Free Republic

Former President George W. Bush said America must resist the "temptation" to allow the government to take over the private sector. Do you think the government is too involved now? http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/12/bush-warns-threats-freedom-economic-growth/

It has always been understood, sometimes whispered, that Geroge Soros, the great beneficiary of markets, hates them. The truth is now out in the open. John Stossel reports, via FT, that Soros will give $50 million to start a new think-tank to counter "the unwavering belief in unchecked free markets, which remains pervasive in universities." Soros says: "The ideologists in the free markets are still in command and I think they'll be very difficult to remove because they have tenure." If anything proves that one has to question Soros' analytical ability, it is this statement. The leading economic textbook in...

“Free markets have failed us, and there’s no place else to turn other than the federal government,” seems to about sum up Washington’s approach over the past year.

At the time of writing, when practically every country is inflating, though most of them are at peace, price controls are always hinted at, even when they are not imposed. Though they are always economically harmful, if not destructive, they have at least a political advantage from the standpoint of the officeholders.By implication they put the blame for higher prices on the greed and rapacity of businessmen, instead of on the inflationary monetary policies of the officeholders themselves. Let us first see what happens when the government tries to keep the price of a single commodity, or a small group...

Living in Fort Collins, Colo., provides quick access to some of the best trout fishing in Colorado. A few nights ago I made my first outing to the Big Thompson River. I found a stretch of river with pools and pockets of easy-flowing water. After 20 minutes, I felt a strike on my line, and a brown trout surfaced in his struggle to free himself from the hook. I nearly had the trout to shore, but with one last thrash he freed himself and slipped back into the river. If you’re an angler, you know the deep disappointment that grips...

Left or right, we can all agree that our health insurance industry is in serious need of treatment, as we live in a time when a small number of companies make record profits while they cut costs by rejecting the claims of thousands of sick and desperate people. The obvious question is: What can Americans do to get out of this seemingly self-perpetuating rut? The answer is anything but obvious and might surprise you. To illustrate it, you need look no further than your local beer aisle. Today we can go into any supermarket or liquor store and find dozens...

Political analysts frequently consider what it means to be a libertarian. In fact, in 1997, Charles Murray published a short book entitled "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" that does an excellent job of presenting the core principles of libertarian political philosophy. But almost no one ever discusses what it feels like to be a libertarian. How does it actually feel to be someone who holds the principles described in Murray’s book? I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level of frustration. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision...

Are you optimistic about the next 25 years? Milton Friedman: I have great difficulty not being optimistic about it. All the evidence would seem to be optimistic. On the other hand, I can't hold back a doubt. Governments want to spend money and sooner or later, governments are going to want to spend money without taxing it and the only way to do that is to print money—to create inflation. Inflation is a form of taxation. How long will governments be able to resist the temptation? And particularly as people become adjusted to being in a world of stable inflation....

When looking for an appropriate reaction to the problems connected with the current crisis, we should build on the idea that the crisis was basically a failure of governments, not markets. The manipulation of monetary policy in an attempt to artificially prolong the period of growth, the irrational subsidization of demand in the housing sector and the failures of financial market regulation contributed substantially to the crisis. Let us not delude ourselves that the economic cycle and its consequences can be prevented by the more extensive government regulation or by aiming at global governance of the world economy.

Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story" will be released next month. I've neither seen nor read reviews of the film, except for a short piece in the London Telegraph (9/6/09) titled "Michael Moore film calls capitalism evil." Aware of Michael Moore's previous films, I know that it will be at best a misleading story about capitalism. So let's do some defensive mental preparation, not about the film but what is and what is not capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership and control over the means of production. The distribution of goods and services and...

Almost every Friday since January, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has added more names to its “failed bank list”—84 so far this year, already more than the 26 for all of 2008. America should be proud of this document, which seems an example of the prudent regulation integral to free markets. But the FDIC’s elegant system, which both ratifies the markets’ discipline of bad banks and protects broader markets from depositor panic, has become a tool of the government distortion that imperils our competitive economy.

The 20/20 co-anchor summed up the importance of a profit motive for the health care industry to function adequately as he recounted that in Canada, private veterinary clinics provide health care for animals much more rapidly than the government-run system provides similar services for human patients: JOHN STOSSEL: You want innovation and fast treatment? That often comes from people pursuing profit. And you see that in Canada because, even here, there is one area where they do offer easy access to cutting edge technology- UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN: -CT Scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laporoscopy- STOSSEL: -available all the time. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VETERINARIAN:...

Chad Harris is an entrepeneur. As such, health insurance was always expensive for him because he never had group insurance through an employer. (after all he's his own employer) It could cost well over a $1000 monthly for his family. One day he was on a business trip when his wife was discussing the difficulties of getting health insurance with her doctor Dr. Sam Sannoufi, MD. Her doctor came up with an idea. The doctor would provide a menu of basic medical care for her and her family for $599 for the whole year and the whole family. It would...

Choice, competition, reducing costs -- those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Barack Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week.

Sources on Capitol Hill have hinted at several 'compromise proposals' on the multi-trillion dollar government takeover of healthcare as mandated by Barack Obama. Let me be as clear as I can be at the outset: each of these compromise plans are totally unacceptable.

Since the bailouts last fall, lawmakers have been behaving as quasi-owners of the bailed-out banks and businesses, leading to calls for increased regulation of executive compensation and other wasteful expenditures. We have heard much about bonuses and executive pay packages that sound more like lottery winnings than an honest salary. Many lawmakers voted in favor of these unconstitutional bailouts, believing that these corporations were too big to fail, and allowing them to go under would precipitate widespread economic disaster. This second wave of citizen outrage at the bailouts has left these lawmakers with a bit of egg on their face,...

The Cause of the Disaster: Are governments doing enough to fight this financial and economic crisis? Is it a good thing that central banks have cut interest rates essentially to zero and have increased the base money supply dramatically to support the financial sector? Will depression be prevented if governments across the world run up huge deficits in an attempt to strengthen demand, production, and employment? To answer these questions truthfully, we need to diagnose the causes of the debacle and then formulate the proper way out of it. The diagnosis can be stated in just one sentence: Governments have...

In a series of articles published from 1902-1904, Ida Tarbell attacked Standard Oil, the leading US supplier of kerosene lamp fuel. The centerpiece of Ms. Tarbell's criticism was that the company had engaged in predatory pricing by continually lowering its prices. Her readers must have asked themselves, "How is that a bad thing? Am I supposed to be outraged that the amount I pay for lamp oil has fallen?" Although company cofounder John Rockefeller had retired from actively managing Standard Oil in 1896, Ms. Tarbell vilified him in her articles, even criticizing his elderly appearance. Populist US president Theodore Roosevelt...

It worked for President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, when he took tax cuts - a conservative issue - and made it his own. Now, liberals are employing a similar tactic in promoting their health care agenda. But Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., isn't having it. He called out Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the left wing The Nation magazine and MSNBC guest co-host, for attempting it in questioning him in a MSNBC segment on July 29. vanden Heuvel asked Ryan why he was against a so-called public health insurance option. His opposition, she reasoned, would deny consumers the...

The single most important thing to remember in the current debate about the nation's healthcare system is that free market solutions are available, and they work. Barack Obama's contention that there are only 2 choices--his government takeover of healthcare, or doing nothing--is patently FALSE. Other solutions, better solutions, are available and have never been tried on a national scale.

"At the end of the twentieth century, as we look back over a seventy-year Socialist experiment and an equal period of capitalistic Western prosperity, one thing becomes clear. Economic freedom is not a superfluous footnote to to other freedoms, but a prerequisite to the existence of all other freedoms. Even liberal Sweden attests to this. As the years have gone by, Sweden's coercive Socialist economic policies have increasingly spilled over into other areas to the point that civil liberties of all kinds are threatened. Religious freedom, educational freedom, and the freedom to raise one's children according to one's own beliefs...

Take for example the cigar I happen to be puffing on while I write this wonderful article this beautiful evening. I freely exchanged a certain number of dollars, which I earned by the sweat of my brow, for this wonderfully made cigar. The manufacturer of the cigar, and the store in which I purchased it from, gladly exchanged their fine product for the certain number of dollars that I paid for it.

A few weeks back, I wrote this piece analyzing the different forms of an economic recovery: indicated by the letters l, u, v, and w. In it, I predicted that we would form a W shaped recovery. In a W shaped recovery there are one or more false rallies only to find the economy back in a recession. I believe that we will see this W shaped recession. It's why I am still bearish. Whatever short term signs we see of a recovery, they are, in my opinion, overwhelmed by the long term problems caused by the action in response...

I have made no secret of my distaste for big oil. So, now, I will build a case why it would not only be beneficial for society to break them up, but, under Sherman Anti Trust it is perfectly legal. Here is the relevant portion. The Sherman Antitrust Act (Sherman Act,[1] July 2, 1890, ch. 647, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. § 1–7) was the first United States Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies. It falls under antitrust law.

That some should be rich shows that others may become rich,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.” Barack Obama has made it quite clear he wants to be seen as Lincoln’s heir. But in this instance, he is an heir in open rebellion. He is promising a range of policy initiatives that will have the effect of closing off new pathways to wealth, to the detriment not only of our economy but of our national life as well. It’s a matter of some debate among economists whether the private generation of wealth is a...

According to Autoblog, some "far right-wingers" are planning a boycott of GM. Conspicuously absent from the piece is any mention of a "far left-wing" president nationalizing a private company and giving it to political cronies like the "far left-wing" UAW.

"I hear loud and clear from people in my state, and from across the country, what they want to see in health care. They want it to cost less, have the highest quality and see that it extends to all Americans—even when they lose their job or when they're sick. Republicans agree. So do Democrats. Where we disagree is how to get the job done. Our divide is fundamental: Republicans believe health care can be best guided by consumers, physicians and markets; Democrats believe government would do better. Some Democrats would have government buy health care for us; set the...

Our new website is nearing completion. The website will provide a 50 state network of local hubs for activists and liberty loving Americans. You’ll be able to use our site to plan activities (such as Tea Party events), network with others in your area, get training on activism and running for office, direct access to policy research and information, collaborate with folks in other states and much more. If you haven’t done so already, please visit www.americanlibertyalliance.com and get plugged in. This is an announcement you don’t want to miss. -American Liberty Tour On September 9th, 2009, our crew will...

Wrapped in the warm, fuzzy blanket of "consumer protection" against "unscrupulous and dishonest business practices," regulation has become a main component of the creeping socialist machinery. It is argued that we must have an infinite number of supposedly indispensable alphabet soup organizations, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to protect us from the evil "greed" of the businessperson.

FDR's dictum "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" may have been the 20th century's most inadequate piece of economic analysis. Did you ever wonder how acting on such a fantastic premise halts a financial collapse? Or exactly how refusing to be concerned about the financial condition of banks causes them to be solvent? We can safely assume other factors rescue us from recessions and depressions. But what are they? The Obama team tells us the keys are "fiscal stimulus," aggressively easy monetary policy, and more robust regulation. Their argument is rather simple: when we have reacted...

Here is the the problem as I see it. RMBS can be sold for about 30 cents on the dollar now. But banks are unwilling to sell for less than 60 cents -- either because they really think the loans will experience only a 40 percent loss rate, or because they fear that acknowledging market value will put them into insolvency. Which it might very well.

John Stossel is the best-known libertarian in the news media. As the co-anchor of the long-running and immensely popular ABC News program 20/20, auteur of a continuing series of specials on topics ranging from corporate welfare to educational waste to laws criminalizing consensual adult behavior, and author of best-selling books such as Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, Stossel brings a consistent message of liberty to millions of viewers on a weekly basis. It wasn’t always this way. Born in 1947, Stossel started out as a standard-issue consumer reporter, working in Oregon and New York before joining the staff of Good...

Are today’s politicians and bureaucrats smarter than the ones we had a few years ago? Apparently so, since the new fad in the political set is to claim that we can avoid future financial crises via “smarter” regulation. We saw a perfect example of the phenomenon on Morning Joe today. First in a clip from Tim Geithner, then in live comments by two pundits, all agreed that smarter regulation is our salvation. There are only a few little problems with that theory . . . View video here.

Massive government spending and tighter regulation would prolong recession, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday, as he urged U.S. President Barack Obama not to endanger the free market economy in his response to the financial crisis. In a speech at Columbia University in New York, Klaus, a former Czech prime minister who championed the free market after the fall of Communism 20 years ago, said he never expected to see such extensive government intervention again in his lifetime as he now sees around the world. "I am therefore convinced that fighting for freedom and free markets, something we always...

Throughout the campaign, and during his presidency, President Obama has tried to present himself as the moderate on health care. On one side, were the so called free market extremists (like myself) who believed that health insurance and care should be left to the free market. On the other side was the original plan proposed by Hillary Clinton in 1993 which proposed a single payer plan. Instead, President Obama proposed a plan in which a government plan would "compete" with free market alternatives. By doing so, President Obama made his plan seem as though it was the moderate. Make no...

These days, you have to travel far to find a national leader who is talking about market-based approaches to the global recession. All the way to the other side of the world. "We don't tell New Zealanders we can stop the global recession, because we can't," says Prime Minister John Key, leaning forward in his armchair at his office in the Beehive, the executive wing of New Zealand's parliament. "What we do tell them is we can use this time to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running...

Of course, this won't happen, but it should be on the record for posterity at least... First, I want to introduce this quote from a Wall Street Journal article last fall. Is a housing bailout the solution for clogged-up credit markets and a faltering economy? What the Fed has been doing and did again yesterday hasn't really worked, notwithstanding the pops it produces in the stock market every time it shovels liquidity into the system. The Fed's latest move provides financial institutions another $200 billion in direct short-term lending against their unsaleable housing collateral. The Dow Jones jumped 416 points....

I don’t know whether this belongs in the comic-relief category or the future-threats category, but the Harvard Law School is having a conference to analyze the “free market mindset.” The basic premise of the conference seems to be that people who believe in limited government are psychologically troubled. The conference schedule features presentations such as “How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community” and “Addicted to Incentives: How the Ideology of Self Interest Can Be Self-Fulfilling.” The most absurd presentation, though, may be the one entitled, “Colossal Failure: The Output Bias of Market Economies.” According to the description, the author argues...

Last summer, I wrote about what then candidate Barack Obama's policies would do to the stock market. That particular post has seen a resurgence mostly through Google searches, but it is also rather outdated. At the time, candidate Obama had several policies based on a populist platform and a weakening economy. Most of that has changed, and many of the policies that candidate Obama touted in the summer have gone by the wayside. For instance, he floated a capital gains tax increase, a corporate tax increase, as well as an increase in taxes on the top tax bracket. All of...

Time magazine has come out with a list of the top 25 people to blame for the financial crisis. Discussing it on Hardball this afternoon, Chris Matthews came up with an impromptu list of his own. Culprits #1 and 2? Reaganism, and its sidekick of the apocalypse: “economic freedom.” Chris chewed the list over with David Faber of CNBC and Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times. Though Matthews a couple times placed blame on the notion that everyone should own their own home, he kept circling back to his favorite bogeymen. View video.

With the debate over the "Porkulus" bill in Congress (or, as I like to call it, "Pork and Awe"), there has been a great deal of related discussion over why the bill will work, or won't work, to stimulate the economy and create much-needed jobs and economic growth. However, much of the debate has devolved into partisan bickering. It might help to take a step back, and consider the differences between government and private spending in a more general sense. To begin with, what does the stimulus package claim to do? Apparently, it authorizes the government to spend money, in...

I imagine there are many conservatives out there, believers in free markets, who know in their gut that the stimulus plan is a mistake. Who well understand there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But perhaps it has not always been easy to refute facile arguments in favor of the plan. It is now. The Wall Street Journal has served up three succinct paragraphs that pulverize the essence of the Obama plan. They serve as a handy primer, or provide the ammo, if you prefer a martial metaphor, for defeating the arguments most commonly made on behalf of the...

Imagine you are a young Bill Gates. You’re smart. You’re ambitious. You’re thinking about starting a business to put your talents to their best use for you and for society. Then you turn on the television and see President Obama say that “now is not the time” for entrepreneurs to make profits and get bonuses. You hear Vice President Joe Biden say of corporate CEOs: “I’d like to throw these guys in the brig.”

For someone looking to expose MSM bias, the weekend episodes of Good Morning America are a godsend, a veritable corncucopia of liberal media advocacy on display. I really should send co-anchors Kate Snow and Bill Weir gifts next Christmas in thanks for all the material they’ve supplied over the months. But, true to FinkelBlog’s pledge to dole out the kudos when the MSM has done something to deserve them, let’s acknowledge that GMA gave a fair shake today to a group of free-market economists who have come together to oppose the president’s stimulus plan, arguing instead that the government should...

The 18th Century English cleric and theologian John Wesley was troubled by a paradox that emerged as his teaching spread. He, like other Protestant thinkers stretching back to Calvin, taught that one could honor God through hard work and thrift. The subsequent burst of industry and frugality generated by Wesley’s message improved the lot of many of his working-class followers and helped advance capitalism in England. But, “wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion,” Wesley observed, and subsequently pride and greed are growing more common, he complained. The emergence of what Max Weber...

New Rule: neomercantilists, neoconservatives, and statists are no longer allowed to call themselves "free marketers." People who call themselves free marketers such as Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are the primary threat capitalism faces. These false prophets of capitalism are the greatest friends that proponents of socialism have. Many prominent American figures claim to be proponents of free markets but in practice advocate neomercantilist, corporate welfare policies. These policies eventually, and unsurprisingly, lead to disastrous economic and social consequences. These catastrophes are then blamed on capitalism, free markets, and deregulation, at which point, socialists are easily able to convince the...

Here is a good read making the free market case in opposition to the Obama economic plan. The article written by John Tamny of H.C. Wainwright Economics provides an important lesson in economics and the damage caused by ineffective and damaging government intervention. Government moving wealth around, the essence of the Obama tax plan disguised as tax credits will stifle demand and not serve as a vehicle of economic growth. Tamny points out that since no change in wealth will result from the Obama tax policy (unlike what would be the result of an across the board real tax rate...

Among many things that 2008 will be remembered for, one of them will be that free markets began to fall out of favor. Now, those with an economically liberal agenda are using this opportunity to beat free markets when they are down. Free markets are now associated with unfettered greed and out of control behavior. Arianna Huffington took her turn demonizing free markets, and now, so has Thomas Frank. But something went wrong on the road to privatopia. If everything is for sale, why shouldn't the guardians put themselves on the block as well? Now we find that the profit...

The MSM newspapers are going into the crapper and it is all the fault of idiot bloggers (you know, those guys who sit around in their pajamas writing all day). The problem is that printing a hard copy of a publication packed with solid, interesting reporting isn't a guarantee of economic success in the age of instant news. Blogger Glenn Reynolds of "Instapundit" fame seems to be pleased at this. In his book, "An Army of Davids," Mr. Reynolds heralds an era in which "[m]illions of Americans who were in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do...

As America turns to socialism (i.e., the government allocation of economic resources) it is interesting to consider the immorality of what is done. The rich want to keep their wealth. And they seem perfectly willing to exhaust public funds to do so. But the wealth that many want to preserve was never real. The boom that made this wealth was false – and corrupting. At bottom, the market is now trying to correct the immorality of self-deceptive practices. Many participants don’t accept this correction, and so they reject the market just as the ancient Israelites rejected the prophets. “Choice is...