All Posts Tagged With: "risk"
Private Investment and Public “Investment”
Politicians are fond of telling the public that we must “invest” in this program or that—be it education; health care; make-work infrastructure projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”; $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa; $3.4 million for a tunnel to allow turtles to cross under a highway in Florida; $1.8 million for swine [...]
22Jun2011 | Adam B. Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedOf Football Helmets and Bailouts
Attempts to reduce risk can themselves create it; correctly pricing risk is crucial to keeping an economy healthy.
21Oct2010 | Steven Horwitz | 23 comments | ContinuedRegulatory Failure by the Numbers
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. We are told, for example, that the recession would have been prevented if proper regulations had been in place. While it is true that (by definition) the “right” regulations would have prevented [...]
25Aug2010 | and Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedFinancial Regulation Snake Oil
Recent turmoil set off by the threat of Greek insolvency shows how fast markets change. Fear about the inability of European governments to pay their debts caused the 2010 turbulence. By contrast, the 2008–2009 havoc was rooted in the collapse of property values. The next crisis will be about something else, possibly another government’s debt. [...]
25Aug2010 | Chidem Kurdas | 1 comment | ContinuedSafer Living with Chemistry
Back in 1651 Thomas Hobbes described life in the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short.” But even in civilized society during his lifetime, most people lived under what we would consider wretched conditions. At that time, you were lucky if you lived past 30; our notion of basic sanitation didn’t exist; people used [...]
25Jun2010 | Angela Logomasini | 1 comment | ContinuedFederal Deposit Insurance: A Banking System Built on Sand
Federal deposit insurance grew out of a turbulent time in American history: the Great Depression. During two waves of bank failures in the 1930s an astonishing 9,000 banks closed and millions of depositors lost some or all of their savings. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) began operations in 1934, insuring deposit accounts up to [...]
20May2010 | Warren C. Gibson | 11 comments | ContinuedToo Big to Fail
“Once you lose your freedom to fail, you also lose your freedom to succeed and you cease to be a free society.” —U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas In March 2008 the investment banking firm Bear Sterns failed and the federal government quickly stepped in. The public was inundated with the phrase “too big to fail” [...]
2Mar2009 | Michael Heberling | 8 comments | ContinuedWas Money Really Easy Under Greenspan?
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has become everyone’s favorite scapegoat. His policies allegedly caused, or at least contributed to, the current financial crisis. He is attacked from the left for lax financial regulation, from the right for loose monetary policy, and from the middle for both. Yet two years ago, on leaving office, Greenspan [...]
2Mar2009 | and David R. Henderson | 7 comments | ContinuedThe State Is Morally Hazardous To Your Health
It’s never been more important for advocates of individual liberty to emphasize that what is failing today is not the free market but the state. To claim otherwise is to ignore generations of pervasive and deep-seated privilege through government interference with the marketplace. Intentions are irrelevant. The laws of economics proceed whether those who interfere [...]
1May2008 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedHealth-Care Cons
Economist Joan Robinson (1903–1983) wrote, “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of readymade answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” A better reason to study economics is to avoid being deceived by politicians; they are the far greater threat to life, liberty, and [...]
1Apr2008 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedSocial Security and the Insurance Illusion
In 1937, shortly after Franklin Roosevelt threatened to destroy the independence of the Supreme Court by “packing” it with ideological cronies, the Court came to heel and handed down verdicts in three cases affirming that the Social Security Act was, unlike several structurally similar pieces of pre-intimidation New Deal legislation, in accord with the U.S. [...]
1Sep2005 | Will Wilkinson | 3 comments | ContinuedSocial Security Privatization: A Personal View
The increasing interest in replacing Social Security with private retirement accounts has spawned worries that people’s retirement money would be too much at risk. I have experience with both Social Security and a private investment program and have learned something about the relative performance of each. Beginning in 1943 when I worked summers while in [...]
1Jul2002 | Roger M. Clites | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Positive Nature of Risk
Christopher Mayer is a commercial loan officer and freelance writer. There would be no risk if the future were known and all of one’s plans played out exactly as expected. Because of pervasive uncertainty, a variety of risks permeates all human endeavors. It is a common human desire to want to feel secure, to want [...]
1Aug2001 | Christopher Mayer | 0 comments | ContinuedTiger-nomics: Glorious Competition
The ever-mounting accomplishments in the short professional golf career of Tiger Woods are nothing less than historic. In fact, Woods’s mastery of golf offers lessons for duffers and PGA Tour pros alike. But his feats also serve as stunning reminders about the importance of competition not only on the golf course, but also in everyday [...]
1Feb2001 | Raymond J. Keating | 20 comments | ContinuedCourage Overlooked
Courage is universally admired, and rightly so. One reason is that a courageous person says what he truly feels regardless of the consequences. A result is that those who deal with a courageous person know where they stand with him. Another reason for admiring the courageous is that they can be counted on to get [...]
1Feb2001 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedHow Government Prevents Us from Buying Safety
There is a limit to how much people will voluntarily pay to reduce the risk of accidental injury or death. In other words, the marginal value people place on their lives is finite. We accept some risks to take advantage of opportunities to do things that, at the margin, provide more value than the expected sacrifice in health and life expectancy.
1Dec2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | ContinuedMoney, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen
The reader of Money, Greed, and Risk is informed that the book’s author, Charles R. Morris, has been a partner in a consulting firm, an executive with Chase Manhattan Bank, the secretary of health and human services for the state of Washington, and assistant budget director for New York City. In short, Morris has considerable [...]
1Nov2000 | Larry J. Sechrest | 0 comments | Continued-
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