World-News

Strike the Root
by Les Lafave

11/14/08

If not for the remnants of the dollar’s reserve currency status, the credit collapse in the U.S. would have much more of that emerging market bubble flavor (possibly without the imitation butter) — among the primary features, a crashing currency and soaring interest rates. The circulation of the credit collapse has to seem pretty sickening overseas, but the apparent high dollar, low interest boon for the U.S. is in fact a slow motion tragedy. Our leaders are grabbing the wrong signals with desperate enthusiasm, trying to recover the past and oblivious to the future...

http://www.strike-the-root.com/82/lafave/lafave2.html



Bailouts destroy prudence

Tibor's Space
by Tibor R. Machan

11/16/08

Instead of making it possible for you to deal with your reduced resources, instead of letting you make the budgetary adjustments you can make within the context of your own life circumstances, the politicians are insisting that if you refuse to spend the big bucks on those Detroit gas guzzlers, for example, they will tax you and hand over what they have extorted from you to the car makers, never mind your prudent choices. In time the savings you thought you could garner from your good sense and discipline will have to be shelled out in extra taxes so as to bail out those who aren’t getting your business any more. Instead of insisting that those who make the big cars and whatever else that’s no longer in demand in the market place make their own adjustments, tighten their own belts, etc., the politicians insist that they continue to be paid as if nothing had happened, no one changed his or her purchasing behavior, as if the economy continued to be in fine shape...

http://tibikem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B2FD693F4B9A5746!538.entry



Untangling the corporatist knot

Cato Unbound
by Steven Horwitz

Long raises one of my own favorite examples of the conflation problem: ‘privatization.’ I would like to see us ditch the term ‘privatization’ for two reasons. First, many of the things government does and then ‘contracts out’ are things that no one should be doing in the first place, either publicly or privately. The use of private contractors in Iraq is the most obvious example here. … Second, in the cases where state-provided goods and services could be better supplied in the market, the real goal is not ‘privatization’ but ‘de-monopolization.’ What advocates of free markets should be arguing is that the monopoly privilege bestowed by government is the source of trouble, regardless of whether the organization receiving that privilege is public or private...

http://tinyurl.com/6358hc



Five-trillion-dollar frenzy

Disloyal Opposition
by JD Tuccille

11/15/08

Remember when we were just bitching about a $700 billion bailout to favored banks in the financial industry? Well, break out your spare zeros. Forbes reports that the total is much, much higher — and still growing. … Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if, having gotten away with mind-numbing outrages for decades, most of our political class is so jaded that they’re doing all of this on a dare. ‘Hey guys! Let’s throw a few hundred billion more at my brother-in-law and see if that starts a revolution. Nancy! I bet you my private island that they sit still for it’...

http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2008/11/five-trillion-dollar-frenzy.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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