Author Archive
Vikings and Pirates and Taxes, Oh My!
Today’s episode of “Hagar the Horrible” could be an epigraph for the new Fall 2009 issue of Cato Journal.
This issue includes Greek economists Michael Mitsopoulos and Theodore Pelagidis on “Vikings in Greece: Kleptocratic Interest Groups in a Closed, Rent-Seeking Economy” as well as Peter Leeson, author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, writing (with David Skarbek) on the effects of foreign aid. As for taxes, well, editor Jim Dorn has assembled a number of useful papers:
- Andrew T. Young on taxing, spending, and “fiscal illusion”
- Michael J. New on the “starve the beast” hypothesis
- Alan Reynolds on Paul Krugman’s misunderstanding of the monetary and fiscal lessons of the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade
And on the general rapaciousness of the state, don’t miss Jason Kuznicki’s careful review of government racial discrimination from the end of Reconstruction until the civil rights movement.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Tax and Budget Policy
“Freedom in Crisis” on YouTube
My “Freedom in Crisis” speech, which has gotten some compliments as I’ve delivered it in various venues, is now available on the web, complete with accompanying Powerpoint illustrations.
Find it also on the Cato site here. And a partial transcript (pdf) was printed in Cato’s Letter. (Get a free subscription to Cato’s Letter here.) And to hear speeches like this live, watch for details on the next Cato University, July 25-30, 2010, in San Diego.
A Plug for Financial Fiasco
The distinguished Harvard economist Richard N. Cooper, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, praises Johan Norberg’s Financial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation With Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis in Foreign Affairs:
The economic crisis of 2008-9 will no doubt spawn dozens of books. Here are two good early ones….
Norberg, a knowledgeable Swede, provides a much more detailed account of the broader events of 2007-9, from the useful perspective of a non-American. He finds plenty of blame with all the major players in the U.S. financial system: politicians, who thoughtlessly pushed homeownership on thousands who could not afford it; mortgage loan originators, who relaxed credit standards; securitizers, who packaged poor-quality mortgage loans as though these were conventional loans; the Securities and Exchange Commission, which endowed the leading rating agencies with oligopoly powers; the rating agencies, which knowingly overrated securitized mortgages and their derivatives; and investors, who let the ratings substitute for due diligence. Senior management in large parts of the financial community lacked an attribute essential to any well-functioning financial market: integrity. But solutions, Norberg warns, do not lie in greater regulation or public ownership. Politicians and bureaucrats are not immune from the “short-termism” that plagues private firms.
The other book he praises, by the way, is Paul Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics. And oddly, his list of Norberg’s villains doesn’t include one implied in the title: the Federal Reserve Bank, which issued the “easy money” that allowed the boom to happen. Purchase Financial Fiasco here or on Kindle.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy
The Slippery Slope Goes Vertical
In the Obama era, the slippery slope has gone vertical. Instead of “eventually,” the feared extensions of government power come immediately.
When President Obama decided to convert George W. Bush’s bailout of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler L.L.C. into effective government ownership, critics warned that this could lead to political intrusion into the management of automobile companies, with decisions being made for political instead of economic reasons. The companies would get less efficient. The government might try to preserve jobs or engage in political grandstanding rather than build sound companies that serve consumers – eventually.
But there was no “eventually” about it. Before he had even secured government control, Obama fired the chief executive officer of General Motors. He decided what the ownership structure of the companies should be. He insisted that the companies build “clean cars” rather than cars that consumers want to buy. And as soon as a deal was concluded, members of Congress started trying to block the closing of inefficient dealerships and to require the companies to buy their palladium in Montana, use unionized trucking companies, remove mercury from scrapped cars, and so on. Politics reared its ugly head in the first moments of government control.
Now we have the federal government’s unprecedented intrusions into executive-pay decisions at seven bailed-out banks and automobile companies….
Read more at today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
Just Say “No” to Competition
The Democrats who still control the Virginia State Senate (which wasn’t on the ballot this week) say they want to work with the new Republican governor.
“I won’t be like the House Republicans were, where anything they propose is bad,” said Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who like many Democrats says the GOP-led House obstructed the agenda of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D). “If there are areas where we can work things out, I’m ready, willing and able, and so is my caucus.”
But not so fast:
But asked about certain key pieces of McDonnell’s agenda, Saslaw demurred. Selling state-run liquor stores to raise money for transportation, for instance, would sacrifice the annual revenue the stores provide to schools and other purposes, Saslaw said. The Senate’s education committee remains opposed to changing state laws to allow more charter schools, another McDonnell proposal, he said.
No to bipartisan cooperation, no to competition, yes to hoary monopolies. Is that really the rock on which the Democrats want to make their stand as the country’s “implicit libertarian synthesis” yields a “libertarian moment”?
Hail, Bloomberg, Magister Populi
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has been elected to a third term, despite the two-term limits that New Yorkers voted for twice. His biggest challenge was persuading the City Council to overrule the voters, but he managed that trick thanks to his absolute mastery of money and politics in the Big Apple. And on election day, even his $100 million campaign barely overcame popular anger over the repeal of term limits.
Personally, I wish the Council had just given Bloomberg another term. Don’t get rid of term limits. Just do like the Romans used to do in an emergency. Name Bloomberg “dictator,” an extraconstitutional position with extraordinary authority but limited duration. Then you keep the rules, you just make an exception. And I’m sure Bloomberg would be willing to be addressed as Dictator for the duration of the emergency powers.
Instead, Bloomberg used his money and connections to get the Council to allow all the city officeholders to serve three terms, instead of the two that the people had twice voted for.
He said it was because of the financial crisis — just as Rudolph Giuliani had suggested that the city shouldn’t elect a new mayor in the aftermath of 9/11. Of course, as Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute has shown, New York’s revenues rose 41 percent between 2000 and 2007, while spending increased even faster, so it’s not clear why he’s the man you need in a financial crisis.
But the plutocrat mayor used his personal wealth – and the city’s tax dollars – to pressure people to support his bid to stay in office. Last year the New York Times reported:
The mayor and his top aides have asked leaders of organizations that receive his largess to express their support for his third-term bid by testifying during public hearings and by personally appealing to undecided members of the City Council. …
The requests have put the groups in an unusual and uncomfortable position, several employees of the groups said. City Hall has not made any explicit threats, they said, but city officials have extraordinary leverage over the groups’ finances. Many have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving and millions of dollars from city contracts overseen by his staff.
Sounds like a lot of overlap between his personal philanthropy and the city’s own spending, and the Times doesn’t seem to find anything odd about that aspect of the story. And then the New York Post found that the mayor’s tax-funded “slush fund” was being enlisted in the campaign, too:
Mayor Bloomberg showered cash on key City Council members with the power to kill a term-limits extension bill in the last year.
Members of the council’s Government Operations Committee have received millions from Hizzoner’s slush fund, a once-secret pot of taxpayer money the mayor doles out to favored lawmakers for their pet causes….
Five members of the committee secured $3.1 million from the $5.3 million stash in Bloomberg’s 2008 budget. Only three other council members received funds from the mayor in the last year.
And the New York Daily News noted that everyone working for Bloomberg at the City Council hearings is on Mayor Mike’s payroll one way or another:
There was the mayor’s legal counsel and the city’s corporation counsel, both paid with tax dollars, testifying that Bloomberg can and should get another term.
There were aides from the mayor’s Community Assistance Unit, who rounded up pro-Bloomberg speakers from the community and religious and civic groups they work with all day long – many of which thrive on city grants.
There were the dozens of “Ready, Willing and Able” guys from the Doe Fund, which gets funding from the city – and used its vans to bring people to the hearing.
That’s why — to return to my Roman theme – union boss Dennis Rivera came to praise Bloomberg, not to bury him, at a recent campaign event. Hail Bloomberg, Magister Populi, Magister Urbi.
Libertarian Movement — Just Too Big and Too Busy?
Last night — a Monday night, the eve of a hotly contested gubernatorial election in Virginia — there were at least three interesting events for libertarians in the Washington area:
- Reason.tv held an event to launch “Radicals for Capitalism,” a new series of videos celebrating Ayn Rand’s continuing influence.
- The Future of Freedom Foundation and the George Mason University Economics Society sponsored a lecture by Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, at GMU.
- And here at the Cato Institute, an overflow crowd gathered to watch a new film, The Soviet Story, which the Economist called “the most powerful antidote yet to the sanitisation of the past.”
It’s got to be a sign of growth and health if the libertarian movement is offering three excellent programs on one Monday night in one area. But what’s an overscheduled libertarian to do?
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Political Philosophy
The Eternal Battle to Reform the D.C. Schools
“When Kathy Patterson learned about Thursday’s D.C. Council hearing, during which Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee pelted each other with accusations of law-breaking and secret meetings, she had one immediate reaction,” reports the Washington Post.
“Here we go again,” said Patterson, a former council member and chairwoman of its education committee. It looked as if another attempt at public school reform was disintegrating in a hail of recriminations and rhetoric.
Casey Lartigue wrote about the decades-long efforts to improve the D.C. schools for Cato back in 2002.
If We Don’t Admit That Taxes Are an Issue, Can We Make the Issue Go Away?
The Washington Post devotes most of a page to summarizing the views of Virginia gubernatorial candidates Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds on the major issues of the election. (The article seems to have no real headline online, and isn’t linked from anywhere obvious, but in the actual paper, it dominates page C4 under the headline “Where do they stand on the issues? A Rundown of Competing 4-Year Agendas for Virginia.”)
And what are the issues the Post thinks are important? Education, transportation, energy and environment, abortion, gun control, health care, and labor. All fine issues to debate.
But what about taxes? Or government spending? Or the size and scope of government? McDonnell’s television ads focus heavily on Deeds’s apparent willingness to raise taxes, and he’s been rising in the polls as those ads have run. Could it be that the voters think taxes are an important issue?
Turn to a front-page story on New York’s special congressional election, and you’ll find Todd Harris, who has been a media adviser to John McCain, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and now Marco Rubio, making this point: “A lot of the establishment Republicans underestimated the grass-roots anger across the country about spending and the expansion of the federal government.”
The Post wishes that taxes weren’t an issue in Virginia. In fact, the Post wishes that voters wanted their taxes raised. But wishing won’t make it so.
Is the Economy Booming Again?
The lead headline in Friday’s Wall Street Journal proclaims
Economy Snaps Long Slump
But buried on page C10 is a more skeptical view:
If the Obama administration were managing a company, it might have hoped the latest gross-domestic-product numbers would be greeted with cries of “great quarter, guys!”
At least the stock-market obliged, rising on the back of better-than-expected GDP data Thursday morning. But then bulls have become used to looking to Washington for inspiration. Zero rates and stimulus programs boost economic data as well as nudge money toward riskier assets.
Fully 2.2 percentage points of the third quarter’s 3.5% growth figure related to vehicle purchases and residential construction, both juiced by government support. Federal spending added 0.6%.
If these GDP data were company earnings, they would be what analysts euphemistically call “low quality.” Investors buying into the market off the back of them are ignoring weekly unemployment-claims data that came in above 500,000 again on the same day.
The danger is that all these short-term fixes leave the economy dangerously addicted to taxpayer-funded steroids. The circularity in the housing market, whereby Washington provides tax breaks to first-time buyers, guarantees most of the mortgages written, and then buys most of those, beggars belief, and suggests a worrying case of amnesia following the bursting of the housing bubble. (emphasis added)
Johan Norberg warned about the dangers of repeating the very mistakes that created the bubble and bust in the first place in Financial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation with Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis (available in hardcover, e-book, or Kindle).
Filed under: Cato Publications; Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy
Battle for Libertarian Voters in Virginia
Almost two months ago I quoted a Washington Post op-ed that said that this fall’s gubernatorial race in Virginia would depend on
the all-important independent voters — the disproportionately moderate, young, prosperous, suburban and libertarian-leaning people who typically decide Virginia contests.
It looks like Frank B. Atkinson, a high-powered Richmond lawyer who served in the Ronald Reagan and George Allen administrations and has written two books on Virginia politics, knew what he was talking about. At least on my television here in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., the race has been dominated by two kinds of ads: Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds tells us over and over again that his Republican opponent Bob McDonnell is a reactionary social conservative. McDonnell counters with endless plays of Deeds’s stumbling admission that he’d like to raise taxes.
Judging by the polls, it looks like people are more worried about taxes and the overreach of the Obama administration than about McDonnell’s career-long ambition to roll back social change.
Of course, the bad news is that both candidates are right: McDonnell is a reactionary social conservative, and Deeds will raise taxes. The even worse news: Deeds voted for the anti-marriage constitutional amendment in the Virginia legislature, though he later flipped his position; and as a legislator and attorney general, McDonnell backed transportation tax increases. So if you’re a pro-tax, anti-gay Virginia voter, you have a wealth of choices on Tuesday. Freedom-loving, “leave us alone” voters, a tougher day.
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Political Philosophy
Our Libertarian Future
Brink Lindsey described a “libertarian consensus that mixes the social freedom of the left with the economic freedom of the right” in his book The Age of Abundance. Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie said that right now is a “libertarian moment.” I saw a “civil liberties surge” in public opinion polls on marijuana laws and gay marriage. And now Jacob Weisberg foresees the imminent end to various kinds of prohibition in these United States:
Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.
For good measure, he adds that we’re not going to prohibit either abortion or gun ownership. “Conservatives would be wise to give up on the one, liberals on the other. In each of these cases, popular demand for an individual right is simply too powerful to overcome.”
Sounds like libertarian heaven:
The chief reason these prohibitions are falling away is the evolving definition of the pursuit of happiness….
Republicans face a risk in resisting these new realities. Freedom is part of their brand; if the GOP remains the party of prohibition, it will increasingly alienate libertarian-leaners and the young. But the party as presently constituted has very little capacity to accept social change. Democrats face a danger in embracing cultural transformations too eagerly. Nearly four decades after George McGovern became known as the candidate of amnesty, abortion, and acid, cultural issues are still treacherous territory for them. Why get in front of change when you can follow from a safe distance and end up with the same result?
Of course, if the Democrats raise taxes and the deficit high enough, and do what they’re threatening to do to health care, marijuana may be the only medicine you don’t have to get on a waiting list for, but you won’t be able to afford it. And the marriage penalty may make everyone decide they can’t afford to get married. And flights to Cuba may be too expensive on our dwindling after-tax incomes.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Government and Politics; Political Philosophy
Wisdom of the Anti-Federalists
Everybody reads the Federalist Papers. (I hope!) Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, they are generally regarded as the most profound collection of political theory ever written in America. And since they deeply inform our understanding of our fundamental law, they are essential to understanding the American version of limited, constitutional government. But the ratification of the Constitution was a close thing in 1787–89, and the Anti-Federalists (who said that actually they were the federalists, while their opponents were nationalists) also had some insightful things to say about liberty and limited government.
Now the invaluable Liberty Fund has made available a collection of anti-federalist writings, The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle. The publisher says:
The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle makes available for the first time a one-volume collection of Anti-Federalist writings that are commensurate in scope, significance, political brilliance, and depth with those in The Federalist. Included in this volume as an appendix is a computational and contextual analysis that addresses the question of the authorship of two of the most well-known pseudonymous Anti-Federalist writings, namely, Essays of a Federal Farmer and Essays of Brutus. Also included are the records of Smith’s important speeches at the New York Ratifying Convention, some shorter writings of Smith’s from the ratification debate, and a set of private letters Smith wrote on constitutional subjects at the time of the ratification struggle.
One reason it’s important to study the ideas of the Anti-Federalists was offered by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism:
Most of the Amendments comprising the Bill of Rights restricted the national government’s direct authority over its citizens. Only one section dealt with the relationship between the state and central governments; the 10th Amendment “reserved” to the states or the people all powers not “delegated to the United States by the Constitution.” Nothing better illustrates that, whereas the Anti-Federalists had lost on the ratification issue, they had won on the question of how the Constitution would operate. The Constitution had not established a consolidated national system of government as most Federalists had at first intended, but a truly federal system, which is what the Anti-Federalists had wanted. In simpler terms, the Federalists got their Constitution, but the Anti-Federalists determined how it would be interpreted.
In a world where it’s easy to find a “Dirty Dozen” of Supreme Court decisions that have expanded government and eroded freedom, that may be hard to believe. But it’s important to read both halves of early American debate over the Constitution in order to understand the foundations of our system.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Law and Civil Liberties; Political Philosophy
This Week in History: Reagan Backs Goldwater
Forty-five years ago yesterday, the actor Ronald Reagan gave a nationally televised speech on behalf of the Republican presidential nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater. It came to be known to Reagan fans as “The Speech” and launched his own, more successful political career.
And a very libertarian speech it was:
This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”
The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.
Video versions of the speech here. Would that the current assault on economic freedom would turn up another presidential candidate with Reagan’s values and talents.
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; Political Philosophy
Your Tax Dollars at Work
The National Park Service announced Friday that it has removed its superintendent at Gettysburg National Military Park and reassigned him to work in a cultural resources office as an assistant to the associate director. His job duties have not yet been determined.
John A. Latschar said Thursday that his demotion was in response to the public disclosure of Internet activity in which he viewed more than 3,400 “sexually-explicit” images over a two-year period on his government computer — a violation of department policy. The misconduct, which Latschar acknowledged in a sworn statement, was found during a year-long investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general and was documented in an internal Aug. 7 report obtained by The Washington Post.
The reassignment came after a Post report Monday about the results of the investigator’s forensic analysis of Latschar’s computer hard drive, which showed “significant inappropriate user activity” and numbered the “most sexually-explicit” images at 3,456….
David Barna, spokesman for the National Park Service, said Latschar’s annual salary of $145,000 and his pension will not be affected. The cultural resources office is based in Washington, but Latschar will commute from his home in Gettysburg to a Park Service office about 30 miles away in Frederick, Barna said.
Hey, can I get that deal? If I download 3,500 pornographic images on my office computer, can I get reassigned to a telecommuting job with no defined duties at my current salary and pension? As superintendent of a very visible national park, Latschar had a job with a lot of pressure, lots of criticism, management challenges, etc. Now he’s going to be some sort of undefined “assistant to an associate director in a cultural resources office,” but he won’t have to actually go to the cultural resources office, and he’ll still get the same pay and benefits he was getting for doing a real, stressful job. Does anyone in the federal government ever get fired?
The Church of Global Warming
Novelist Michael Crichton said that environmentalism had all the trappings of a religion: “Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday.” I never took such claims entirely seriously. But then I heard this statement from a Montana writer, Jim Robbins, interviewed by the “sustainability reporters” of government-funded Marketplace Radio:
There’s a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think there’s something along that line happening here. I mean, there are still some people who refuse to believe it. But I think there’s been an erosion of that disbelief and it’s changed pretty dramatically.
Darned if he isn’t using terms like “atheists” and “disbelief” in a discussion of global warming. Almost as if he were, you know, a theologian.
Reporter Sarah Gardner, by the way, says that “in my own lifetime, average temperatures in this country have gone up more than 2 degrees.” That doesn’t sound like that much — maybe like moving from Washington to Richmond? But anyway, unless Sarah is about 200 years old, she seems to be exaggerating.
For a different view of global warming — not that of an atheist or even a skeptic, just a non-fundamentalist or non-apocalyptic — see this short paper or this book by climatologist Pat Michaels.
Gallup’s Conservatives and Libertarians
In today’s Washington Post, William Kristol exults:
The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public’s conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.
Gallup often asks people how they describe themselves. But sometimes they classify people according to the values they express. And when they do that, they find a healthy percentage of libertarians, as well as an unfortunate number of big-government “populists.”
For more than a dozen years now, the Gallup Poll has been using two questions to categorize respondents by ideology:
- Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?
- Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?
Combining the responses to those two questions, Gallup found the ideological breakdown of the public shown below. With these two broad questions, Gallup consistently finds about 20 percent of respondents to be libertarian.
The word “libertarian” isn’t well known, so pollsters don’t find many people claiming to be libertarian. And usually they don’t ask. But a large portion of Americans hold generally libertarian views — views that might be described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or as Gov. William Weld told the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” They don’t fit the red-blue paradigm, and they have their doubts about both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. They’re potentially a swing vote in elections. Background on the libertarian vote here.
And note here: If you tell people that “libertarian” means “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” 44 percent will accept the label.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Government and Politics; Political Philosophy
Slipping Support for Government Health Insurance
Here’s a striking graphic of the results of continuing New York Times/CBS News polling on the question, “Do you think the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans, or isn’t this the responsibility of the federal government?”
Support for a government guarantee of health insurance starts dropping sharply as the country starts debating the topic. It’s not clear from this graphic, provided by Gallup, but support is at 64 percent in June, 55 in July, and 51 in late September, well after the Long Hot August and just after President Obama’s health care blitz that included his primetime speech to Congress and highly publicized rallies in Minnesota and Maryland. Note also that the question doesn’t mention any downsides of the government guarantee; respondents apparently had figured those out for themselves.
Oddly enough, if you search the New York Times site for this question, nothing comes up. And if you Google the question, the Times isn’t in the search results. It’s almost as if they didn’t want to publicize their very interesting finding. You can find a reference to it here and documentation here.
Another interesting take on support for health care “reform” can be found here — a graph of all the polls on health care plans offered by the president or in Congress, from January to present, showing opposition rising. Also from pollster.com: President Obama’s slipping approval numbers on health care.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Health, Welfare & Entitlements
Talking about Ayn Rand
Two new books about Ayn Rand are just hitting the bookstores: Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller, and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.
As Janet Maslin writes in the New York Times, reviewing the two books, the 1970s were “one Rand moment. This seems to be another.” Brian Doherty, historian of libertarianism, agrees. Sales of The Fountainhead are soaring in India. The chairman of BB&T was inspired by her work to renounce lending to eminent-domain projects and to spread her ideas in schools and colleges. She’s being blamed for the financial crisis on government TV, but the takeovers and bailouts have caused sales of Atlas Shrugged to soar.
Both the books are getting good reviews, though reviewers have varying perspectives on the subject of the bios. Rand has been denounced in the New Republic (yet again), and defended against TNR’s criticisms by our own Will Wilkinson. Embattled governor Mark Sanford declares her prophetic in Newsweek. New York magazine calls her “Mrs. Logic,” not without irony. Caroline Baum of Bloomberg says Rand would tell us to stop blaming capitalism for problems caused by regulation and cronyism. Conor Friedersdorf can’t believe how wrong Hendrik Hertzberg gets her in the New Yorker.
Find out for yourself next Wednesday when Burns and Heller speak at a Cato Book Forum, “The Life and Impact of Ayn Rand.” If you can’t get to Washington, watch it on the web.
What Caused the Crisis?
Last night National Government Radio promoted a documentary on National Government TV about the financial crisis of 2008, which concludes that the problem was . . . not enough government.
If the “Frontline” episode mentioned any of the ways that government created the crisis — cheap money from the central bank, tax laws that encourage debt over equity, government regulation that pressured lenders to issue mortgages to borrowers who wouldn’t be able to pay them back — NPR didn’t mention it.
For information on those causes, take a look at this paper by Lawrence H. White or get the new book Financial Fiasco by Johan Norberg, which Amity Shlaes called “a masterwork in miniature.” Available in hardcover or immediately as an e-book. Or on Kindle!
And for a warning about the dangers lurking in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, see this 2004 paper by Lawrence J. White.
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