While the case for minimal government is very strong, that doesn’t mean that there are easy answers for every question. For instance, we know that markets will – over time – penalize people who discriminate. A merchant or employer who deliberately shuns women, blacks, or some other group of people is being economically irrational and […]

The governments of Spain, Italy, Belgium and (of course) France recently imposed 15-day bans on “short selling,” which means they are prohibiting people from making investments that would be profitable if certain stocks fall in value. According to the politicians, the bans are being imposed to protect financial markets from “speculators” who cause “panics” by […]

Allen Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, writes today in the Wall Street Journal about the Fed’s worrisome announcement that it will continue the easy-money policy of artificially low interest rates. Professor Meltzer’s key point (at least to me) is that the economy is weak because of too much government intervention and too much […]

I think it may be time to update the dictionary definition of irony. George Soros, the billionaire who finances statist organizations and causes in order to promote more government, has decided that he doesn’t want to deal with some of the new regulatory burdens resulting from the Dodd-Frank bailout legislation. Consider this blurb from the […]

Here’s a recent interview with Neil Cavuto about bailouts for Fannie Mae, one of the government-created entities used by Barney Frank, et al, to subsidize housing (and line the pockets of well-connected political insiders). My main concern is not the bailouts, which surely are odious, but whether we can at least limit future damage by […]

If you want to understand how government intervention screws up markets and damages an economy, there are two new publications worth reading. First, pick up a copy of Reckless Endangerment, a new book by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, and Joshua Rosner, an expert on housing finance. I’ll confess I haven’t read the […]

e left is desperately trying to maneuver Republicans into going along with a tax increase. And they are smart to make this their top goal. After all, it will be very difficult – if not impossible – to increase the burden of government spending without more revenue coming to Washington. But how to make this […]

The libertarian position is that government should be totally neutral whenever there is a conflict between labor and management. Unfortunately, politicians usually tilt the playing field in favor of unions, largely in response to big campaign contributions. This issue has been in the news because of the Obama Administration’s thuggish move to block Boeing from […]