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You arrive home to discover you’ve been burglarized. In retaliation, you “strike back” by randomly spraying machine-gun fire up and down the street, killing passers-by and destroying a medical clinic. An irresponsible act? Terrorism, perhaps? After its bombing raids in Sudan and Afghanistan, the U.S. stands roughly in the position of this

The Fed may be preparing to adopt exactly the wrong policy in response to falling stock prices, recessionary fears, and collapsed world currencies. Instead of allowing a much-needed market correction to run its course, it may attempt to head it off by driving interest rates lower. Some financial pundits even suggest the Fed should intervene to

The Journal of Commerce September 7, 1998 Strange things happened at General Motors this summer. Huge swatches of its highly paid, coddled, unionized labor force went on strike. The result was catastrophic: GM plants all over North America shut down, causing the company to lose $75 million a day, idling 175,000 other workers, causing an 81% drop

Let’s say Clinton resigns or is impeached. The tragedy is that he’ll be replaced. A better idea: leave the office empty. Call off the 2000 election, and declare Clinton the last president. The presidency has become a drain on our economy, our culture, and our national life. We’d be better off without it. At this point, the very institution is

In his speech on the world economy before the Council on Foreign Relations, President Clinton said that the most pressing problem facing us is global “financial turmoil.” But his solutions take us entirely in the wrong direction. He recommends more IMF funding, more environmental and labor regulations, and a new international conference to create

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, President Clinton proposed more spending, regulating, and monetary manipulation as the keys to fixing up the world economy. More ominously, he called for the creation of a new international financial “architecture,” which, he implied, would be a permanent bailout fund for deadbeat governments the world

Losses are an integral part of the capitalist process. But you wouldn’t know it from the way some big boys are treated by the Federal Reserve. It seems that if your losses are big enough, and your connections good enough, you can rely on a permanent line of credit to shield you from the consequences of your mistakes. The new rule is gleaned from

Washington is celebrating what Clinton calls “a new era of balanced budgets and surpluses.” The fiscal year ended with $70 billion in taxpayer’s money left over, a sum that is now burning a hole in Leviathan’s pocket. The government, sad to say, is not planning to return the money from whence it came. For decades, the dispute about tax policy has

Confusion reigned this week as the IMF, the World Bank, the Fed, and the White House tried to cobble together some way of dealing with the global financial meltdown. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin was reduced to paraphrasing Rodney King: can’t we all just get along? Some convergence does seem to be in the offing, however, which is bad news for

Joe Klein of the Justice Department is at it again, striking out at successful businesses while claiming to be protecting the public. As the man behind the attack on Microsoft, he now claims the market can’t be trusted to handle credit-card distribution either. His target this time is the supposed monopoly held by Visa and MasterCard. Together