The connection of Alan Greenspan to Ayn Rand, decades ago, is being used to blacken her name and her ideas. This from the Leftist “Mother Jones” publication is one of the milder expressions: “In a historic moment, former Fed chair Alan...
POLITICS
Planned Chaos: Trotsky’s Heresy (Part 6 of 11)
The dictatorial doctrine as accepted by the Russian Bolshevists, the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis tacitly implies that there cannot arise any disagreement with regard to the question who shall be the dictator. The mystical forces directing the course of...
Antipathy Towards Mark-to-Market Accounting is Misguided
The antipathy towards mark-to-market accounting is misguided. Mark-to-market is entirely appropriate for goods that trade in liquid markets. Open up your brokerage statement. If you see a notation that your account gained or lost X% of value, that is an application of...
Planned Chaos: Russia’s Aggressiveness (Part 5 of 11)
The German, Italian and Japanese nationalists justified their aggressive policies by their lack of Lebensraum. Their countries are comparatively overpopulated. They are poorly endowed by nature and depend on the import of foodstuffs and raw materials from abroad. They...
Capitalism and the Financial Crisis
There has always been contempt for economic liberty. Historically, our nation was an important, not complete, exception. It took the calamity of the Great Depression to bring about today’s level of restrictions on economic liberty. Now we have another...
Airstrikes Against Iran?
Why do I assume that air strikes against Iran will be ineffective, especially given the sad shape of the Iranian economy and its weak military capability? [1] My answer: because everything Bush has done for the past seven years indicates that the strikes will be...
Planned Chaos: Socialism and Communism (Part 4 of 11)
In the terminology of Marx and Engels the words communism and socialism are synonymous. They are alternately applied without any distinction between them. The same was true for the practice of all Marxian groups and sects until 1917. The political parties of Marxism...
“Maestro” Alan Greenspan vs. and The Free Market
Alan Greenspan claims that the free market failed to prevent the financial crisis, and that he is “shocked” that his professed “free-market ideology” turned out to contain a “flaw.” But why should we take him seriously? Greenspan,...
The Conservative Package Deal
One of the worst mistakes that one can make in about this election is to see the two-parties as standing for a fundamental alternative. The symptom of this is when an opponent of Party A (“don’t vote for McCain”) is accused of advocating a vote for...
Planned Chaos: The Dictatorial, Anti-Democratic and Socialist Character of Interventionism (Part 3 of 11)
Many advocates of interventionism are bewildered when one tells them that in recommending interventionism they themselves are fostering anti-democratic and dictatorial tendencies and the establishment of totalitarian socialism. They protest that they are sincere...
Why Conservatism Failed: The Anatomy of Compromise Revisited
It’s been argued that if Obama wins, the left will properly once again be blamed for the failures of collectivism. This is actually an example of a broader principle, one Miss Rand identified in her essay “The Anatomy of Compromise” [1]: “When...
George W. Bush’s Empowerment of Iran
The recent surge in Iraq has gotten great press lately. Clearly Iraq is calmer than it has been in years. The surge itself, some have claimed, demonstrates how the Bush administration has learned to fight such an enemy. It provides, they say, a blueprint for defeating...
Planned Chaos: The Failure of Interventionism (Part 2 of 11)
NOTHING is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal...
Planned Chaos: Introduction (Part 1 of 11)
The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism...
Gold and a Free Market: The Solutions to Our Financial Crisis
Many blame capitalism for the current financial crisis. Even Alan Greenspan, who at one time was an advocate of the free market, blames capitalism. He recently testified in front of a congressional committee that “A critical pillar to . . . free markets did...
The GOP Betrayal of Capitalism, Alan Greenspan’s Lies and The Scapegoat Phase of the Bear Market
These GOP traitors to capitalism have aped the Social Democrat playbook.
Let Them Fail
Everywhere today politicians are blaring that they must save America’s financial institutions, alleging catastrophic risk to the economy were any to fail. Paulson and the entire Bush administration, in a discernible panic, are now pouring $700 billion into the...
A Perfect Storm
Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic– and catastrophic. Once the...
Obama, Colin Powell and Popularity
Among all the people who are now scrambling to get on the Obama bandwagon, none is likely to impress more people than Colin Powell– especially people who know no more about the specifics of Colin Powell’s actions than the specifics of Barack Obama’s....
The Politics of Health Insurance
There are some noteworthy differences between the health care policies advocated by Senators McCain and Obama. Both candidates, however, share fundamental flaws that make either set of proposals largely undesirable and impossible to implement. Both Obama and McCain...
Wackonomics
For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I’m going to name this branch of economic “science” wackonomics and...
Taxing Times
Chief Justice John Marshall said it all in one sentence: “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” It is not the money that is taxed away that is destroyed. What is destroyed is the wealth that does not get produced in the first place, because high taxes...
Obama and the Law
One of the biggest and most long-lasting “change” to expect if Barack Obama becomes President of the United States is in the kinds of federal judges he appoints. These include Supreme Court justices, as well as other federal justices all across the...
A Nation of Sacrificers: McCain’s Love of What is Not America
One thing that is often implied, if not made explicit, about this election is that John McCain–like George Bush–really loves his country. Of course he makes mistakes in particular areas, the apologists claim, but these are the forgivable errors of a true...
Who Broke Health Care?
Many politicians now tell us that health care in America is “broken.” The best initial response to that is to ask yourself whether you think that your own health care is broken. And if it is, do you want to turn your decisions about your own health over to...
Vote “No” on Amendment 48
Colorado voters face a stark moral choice in this election: vote yea or nay on Amendment 48. That ballot measure would grant fertilized eggs the legal standing of persons–including “inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of...
Affordable Health Care
One of the campaign themes this election cycle is “affordable” health care. Shouldn’t we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the “affordable” housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us...
At Moment of Truth, Where Was Dagny Taggart?
The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal carries a story titled “At Moment of Truth, U.S. Forced Big Bankers to Blink.” In the quarter-century I’ve been reading the Journal, I’ve never read a news story that was more disturbing. The...
True Believers in Obama
Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend. It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don’t want to...
The Alleged Absence of Depressions Under Totalitarian Management
Many socialist authors emphasize that the recurrence of economic crises and business depressions is a phenomenon inherent in the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, they say, a socialist system is safe against this evil. As has already become obvious and...
In Defense of the “Barbarous Relic”: Why The Enemies of Capitalism Smear The Gold Standard
Given the state of affairs created by the U.S. Central Banking system this classic on Free Banking and the Gold Standard by Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) is all the more relevant today . Excerpted from his book “Human Action: A Treatise on Economics”...
Faith-Based Politics Costs Colorado Republicans
Colorado is known for its Western values of independence and economic liberty. So why do Republicans, the supposed champions of those values, keep getting trounced? Republicans can blame wealthy Democratic donors, but in large part Republicans have beaten themselves...
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