusing parts of my job is thinking of all the different ways I can explain to people what I do. “I work for a public policy think tank” usually causes eyes to glaze over and elicits a response of “what does that mean?” My grandfather finds it particularly difficult to understand [...]
Britain’s 2011 aircraft-carrier debacle may seem to have little in common with a 1940s Philadelphia ghetto and a modern French electricity company, but looks can be deceiving. Two new carriers, contracted at $6.5 billion in 2008, may cost $16.5 billion when completed by the end of this decade and cash-strapped Britons are furious. Beneath all [...]
The title of this essay takes its name, in part, from a speech that William McGurn delivered recently at Hillsdale College. Mr. McGurn served as the chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush from 2006-2008 and is currently the vice president of News Corporation. In his speech, Mr. McGurn sought to look at the claim [...]
The following essay appears in the final chapter of Russell Kirk’s textbook Economics: Work and Prosperity (Pensacola, Fla.: A Beka Book Publications, 1989), pp. 365–368. Some people would like to separate economists from politics, but they are unable to do so. Another name for economics is political economy. As we mentioned in earlier chapters, a [...]
The future ain’t what it used to be.—Yogi Berra It almost makes one want to go Green just to contemplate the trees that have been sacrificed for the writings of economists. They, like weathermen, claim to be custodians of a predictive science. Both get paid to be wrong much of the time, but at least [...]