Ever since the bailout of Continental Illinois Bank in 1984, bank bailouts have been an unpopular device invoked to protect the financial system from risks posed by troubled banks deemed “too big to fail.” Many taxpayers believe that bank bailouts are an abuse of taxpayer funds, especially when bank managers are allowed to keep...
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Of capitalism’s condemned features, perhaps leftists complain most of all about the profits, seemingly growing without relent, accumulated in the hands of an established corporate elite. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer. Putting aside the second part of the last sentence, the concept of the rich getting richer is especially striking....
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Mario Vargas Llosa admired the Cuban Revolution well into his writing career, but for more than two decades the 2010 Nobel laureate author has been the most famous exponent of classical liberalism in the Spanish-speaking world. Why did he forsake the radical collectivism of Che and Marx and embrace individual liberty instead? In his...
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In the continuing revolving door between industry and its government regulators, the Wall Street Journal yesterday reported on the $13 million Congressional staffers earned from their former private employers, companies they run or other side jobs in 2009. Further, ethics rules “permit the vast majority of [Congressional] aides to have financial ties to companies...
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In his latest column for the New York Times, “Our Lefty Military,” the iconic “liberal” commentator Nicholas D. Kristof has now come clean on the reality of his own collectivist views that military means and organization embody the “liberal ethos” (“progressivism”), an admission that liberals rarely face up to. While numerous liberal and conservative...
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Here is Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs speaking on “Ethanol Subsidies Have Many Bad Consequences,” from the Mises Circle seminar, “Agricultural Subsidies: Down on the D.C. Farm,” held May 14th in Indianapolis. Download audio file (27:51 minutes) Please also see the following books: Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture, by...
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In their new study, “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled,” economists Timothy Conley (University of Western Ontario) and Bill Dupor (Ohio State University) present their empirical findings of the economic impact on employment of the 2009 Obama stimulus package of $787 billion, entitled the American Recovery...
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“Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two” is the superb and very timely sequel to the phenomenally successful and insightful, rap video pitting the views of macroeconomist John Maynard Keynes against those of Austrian School economist Friedrich A. Hayek, “Fear the Boom and Bust.” The original has attracted to date more than...
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The Federal Reserve emerged from the financial crisis of 2007–2009 with new powers to allocate credit to specific firms, including non-bank institutions. This development in effect makes the central bank the U.S. economy’s central planner. But why did Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke lobby for the new lending powers, rather than rely on the Fed’s...
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The Obama administration has detained the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower under torturous conditions—for almost a year, he has been subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless 6×12 cell for 23 hours a day, under constant surveillance, prevented from exercising, lacking a pillow or sheets. For the remaining hour every day, he is allowed to walk...
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