New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and others who claim that the Enron scandal will be a watershed for regulation miss the point. Government regulation already dominates our economic landscape. Tossing on a few more rules might do damage, but it will not prevent fraud from occurring in the future.
Professional victimologists see bad investors as victims of biased research. But they ignore the fact that smart investors have plenty of chances to avoid bad advice. What the losers from the Enron collapse got taken in by was the Fed-induced Bubble, not someone else's bad research. Those who would impose additional bureaucratic restrictions on Wall Street only penalize everyone to protect the gullible.
Consumer protection regulation is the consumer’s worst nightmare. In fact, it is not protective at all. It is merely another one of those regulatory rackets that has the appearance of providing necessary security for a collective group in an entirely positive sense while encompassing no negatives. After all, how can anything entitled "protection" have a downside?
Far from an example of a market failure, Enron's saga shows that firms that invest too much in politics can easily become complacent in the face of changing market conditions. In economics, this is called government failure, and we can blame the growing requirement for firms to divert resources to grease palms in Washington as a necessary business investment for its occurrence.
While the facts (as we know them today) of the Enron debacle are easily available in most newspapers and on the Internet, they are accompanied by a number of myths that are being spawned by politicians and their media allies. William Anderson tackles a few of these economic and political "old wives' tales" and helps set the record straight.
President Bush claims that the war on terror "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." Does that include the ELF?
Like control over consumer goods in the former Soviet Union, water in Canada is subject to strict state control.
Sometimes you have to make a choice between man and the natural world. As Tibor Machan notes, environmentalists often side against man.
A federal judge rules: No drilling allowed. Tibor Machan explains why this is not a "victory for the California coast."
Facing a crisis, their primary concern is political survival; to admit their culpability and liability would be committing political suicide. Therefore, they rant and rave, always pointing toward the producers of energy. It is they who heartlessly, scandalously, viciously, and immorally conspire to create energy shortages in order to reap exorbitant profits.
