Jon Brodeux of Cafe Hayek has a nice critique to Amar Bhide’s, Let’s Break Up the Fed that appeared in the WSJ on July 29th. on Cafe Hayek.
Cheers
In response to a few postings by my brother, I am going to aggregate the four liberty loving candidates looking to come (back) to Washington after the 2010 elections.
Senate:
Dr. Rand Paul – Kentucky, still undecided, big announcement soon. May challenge Trey Grayson who will likely have establishment support in the GOP primary.
Website – Twitter
Peter Schiff – Connecticut, famous investor who predicted the economic meltdown from an Austrian lens in the face of ridiculing talking heads.
Website – Twitter
House:
Dr. Ron Paul – Texas’s 14th District, you all know him
Adam Kokesh – New Mexico’s 3rd District, no real GOP primary opponent yet. Faces freshman incumbent Ben Ray Lujan.
Website – Twitter
RJ Harris – Oklahoma’s 4th District, taking on heavyweight Tom Cole in GOP primary.
Website – Twitter
Jake Towne – Pennsylvania’s 15th District, going it as an independent, “Simply put, I am for liberty. I hate war. I love life. And I have no fear.”
Website – Twitter
Dr. Mike Vasovski – South Carolina’s 3rd District, In a wide open GOP primary battle. Seat currently held by GOP’s Gresham Barrett.
Website
Cheers Michael, that piece was phenomenal.
Bashing Goldman Sachs Is Simply a Game for Fools: Michael Lewis
Fellow ABCT (Austrian Business Cycle Theory) follower, is attempting to take on incumbant Chris Dodd (D) in Connecticut.
Brothers Austrian, will officially endorse him right now! As if that means anything, but hey what the heck. We need to get Ron Paul some help!
To show your support visit http://www.schiffforsenate.com/
I look forward to helping Schiff in his campaign anyway I can.
Cheers
Don Boudreaux of the Cafe Heyak blog sent the below letterto the Washingon Post:
Dear Editor:
Five-hundred and thirty-six officials – one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and the others a few blocks down that boulevard of brazen busybodies – are frenetically trying to lord it over ever-more vast aspects of our lives. Sen. Orrin Hatch wants Washington to correct what he divines to be imperfections in the method of choosing which teams compete in post-season college football games. Pres. Obama wants to mute changes in oil prices. And a majority of these savior-wannabes seek to remake health-care delivery, run automobile companies, protect us from financial risks, and, generally, to mandate, prohibit, and regulate us all into velvet-lined shackles.
I have a name for this repulsive social system: Capitolism.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
I think that Don eloquently points out the misgivings of capitolism, I wonder if they printed it?
For those that do not follow David Rosenberg of Glusken Sheff (formerly the chief economist of Merrill…I wonder if Merrill Lynch management/board ever read his “Morning Market Memo”?…I am going speculate the answer is no!) had an observation today that I want to share in regards to Canada’s tax the rich policy in the 1990’s:
House Democrats, led by Charlie Rangel, are setting a course to apply a 1% surtax on married couples making $350,000 or more; raising to 2% for those earning in excess of $500,000; and 3% for anybody with audacity to be pulling in more than a cool million (someone has t o pay for Obama’s $550 billion health plan.) We saw this ’soak-the-rich’ strategy happen in Ontario in the early 1990’s and it let to (i) the brain drain (ii) capital flight; (iii) eroding productivity growth and lower standards of living and (iv) a currency depreciation.
But then again who carries about productivity? The scary part is that the soak the rich legislation will surely pass through the House in whatever form it comes. Politicians, they are Robin Hood’s of the USA, playing the ‘good guy’ in their own a fairy tale.
With talk of a second stimulus package already in the works, many are wondering who is going to pay for all of this? Well, as William Graham Sumner famously said, it will be the “Forgotten Man.” Well, certainly we will all have to pay for stimbailtarpitis, in some way or another, but it is the Forgotten Man who will pay the most. This will likely come in the form of inflation.
As any good Austrian knows, inflation will hit the Forgotten Man (especially the poor Forgotten Man), first and hardest. Many will counter and say, what about all of those people who got jobs from the stimulus package? Well, yes, but they are not the forgotten ones. If one were to take a cynical view they are merely the ones closest to those wielding influence over policymakers. Nevertheless, they will benefit from the stimulus, but only at the cost of the rest of society. As Henry Hazlitt eloquently explains, those who receive additional money (from the stimulus) will be willing to pay more for goods and services. Anyone who understands basic supply and demand will agree with this. Stimulus receivers now have more of something (dollars) and therefore each will inherently mean less to them. This will lead to price inflation.
The Forgotten Man, however, is now stuck in an even worse situation. Now, not only does he feel worthless for not getting stimulated, he also has a lower standard of living than before. Why? He did not receive an immediate impact from the stimulus, but higher prices stared him in the face shortly after the dole was passed out to his neighbor. His standard of living will go down.
I will leave with a parting shot from Mr. Sumner. Keep in mind how relevant this is and remember, he is writing in 1883, not 1983.
In all jobbery the case is the same. There is a victim somewhere who is paying for it all. The doors of waste and extravagance stand open, and there seems to be a general agreement to squander and spend. It all belongs to somebody. There is somebody who had to contribute it, and who will have to find more. Nothing is ever said about him. Attention is all absorbed by the clamorous interests, the importunate petitioners, the plausible schemers, the pitiless bores. Now, who is the victim? He is the Forgotten Man. If we go to find him, we shall find him hard at work tilling the soil to get out of it the fund for all the jobbery, the object of all the plunder, the cost of all the economic quackery, and the pay of all the politicians and statesmen who have sacrificed his interests to his enemies. We shall find him an honest, sober, industrious citizen, unknown outside his little circle, paying his debts and his taxes, supporting the church and the school, reading his party newspaper, and cheering for his pet politician.
From the grave. You cannot separate savings and investment. Investment is savings and savings is investment!
In 1819 the Second Bank of the United States was a lightning rod issue in many states. The bank was in shambles, as was the American economy. Take a look at the following argument from McCulloch v. Maryland, we get the following oral argument from Walter Jones. The Constitution did
not imply the power of establishing a great banking corporation, branching out into every district of the country, and inundating it with a flood of paper money. To derive such tremendous authority from implication would be to change the subordinate into fundamental powers; to make the implied powers greater than those which are expressly granted; and to change the whole scheme and theory of government.
Of course this logic was rejected, sound familiar though? Some may not understand the tremendous power grab Supreme Court Justice John Marshall took on behalf of the federal government when repudiating the above sentiment. His sweeping opinion codified the implied powers clause as a broad offering of power to the federal government. A tragic, if inevitable, day in American history.
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