Republicans are about to kill a bank that's been around for 80 years — at least for a little while

Business Insider ^ | 06/24/2015 | ERICA WERNER, ASSOCIATED PRESS

[bkepley]

No I am glad to hear you are for free markets. Many here aren’t. The alternative is gvmt picking winners and losers via tools such as ex-im and tariffs. If we don’t support something like ex-im we have to go whole hog free markets or turn to tariffs and tariffs are also corrupt for th same reason as ex-im.

[BlackElk]

If I had the power, I would abrogate all of the trade agreements and start over. Tariffs, if need be, designed to restore our industrial base would make more sense than the dense web of existing violations of free market principles. Eliminate the latter in favor of the former and relentlessly re-evaluate with an eye toward further reforms to restore free markets. Our current mes was not created in a day and it may take a while to see to the restoration of our status as a manufacturing colossus. If not, I am old and my health ain’t what it used to be and my course has largely run.

[BlackElk]

BTW, it is always encouraging when a successful practitioner of popular culture turns out to be an eloquent advocate of free market principles. Best selling thriller novelist Brad Thor (formerly of Sickago, IL until our taxes proved outrageously burdensome), a few years ago, wrote a best seller called Full Black featuring his usual protagonist Brad Harvath, formerly of the CIA, the Secret Service, the Navy Seals, etc., and now employed by the Carlisle Group, named for its leader, a former CIA poohbah fed up with the red tape.

Full Black has a sinister George Soros type character named James Standing, a multi-billionaire on a mission to destroy capitalism freedom and the United States (not necessarily in that order). There is also a young woman of considerable attractiveness who interviews Standing for a NY financial publication. With the intent of bedding her and her considerable charms, the 78-year old Standing insists on continuing the interview over dinner at a legendary NY restaurant. He is a caricature of a leftist airhead explaining his personal virtue in trying to re-establish soviet-style worldwide rule by narrow elites. She is supposed to be 25 but her questions and counterarguments are worthy of von Mises, von Hayek and Friedman. Standing's sound like Obozo.

Give yourself a treat and buy a copy. The colloquy takes place somewhere between pp. 150 and 200. Enjoy!