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Liberty and Power

  • Aug 31, 2010

    Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

    by Liberty and Power

    The recent decision by the Federal Reserve to keep its balance sheet stuffed to bursting with whatever the Wall Street banks decide to throw onto it came as no surprise and crushed any hope that the Fed would tone down its policy of quantitative easing (QE) — or credit easing (CE), as Mr. Bernanke prefers to call it. With the US economy stalled despite the trillions of"stimulus" funds larded out to the politically connected, the people who helm the Federal Reserve likely felt they had no other c
  • Aug 29, 2010

    This One's A Toughie...

    by Liberty and Power

    On the one hand, anything that comes out of the mouth of a man like Fidel Castro can be safely discounted, being that he is a politician. But on the other hand, if Bin-Laden was found to be on the CIA payroll (as Castro claims), would anyone really be all that surprised?
  • Aug 27, 2010

    Playing the Genocide Card

    by Liberty and Power

    Tara McCormack has written a thoughtful review of The Politics of Genocide, a recent book by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson that challenges the idea that external intervention can be a force for good. Sadly, far too many libertarians are all too happy to defend particular instances of U.S. and Western meddling in foreign countries. The book was published by Monthly Review Press in spring 2010.
  • Aug 25, 2010

    Sovereign Default Under Fiat Currencies

    by Liberty and Power

    In a recent comment on my article predicting Treasury default, Bruce Ramsey asked,"When has a government ever defaulted on debt in its own fiat currency? It's difficult to imagine this." I'm reminded of a quotation from a 1991 Gordon Tullock article:"There is a myth that floated around the banking community not many y
  • Aug 24, 2010

    Regime Uncertainty: Are Interest-Rate Movements Consistent with the Hypothesis?

    by Liberty and Power

    Regime uncertainty has gained increasing recognition as the current economic troubles have persisted with little or no improvement since the economy reached a cyclical trough early in 2009. As described in my 1997 paper, regime uncertainty pertains to
    the likelihood that investors’ private property rights in their capital and the income it yields will be attenuated further by government action. Such attenuations can a
  • Aug 21, 2010

    Ron Paul on the Mosque Fiasco

    by Liberty and Power

    Ron Paul is a rare example of a politician who gets better with age. In this statement he scores a direct hit on conservative anti-mosque hysteria:
    “The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

    “Instead, we hear li

  • Aug 19, 2010

    No Copyright Law may have fueled German Development

    by Liberty and Power

    Germany's intellectual and economic development apparently was aided by the lack of enforceable copyright law.

    According to a recent article in Der Spiegel Germany's rapid industrial advance, extraordinary production of books. and country-wide interest in reading was due to not having an enforceable copyright law, whereas in England books were kept scarce by monopoly copyright holders.

    ht

  • Aug 13, 2010

    “Born in the U.S.A.”: Damon Root’s Reminder of our Proud Exceptionalism

    by Liberty and Power

    From Damon Root’s “Hit and Run” blog over at Reason, a splendid reminder of how open-minded (and open border) the United States was in the 19th century. Imagine Republicans standing up and arguing that the Chinese and all other immigrants have a “natural right” to migrate wherever they choose. And the Republicans preserved the right of their children to be here as full-fledged citizens born on U.S. soil. (They lost the 1882 deba
  • Aug 10, 2010

    A Moment of Clarity

    by Liberty and Power

    Finally, amidst the carnage, someone looks up instead of down and comes to a perfectly rational conclusion regarding the supremely idiotic War on Drugs. It is said that Afghanistan is America’s longest running war – that is incorrect. Our War on Drugs has been decades long, and is all the sadder because it is us we are hitting over the head. I hope for the sake of the Mexican peo