The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Stephen Moore supports the trillion dollar bailout of investment banks. Stephen is the alleged champion of free markets and was formerly with Club For Growth and was a federal budget policy director at the Cato Institute. His reasoning? Taxpayers must be made to subsidize an industry to avoid a “meltdown.” Wrong! The meltdown, caused by the deflation of a Fed-created bubble, cannot be avoided. The bailout is merely transferring the costs to taxpayers.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/8561/bailout-hall-of-shame/
Bailout Hall of Shame
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The CATO web site has some opinion about the bad things that will come from these bailouts but not the critical issue: The Existence of a Goverment Monopoly on Money. I am really unimpressed at the CATO institute which is becomming more “pragmatic” in its opinion.
At least LvMI and LRC, and Jim Rogers have it right. The Fed and fiat money cause this and no amount of regulation or increase in fiat money can solve it.
I do think that its a good thing that Cato is moving to being more “pragmatic.” There are many of us who are fans of free markets and that is great, but events of the past few days should show us clearly how few people in politics, in media, and even among friends (my friends at least) agree.
It is disheartening how many people believe that regulation is the solution, and how many believe that we “must” bailout these companies to prevent a “meltdown.” Statism is heavily indoctrinated in the American people these days, especially in the 20- somethings that form my peer group. When I talk to people I know, I try to advocate the free market in moderate quantities and baby steps. Instead of jumping in feet first and advocating the gold standard and dissolution of the Federal Reserve, I try to start with the idea that maybe we should suffer an economic slowdown now, instead of propping up a system in need of readjustment and allowing these problems to recur in the future.
Cato has similarly moved towards pragmatism, since that is the only way ACTUAL change is likely to happen in America. It is nice to see the amount of support Ron Paul got for president, but it is likely a candidate will have to be much more moderate to be elected.
Any step in the free-market direction is a welcome and good one. Being condescending to smaller changes only reduces the likelihood that they will ever occur.
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Dan, no sane person is against steps in the right direction. But approving statist intervention in the hope that this will curry favor with the elites who will then listen to you on other issues tending toward liberty? It doesn’t work. In fact, pragmatism in general is not pragmatic at all: it doesn’t work.
If we could achieve liberty by selling out, there might be a case for it. In fact, selling out only achieves the opposite.
Could the governement have prevented this whole ordeal and saved tons of $$$ by bailing out Lehman in the first place…? Just food for thought…
Here sit the little folks who wonder how they are going to pay for groceries and prescriptions and gas and rent, while the big CEO’s walk off with millions of dollars.
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