Posts Tagged ‘economy’
The Paycheck UNfairness Act
By Phyllis Schlafly Women didn't vote for Democratic candidates in last November's election in the expected numbers, so President Obama tried to woo them back by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act in the Lame Duck Session. Fortunately, this plan failed because Congress realized this bill is a job killer, not a job creator. The radical [...]
What Ended the Great Depression?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Burton W. Folsom Jr. What finally ended the Great Depression? That question may be the most important in economic history. If we can answer it, we can better grasp what perpetuates economic stagnation and what cures it. The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. From 1931 to 1940 [...]
CBO: Full Privatization of Fannie, Freddie May Be Best Option
Liberty Alerts, Matt Cover, CNSNews.com The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that returning the secondary mortgage market to full privatization would force mortgage firms to be more responsible and might be the best option for taxpayers. The CBO in a December 2010 paper assessed the problems of the Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) [...]
Report: Soda Tax Chases Jobs Out of Baltimore
Liberty Alerts, Susan Jones, CNSNews.com The Pepsi plant in Baltimore will no longer make soda, and the company plans to lay off 77 people -- a decision blamed in part on a controversial new beverage tax in the city, the Baltimore Sun reported on Tuesday. Kristine Hinck, a company spokeswoman, cited the 2-cent tax on bottled beverages passed [...]
A Matter of Life and Death
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sandy Ideka I had the privilege of studying under Israel M. Kirzner at New York University in the 1980s. In 2006 Professor Kirzner, one of Ludwig von Mises’s most gifted American students, was given a lifetime achievement award from the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. In his [...]
The Welfare State Fantasy
Free Enterprise Zone, Guest Columnist, Chris Clancy I met a couple on holiday here in China. They were from the UK. They spotted me in a crowded department store and needed some help. Rather than give them directions I escorted them to the shops they needed. We agreed to meet up for dinner that evening. We had a pleasant meal. They talked about [...]
Inside Insider Trading
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Warren C. Gibson Insider trading is something we hear a lot about these days. To most people, the practice smells of foul play, and federal law restricts it. But the inside story of insider trading is something very different, as we shall see. The alleged ill effects on shareholders in particular and on [...]
Do We Need the “Next Level” of State Security?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, William L. Anderson When a university hires a football coach, the athletic director often declares that the new coach will take the team to “the next level.” What the director means is that he hopes the coach will lead State U’s team to a championship or a high-ranking bowl. However, when [...]
Jury Nullification: Remedy or Danger?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Wendy McElroy The discombobulated deputy attorney of Missoula County, Montana, called it “mutiny.” The quiet courtroom insurrection was sparked by the prosecution of a man accused of possessing 1/16th of an ounce of marijuana. One of the 27 potential jurors asked why taxpayer money was being wasted in [...]
How Washington Protects Your Privacy and Liberty
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, James Bovard Preserving trust in government is the highest good—at least for politicians. To create that trust, government continually spawns façades to make people believe their rights are safe. Few things better illustrate this charade than the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In 2004, [...]
Intellectual Property: Silly or Sinister?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, David K. Levine Imagine a land recently seized from a foreign power where there is little law and a lot of gold. Since nature abhors a vacuum, prospectors quickly adopt the conventions of private property: Whoever is first to put four stakes in the ground is the proud owner of the land and any gold beneath. [...]
Tariffs and Freedom
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Donald Boudreaux A historical episode that opponents of consumer sovereignty—that is, opponents of free trade—frequently cite to support their case for high tariffs is late nineteenth-century America. Pat Buchanan, for example, in his book The Great Betrayal asserts about the 1800s that “Behind a [...]
Charity? Or A Political Tool To Gain Political Power?
Prophet Statesmen, J. Reuben Clark Jr. Just as “we the people of the United States” in ordaining and establishing our Constitution did not delegate to the government the power to go into private business, so we aimed, as far as was wisely possible, to keep our government under the Constitution, away from immediate, financial dealings with [...]
Ask Not For Whom the Drug Tolls
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Wendy McElroy “Fifty years ago, it made sense to assert that mental illnesses are not diseases, but it makes no sense to say so today. Debate about what counts as mental illness has been replaced by legislation about the medicalization and demedicalization of behavior. Old diseases such as homosexuality [...]
Social Security Is Not Insurance
Texas Straight Talk with Ron Paul Perhaps the biggest media story of 2010 was the influence of Tea Party voters on the congressional landscape. The new congress comes to Capitol Hill with a mandate to end profligate spending and restore fiscal sanity, we are told. But when the House and Senate convene in January, the newly elected members [...]
Ruthless is the Word
American Gumbo with Diane Alden Responding to William Anderson's "False Foreclosures and the Free Market": Ruthless is the word. Not only in home foreclosures but I know of a case where a person with only SSI was hounded into a heart attack by a credit collection agency even though this person was disabled and could not possibly pay the [...]
Ominous Copyright Ruling Stands
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Wendy McElroy A stunning but little-noticed Supreme Court ruling signals that the face of business and the boundaries of ownership could soon change dramatically. The December 13 ruling in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega S.A. is little-noticed because as a 4-to-4 decision, with one Justice recused, it merely [...]
As long as grass is green and the sky is blue… — T.F. Stern
By T.F. Stern, There’s a line in the movie, Little Big Man , which sums up how government keeps promises. The movie’s message had to do with our Federal government’s treaties with the Indians as spoken by Little Big Man, a white man adopted by the Human Beings, “This land was promised to the Indians for as long as grass grows green and [...]
Rotate Key Every 3000 Miles — T.F. Stern
By T.F. Stern, Every now and again you find a customer with a key story worth sharing; like the fellow who drilled a hole in the head of his key to make sure it wouldn’t fall off his key ring, drilled smack dab through the transponder of his key and wondered why his car wouldn’t start. I found another interesting key/story the other [...]
Rare Earth Elements: Stockpile or Markets?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Warren Gibson Quick, what do you know about lanthanum, praseodymium, neodymium, or dysprosium? If you said they are chemical elements, you are right: numbers 57, 59, 60, and 66, to be exact. They and their neighbors on the periodic table, collectively “rare earths,” were once mere curiosities tucked in [...]
A Boost for the Managed Economy
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sheldon Richman Nowhere is it easier to miss the forest for the trees than in discussions of government policy. For the past week the media have been saturated with debates over the “compromise” tax package agreed to by Barack Obama and congressional Republicans. The package passed by the House and [...]
What “Undercover Boss” Could Be
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Recently I stumbled across the TV show Undercover Boss. A CEO poses as a new employee at one of his firm’s factories or stores in order to see how the company really runs. In the episode I watched, the CEO of the Johnny Rocket’s restaurant chain spent time working in a couple of [...]
Revealing the Reality of Antitrust
Free Enterprise Zone, Gary Galles, Mises.org The rhetoric and imagery of American antitrust law has always been procompetition and proconsumer. However, the reality has always been the opposite. As demonstrated by Dominic Armentano, Tom DiLorenzo, and others, it has been not only a pervasive violation of property rights but also anticompetition [...]
Should NCAA Rule Infractions Be Crimes?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, William L. Anderson In a 2009 Reason article Candice E. Jackson and I asked: How did breaking sports rules become a federal offense? We believed the question had merit, since federal prosecutors had found ways to jail star athletes who run afoul of rules in their sports. Sports Illustrated recently reported [...]
Paying the Unemployed Does Not Stimulate the Economy
Free Enterprise Zone, James C.W. Ahiakpor, The Freeman Many in Congress as well as the President and some of his economic advisers have argued that extending the period for paying the unemployed will stimulate the U.S. economy out of its sluggish performance. Would any of them consider as valid an argument that giving money out of their own [...]
Audit the Fed in 2011
Texas Straight Talk with Ron Paul Since the announcement last week that I will chair the congressional subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, the media response has been overwhelming. The groundswell of opposition to Fed actions among ordinary citizens is reflected not only in the rhetoric coming out of Capitol Hill, but also in [...]
Building China Into a World Hegemonic Superpower
American Gumbo with Diane Alden Yes, lets continue to build militaristic Statist controlled economy and 5000 year old hegemonic civilization into a world super power. Much of this comes courtesy of Wall Street, the stupid Business Roundtable, US Chamber of Commerce and political elites bought and paid for. I will throw in the numbnuts [...]
The Fed: The Chicago School’s Achilles Heel
Robert P. Murphy, Mises.org In a recent post "Triumph of the Austrian Economists," David Frum laments the displacement of the respectable Chicago School as the economists of choice among the political Right. Frum fails to see that conservative Republicans are justified in switching their allegiance to the Austrian economists, because [...]
Obama’s EPA Goes After Coal Fired Energy — T.F. Stern
By T.F. Stern, Do you remember Obama’s pledge back in 2008 when he was running for the Oval Office, a pledge to bankrupt the coal industry? At the time he threatened to make it too expensive to operate coal fired electrical plants via Cap & Trade legislation mandates in order to force Americans into “green” forms of energy [...]
Hosed by Central Bankers
American Gumbo with Diane Alden I don't think government spending reaches the magnitude of this deal: a staggering 13 trillion dollars. We are getting hosed folks by central bankers, the Fed, foreign banking interests, the powers that be. We were finally granted the honor and privilege of finding out the specifics, a limited one-time Federal [...]
