Corporate Welfare

Consumers are eating shrimp like never before, writes Don Mathews, so why is the industry so unhappy?

So Greenspan says that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are so big and so out of control that they represent a threat to the whole financial system. Well, asks Frank Shostak, just how does Greenspan think they got to be that way? Might it have something to do with a central bank that guarantees the life of not only these two institutions but every bank in the US?

Recorded at the Mises Institute, May 1994.

Many pundits have attempted to diagnose why such a wave of scandals and record bankruptcies occurred when it did. Most suggestions fail to address underlying causes. The real lesson of Enron, argue Steinreich and Oglesby, is that significant corporate corruption will end when one-party rule of corporate America does. Until then, expect more Enrons.

Hardly a day goes by when Mark Brandly doesn't observe confusion on the subject of international trade, from pundits who blame it all of American economic and social to those who think trade can only thrive in the context of treaties and war. This primer corrects most of the big mistakes.

The answers we receive from the academics in response to the collapse of the Enron Corporation and the implosion of other firms are not answers at all. At best, they deal only with effects, or, at worst, reverse the pattern of cause and effect. To put it another way, writes William Anderson, the people who are supposed to know the answers don’t even know what questions they should pursue.

Argentina cannot afford to wait for an IMF rescue package, which will only prolong the current unsustainable monetary regime. It must act now to reform its paralyzed monetary and financial system. In this interview, QJAE editor Joseph Salerno discusses the financial and banking chaos in Argentina.

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln said he had no intention of disturbing slavery, and he appealed to all his past speeches to any who may have doubted him. But with the tariff it was different, notes Thomas DiLorenzo. Lincoln was willing to launch an invasion that would ultimately cost the lives of 620,000 Americans to prove his point.

There has been a lot of talk recently about foreigners who hate our prosperity and civilization, and seek ways to inflict violence in retaliation. Well, here is another case in point, except these are not swarthy Islamic terrorists; they are diplomats and statesmen on nobody's list of suspicious characters.

In its original meaning, "crisis" signifies a turning point that can either lead to improvement and recovery or to more severe deterioration. In the case of Argentina, with the future of the Argentinean people in mind, one must hope for the abandonment of its interventionist economic system, with its reliance on a bureaucratic apparatus and its self-chosen dependency on foreign credits.