CATO UNBOUND :Our ongoing financial turmoil began in the mortgage market. Real-estate loans at commercial banks grew at a remarkable 12.26 percent compound annual rate over the four-year period from the midpoint of 2003 to the midpoint of 2007... READ MORE......
[Show More]

Georges Rey , a professor of mine from grad school used to enjoy telling me to “Keep distinct distinctions distinct.” In fact, he liked saying it so much, he inscribed it into my copy of his book, but that’s another story. Libertarian seems to be an equivocal term in that it can refer to people with differing political affiliations. The common distinction made is the “Big......
[Show More]

| Peter Klein | What is the net effect of government intervention on firm size, scope, complexity, and ownership? Roderick Long thinks government intervention makes firms larger and more hierarchical than they would otherwise be, and that a pure market economy would be dominated by small, worker-owned cooperatives. I think the net effect of government intervention on firm characteristics is ambi......
[Show More]

NotneuqCorp asked: When i start my corporation does that give em a new credit score for the company and what are some good credit card companies to get one from for new corporations? Also does my personell credi score effect the application in anyway? Related Blogs Related Blogs on Corporations Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now When Corporations Hate Markets......
[Show More]

Been following the discussion fallout from Rod Long’s essay on Cato Unbound.  Spotted some blog responses I found rather curious, figure I’d provide my two cents… - Tyler Cowen , referring to remarks by Matt Yglesias (which amounted to “watch me completely ignore Dr Long’s point!”, IMO): In my view at the margin it would be better to have both l......
[Show More]

Quote of the Week: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”                                                                                                                           -George Orwell War, Peace and the State  by Murray N. Rot......
[Show More]

Lew Rockwell’s recent interview of Naomi Wolf for his podcast — the scare quotes are there because it quickly turns into a very two-sided conversation, and works very differently from a conventional interview — is really remarkable, and a paradigm for the kind of engagement that could build a vibrant libertarian Left. Naomi Wolf is not my favorite feminist, and Lew Rockwell is c......
[Show More]

“A free market is a market in which property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. By definition, buyers and sellers do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other’s property without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud, nor is the transfer coerced by a third party.R......
[Show More]

J.H. Huebert and Walter Block have recently published an essay which claims to be a reply to Roderick Long’s essay on left-libertarianism for Cato Unbound . Huebert and Block insist that they are going to set the record straight on the correct libertarian view of these matters. But it’s not clear that they have succeeded in even setting the record straight on Roderick’s view o......
[Show More]

As I’ve noted previously about Roderick Long’s heroic article about corporate immorality at Cato Unbound, some “lib ertarians& #8221; are simply beyond hope when it comes to showing them the true nature of power and politics and how capitalism is an intolerable evil for the world. This hopelessness could not be more evident than it is with Walter Block and J H Hubert’s n......
[Show More]

The “Nightly Roundup� is a collection of items I’m too busy or too lazy (or both) to give proper commentary. The Roundup will appear nightly (note: nightly does not necessarily mean “at night� or “every night�). Project for a New American Revolution is publishing daily lists of news articles and blog commentary. I just saw it in my list of referrers, it might ......
[Show More]

Dear Mom: When an economist looks at marriage , they figure that it’s original role was to deal with a market failure: the services provided by housewives were not available on an open market. Now that this is changing (and the more that it changes, the more equal women become), the value of marriage is thrown into question. Those economists have come up with the idea that the ......
[Show More]

Here’s something I didn’t know. Each month the Cato Institute posts an essay to Cato Unbound and invites other political commentators to reply to that essay. They also invite anyone to dive into the debate via their own blogs. The essay this month is Corporations Versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now . I’ve have a reply up within the next week or so. To be com......
[Show More]

From out across the nations We need to wake up and understand Many hurting hearts are crying But our voices seem to be dying Can you see the battle raging on? We are the light to reach this world We are the salt preserving these souls Let’s show them the love that we’ve received now We are, we are in desperation We need to reach this generation We are speaking louder than before ......
[Show More]

Roderick Long : Au dix-neuvième siècle, les libéraux étaient en première ligne sur diverses causes considérées "de gauche" aujourd’hui, notamment le mouvement ouvrier, le mouvement féministe, le mouvement abolitionniste, et le mouvement anti-guerre ; les causes du long détour des libéraux par la droite et du long détour de la gauche par l’État sont un suj......
[Show More]

An Area of Darkness by Jay Nordlinger on National Review Online (tags: article editorial politics middleeast education ) Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » Corporations versus the Market who's afraid of the big bad free-market? (tags: article economics editorial libertarian ) Candied Bacon Ice Cream Recipe - David Lebovitz I want some (t......
[Show More]

Want Change? Let’s Try Truly Free Markets......
[Show More]

In today’s installment of Cato Unbound, Dean Baker calls libertarians to task for their failure to take a more skeptical stance toward the government-granted monopolies we call copyright and patent protections: Their enforcement efforts have required terrorizing people for making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material. In a recent case, a single mother was fined several hundred thou......
[Show More]

Read Matt Yglesias on the inconsistency of the libertarian project .......
[Show More]

Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip Conflation Now : Defenders of the free market are often accused of being apologists for big business and shills for the corporate elite. Is this a fair charge?......
[Show More]

Within the last few days, both Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias have tried to explain missteps in the libertarian movement that don’t really fit with smart putatively libertarian thought. They are right that libertarians and even occasionally libertarian think tanks have backed issues such as pollution “rig hts” that don’t seem to quite fit with the views I attribute to inte......
[Show More]

As someone consistently concerned that my social affinity for libertarians will be misconstrued as sympathy for their ideas, let me link to, and endorse, the sentiments contained in this essay by Matt Yglesias. I’d add that the nexus between libertarianism -- and in this post, I’m talking about the business of professional political libertarianism as it exists in the Beltway, not the......
[Show More]

I was very interested to read Roderick Long’s opening essay for this month’s Cato Unbound. Long draws a distinction between genuine free markets and policies such as corporate welfare and protectionism that favor the interests of incumbent businesses at the expense of the general public. Almost all libertarians draw this distinction, of course, but Long suggests that many libertarian......
[Show More]

This marvelously clarifying essay by Roderick Long is your must-read item for the week. So where does this idea come from that advocates of free-market libertarianism must be carrying water for big business interests? Whence the pervasive conflation of corporatist plutocracy with libertarian laissez-faire ? Who is responsible for promoting this confusion? There are three different groups th......
[Show More]

Some quick links to items of interest: Nice new page for tracking a live and historical economic data ( OANDA ) Massive shortfall in San Diego city pension fund ( SOSD ) U.S. retail CMBS delinquencies data ( ResearchRecap ) How the credit crisis is playing out in research organizations ( Nature ) Year-end mutual fund tax bite may further d......
[Show More]