[From the Journal of Commerce , July 29, 1999] The stock market is at record highs. The economy has been booming. So why are many of America’s largest corporations still receiving handouts from Uncle Sam? The Budget Committee of the House of Representatives addressed this paradox during hearings late last month. Not only did public-interest groups
Under prodding from agitators and activists, the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a proposal that would reduce the investment performance of mutual funds. If adopted, the measure would impose harsher disclosure requirements on portfolio managers under federal law. Instead of reporting their holdings semiannually, as is current
Activists with the same agenda as anti-globalization rioters and eco-terrorists have set their sights on the nation’s business schools. According to an October 30 report in the Wall Street Journal (Alsop, Ronald. “Corporations Still Put Profits First, But Social Concerns Gain Ground.” The Wall Street Journal 30 Oct. 2001: B12) the World
With the Enron collapse making headlines, all the usual suspects in government and the media are beating the drums for more government regulation of the financial world. As a result, we are hearing specious arguments about alleged “conflicts of interest” amongst brokerage firm equity analysts. This issue is spearheaded by a ruthless New York
The media/political movement for expanded accounting regulations is driven by the claim that more government intervention will “stop the next Enron from happening.” Yet the existing rules did nothing to stop the real Enron. In fact, some of the worst aspects of the Enron calamity would not have happened without government intervention in the
Politicians intent on re-election have stirred up a media frenzy over “corporate governance,” exploiting the bankruptcies of a handful of companies like Enron and Worldcom. New accounting industry and corporate financial reporting rules are being imposed with reckless abandon in Washington, D.C. Yet the political class that seeks to grant itself
An impending power grab by Eliot Spitzer, the Democrat attorney general for New York, threatens to disrupt Wall Street and the entire system of capital allocation. What used to be one of the freest financial markets in the world is about to go further down the path of political interventionism and corporatism. In the name of helping the small
“This has been about one thing,” New York politician Eliot Spitzer said before a flock of television cameras at the New York Stock Exchange. “It has been about ensuring that retail investors get a fair shake.” So went the crowd-pleasing explanation for why the state’s just re-elected Attorney General, along with federal regulators, reached an
You buy a stock and the price goes down. Who accepts the liability for losses? The purchaser of stock, of course, who must always bear in mind that stocks are never foreordained to go up or down. Even so, regulators and politicians have been using the great bubble and bust of the late 90s to extract billions from securities companies, under the
Critics of free enterprise have set their sights on business schools, blaming them for recent corporate scandals. If only people like home goods retailer Martha Stewart and Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling were taught business ethics during graduate school, they might not have committed their alleged crimes, or so the argument goes. The implication is
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.