Posted on 02/03/2010 1:19:39 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
My proposition today is that we’re in a fiscal calamity caused by the further, and perhaps, final triumph of politics. Admittedly, I issued this very same forecast awhile back -- 23 years ago to be exact. But I’m not reluctant to try again. Having read Grant’s continuously since 1988, I’ve learned there’s no shame whatsoever in being early -- even often!
The Triumph of Politics was published early, mainly in the unflattering sense that I’d not completed my homework. I was hip to statist fiscal and regulatory evils, but had only dimly grasped the Austrian masters’ wisdom on money; that is, in printing money backed by nothing, central banks inherently threaten prosperity. So today I’ll add the proposition that fiscal decay is the inevitable step-child of the very monetary rot that the Austrians -- Mises, Hayek, Rothbard -- so deplored.
My tardiness on money perhaps owes to the Reagan Revolution’s disinterest. Secretary Don Regan averred that sound money could be readily attested by the height of the Dow while his deputy, a monetarist, gauged it by the width of M2.
Even Alan Greenspan, that is, Greenspan version 1.0, urged not to worry. Gold, he assured Ronald Reagan, was meant to anchor -- not the Fed’s actual balance sheet, but something more ethereal, like perhaps its state of mind.
(Excerpt) Read more at minyanville.com ...
The free market (Capitalism) did not cause this crisis, the government (Socialism/Communism) did.
The free market did not create Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government did.
The free market did not pass laws that force banks to lend to those who do not qualify for a loan, the government did.
The free market did not take us off the gold standard, the government did.
The free market did not dump trillions of dollars of cheap money into the system, the government did.
The free market did not create multiple multi-trillion-dollar unfunded entitlement programs, the government did.
The free market did not write a 60,000+ page tax code that punishes work, rewards sloth and buys the votes of special interest groups, the government did.
The free market did not destroy our public school system and graduate (or fail to graduate) generations of civically and financially illiterate citizens, the government did.
The free market did not drive our jobs overseas and kill our entrepreneurial spirit with over-taxation, over-regulation and frivolous lawsuits, the government did.
The free market did not ban drilling for oil, vilify coal and block the building of nuclear power plants in the United States, thereby transferring hundred of billions of dollars of American wealth and many thousands of energy-industry jobs to foreign countries, the government did.
This crisis is the result of a giant social engineering experiment and vote-buying scheme gone tragically wrong.
The free market does not try to engineer society or buy votes, the government does.
The government caused this crisis, the free market did not.
The government cannot fix the crisis, the free market can.
The big slide started upon Kennedy’s death.
So using Newspeak this is a Man Caused Economic Disaster.
LOL....sure looks that way.
A classical education about Greeks and of Latin is a study of tyranny.
Old as dirt.
One group living off the work and labor of another. Sometimes called Tribune or Senator, King, Commissar, Czar.
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