It doesn’t matter if you are liberal or libertarian: we all agree with me. Either state/market separation should exist as a check and balance function of gov’t oversight, or it should exist as per a hands-off imperative of true capitalism.

If you’ll forgive my cavalier pedantry; the reason that the current central banking system is so derelict is precisely because it is a monstrous example of collusion at the highest of echelons (the last place there should exist corruption is the one place you’re guaranteed to find it!). And it shows no signs of stopping with the appointment of Geithner to the Treasury. If that isn’t the biggest conflict of interests since God put the Devil in charge of Hell…

Right? Or am I missing something?

“The enemies of capitalism and economic freedom … use the accusation of ‘laissez faire’ as a kind of ratchet for increasing the government’s power.”

Today, they continue to play the same game. Always it is laissez faire that they denounce, and whose alleged failures they claim need to be overcome with yet more government regulations and controls.”

>> From J.G. above, “An abandonment of the supervisory
responsibility that should have been applied to keep the speculation
and the fraud and the abuse from getting out of control. So there’s
going to be a major period of correction.”

“Today, the massive interventions not only of the New Deal, but also of the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and of all the administrations since, have been added to the very major interventions that existed even in the 1920s and to which Hoover very substantially added. And yet we still allegedly have laissez faire. It seems that so long as anyone manages to move or even breathe without being under the control of the government, laissez faire allegedly continues to exist, which serves to make necessary yet still more government controls.

The logical stopping point of this process is that one day everyone will end up being shackled to a wall, or at the very least being compelled to do something comparable to living in a zip code that matches his social security number. Then the government will know who everyone is, where he is, and that he can do nothing whatever without its approval and permission. And then the world will be safe from anyone attempting to do anything that benefits him and thereby allegedly harms others. At that point, the world will enjoy all the prosperity that comes from total paralysis.”

George Reisman, Ph.D.

http://mises.org/story/3165

Just because Paulson, Krugman, Bush, Greenspan, Brown, Sarkozy or anyone else equate our current system with Laissez-faire does not make it so just as calling the sky red would not make it so. A simple glance at a dictionary would tell you as much.

I find Rand’s work unreadable drivel, but I really can’t blame her for Greenspan.

These Libertarian posts are simply a bunch pleas for everyone to “clap louder”.

Guess what folks ? Over the last 30 years, we got about as close to a Libertarian government that we’re ever going to get. And it didn’t work. In fact, it failed spectacularly. Time to let the grownups salvage the wreck that is our economy and see what we can save.”

This fails on so many levels it stinks!

How can you have freemarkets with paper money? Also, you can’t have freemarkets when banks become “to big to fail!”

Freemarkets in order to work have to operate on both sides of the mountain….

Need I say more?

I at least presented some topics for discussion. Your reply does nothing to support your position. First, tell me we had a free market and support with evidence. Then, tell me why more regulation would have worked.

I also didn’t state I am a Republican, assuming that’s what you meant. I suppose you place no blame on the Democrats? So the low rates that Greenspan had in place had nothing to do with the fall out of the tech bubble?

“I still completely fail to see how anyone can use the current market circumstances as proof of the failing of free markets.”

That is because Republics are immune to facts.

Next.

Posted by: weinerdog43 | Oct 28, 2008 7:35:30 PM

“wd43, which ones would those be?”

Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the REPUBLICAN Bush administration having to helicopter in $700+B of the public’s money to “save” an industry that was DEREGULATED at the primary behest of Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan. If you had bothered to have read or watch the interview, you would have seen Mr. Galbraith’s point.

But as I have pointed out, Republics are immune to facts or logic.

Posted by: weinerdog43 | Oct 28, 2008 7:43:47 PM

“an industry that was DEREGULATED at the primary behest of Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan….”
~~

and, this:
“I agree with a different chris:

These Libertarian posts are simply a bunch pleas for everyone to “clap louder”.

Guess what folks ? Over the last 30 years, we got about as close to a Libertarian government that we’re ever going to get. And it didn’t work. In fact, it failed spectacularly. Time to let the grownups salvage the wreck that is our economy and see what we can save.

Posted by: OhNoNotAgain | Oct 28, 2008 3:31:05 PM

ONNA,

you’re a sporting chap, though, you’re just as wrong as one can be..

You seem to be confusing de-regulation with free markets. They are not the same.

As a pointed out above, central economic planning, such as we have with the Fed, by its very existence prevents there from being a free market.

Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the REPUBLICAN Bush administration having to helicopter in $700+B of the public’s money to “save” an industry that was DEREGULATED at the primary behest of Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan. If you had bothered to have read or watch the interview, you would have seen Mr. Galbraith’s point.

But as I have pointed out, Republics are immune to facts or logic.

That is because Republics are immune to facts.

Next.