NEIL REYNOLDS
Globe and Mail Update
January 7, 2009 at 6:00 AM EST
Vernon Smith, the American economist who won a Nobel Prize in 2002 for his laboratory scrutiny of abstract economic theory, demonstrated that you can’t end market crashes by imposing more government regulations. Born to a poor Kansas farm family on Jan. 1, 1927, he turned 82 last week. His early life was inextricably shaped by the Great Depression – by hardships that provided an enduring incentive to succeed. (As a child, one of his chores was to keep the woodstove in the kitchen supplied with dried corncobs and dried cow chips.) “Like many of my generation,” he says in his unassuming autobiography, posted on Nobelprize.org, “I am a product of strange circumstances of survival and of successes built on tragedy.” Continue Reading »
By Richard G. Scott, December 20, 2008
The answer is yes. Recessions are unpleasant experiences for many businesses and the people who work for them, not to mention of course the people who ultimately lose their jobs during recessions.
So then if recessions are bad, then we should just ban them, right? Why would we want to keep having these pesky occurrences every few years if it makes so many of us downright miserable? Surely we can elect people to make sure that we are protected from recessions, with their powerful big government sugar daddy programs and bailouts. Yes, that’s the role of government, to make sure that none of us experience personal hardship as a result of the business cycle. Continue Reading »
Fraudulent “Credit Crisis” Paves Way for Economic Disaster
By Cliff Kincaid Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Doing the kind of investigative reporting we should expect from the major media, a financial research and consulting firm has released a major analysis of the “credit crisis” that concludes that the claims made by Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to justify a socialist takeover of the financial industry were demonstrably false.
The analysis, Flawed Assumptions about the Credit Crisis: A Critical Examination of US Policymakers, concludes that the result of the unjustified massive federal intervention in the economy could be similar to the economic crisis in the Weimar Republic of 1922, where disastrous hyperinflation made the currency worthless and threatened the nation’s political system and stability. Continue Reading »
November 25, 2008
Ontario lags almost all its North American peers in prosperity and has shown little improvement this decade, a new task force report concludes.
A report by the province’s Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress says the province ranked 14th out of 16 regions in North America in terms of per capita gross domestic product in 2007, trailing only Michigan and Quebec.
That’s a modest improvement from 15th position in 2006, but the report says it occurred only because Michigan’s economy was hit hard by the slumping auto industry. Continue Reading »
Linda R. Monk, J. D., is a constitutional scholar, journalist, and nationally award-winning author. A graduate of Harvard Law School , she twice received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, its highest honor for law-related media. Her books include The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution, Ordinary Americans: U. S. History Through the Eyes of Everyday People, and The Bill of Rights: A User’s Guide. For more than 20 years, Ms. Monk has written commentary for newspapers nationwide, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune Continue Reading »
Rescuers pulling market under – Drowning in too much stimulus.
Drowning
The G20′s architectural folly – One definition of folly–but of merely conventional policy making–is doing the same thing over and over, ….
G20′s Folly
Quantum of failures – Forget the markets: massive government failure is behind world fincial chaos.
Forget the Markets
a) Reply to Ron Turley’s Response (below) June 3, 2008
Thanks for your assessments. They are appreciated.
Re banning speculators – I agreed in advance there’d be “can’t do it” reactions and that the key questions were how and by whom. But it seems to me to be a fundamental wrong that a few hundred can cause serious hardship for a few billion – only because they can at this time.
Re oil – sure it’ll run out, but in a time frame measured in centuries, not years or decades. Why? Because of technology advances such as you cite and others, including turning heavy oil into light, which will extend the life of existing stocks, and, the exploration and exploitation of blocked fields and new finds of which we’re told the estimates range in the multi-billions of barrels. Continue Reading »
To: Messrs. Kay, Foster, Dreyer, Cosh, Fulford and Jonas –
c.c. Messrs. Corcoran and Gunter
Dear Sirs,
Re: Your articles on “Is Capitalism Conservative?”
Wonderful journalism, and sorely needed. You’ve succeeded in highlighting one of the central problems of our times which is that our leaders, never mind our citizens, are really confused about the language of principles, hence policies. You could help clear things up.
“The word ‘capitalism’ was coined by Karl Marx who hoped this labelling would help in
his crusade to denigrate the system of private property and free enterprise and promote socialism.” [from a book review published in the Ludwig Von Mises Institute's DAILY ARTICLE.]
But ‘capitalism’ is a very limited, specific term for one of the three ways humans do business where ‘business’ involves some or all of the processes of producing, distributing and exchanging goods and services. ‘Barter’ and ‘mercantilism’ are the other two terms. Continue Reading »
