All Posts Tagged With: "Wall Street"
Bought and Paid For
Americans who have at least a modicum of political sophistication know that special-interest groups have enormous power to influence the political system, getting favors from government they couldn’t obtain through voluntary means. Informed people know, for example, that many farmers receive subsidies, that labor unions have privileges to employ coercion that no other private organization [...]
21Apr2011 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedToo Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves
Books about the 2008 financial crisis keep coming, and New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin offers one of the better accounts of the meltdown. Using a large number of interviews, he reconstructs the words and acts of key people during the six months from the near-collapse of Bear Stearns in March to the bankruptcy [...]
24Feb2011 | Chidem Kurdas | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Charade
Writing in Forbes recently, Dinesh D’Souza presents the bizarre idea that Barack Obama’s presidency can be best understood by realizing that “Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s [that is, Obama’s late estranged Kenyan father]. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world [...]
22Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 10 comments | ContinuedThere’s Too Little Trust in Government?
There is one point on which I can unequivocally agree with E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s, column “Can We Reverse the Tide on Government Distrust?”: “So far, the Obama administration has missed the opportunity to demonstrate . . . how it is changing the way government works. How is its approach to . . . regulations [...]
22Oct2010 | Charles Johnson | 2 comments | ContinuedGordon Gekko on Greed
When profits and losses redound to those responsible for making the decisions that produce them, market participants tend to grow more responsible and make better decisions.
28Sep2010 | Sandy Ikeda | 12 comments | ContinuedFinancial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation with Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis
Free-market greed stands accused of undermining the world financial system, but that is a mistaken analysis, writes Johan Norberg. The Swedish author made famous by his book In Defence of Global Capitalism is back to provide an explanation for the current financial crisis. Many factors led to the global financial fiasco, Norberg writes, including a [...]
20May2010 | Waldemar Ingdahl | 20 comments | ContinuedComparing the Great Depression to the Great Recession
President Obama has often remarked that the Great Recession (2008–10) is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It’s interesting to study the many parallels between the Great Recession and the Great Depression. Causation. The main causes of both crises lie in actions of the federal government. In the case of the Great Depression, [...]
20May2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 47 comments | 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 | ContinuedThe Washington-Wall Street Kabuki Dance
When I watch the public furor over the ruling party’s attempt to “toughen” regulations on the financial industry, I get the same feeling I often have in a theater: Good show but it’s not real.
23Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | ContinuedMr. Obama and the Bankers: “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly”
Speaking to a very receptive Elyria, Ohio, crowd a few months ago, President Obama took off the gloves and promised that he was ready to fight to provide more jobs, improved education, and security from the threat of bankruptcy for homeowners. Turning his attention to the Wall Street bankers, who had just announced another round [...]
20Apr2010 | Bruce Yandle | 1 comment | ContinuedClose Encounters: NY Fed & Wall Street
Last’s week’s TGIF discussed the intimate relationship between the Federal Reserve–specifically, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York–and the Wall Street establishment it regulates. Using a recent New York Times article, TGIF focused on former New York Fed president and current Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, whose mentor is former Goldman Sachs executive, former Treasury secretary, [...]
4May2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedMadoff is a Piker
Bernard Madoff, who stands accused of bilking sophisticated investors out of $50 billion, reportedly told two of his executives that his business was “a giant Ponzi scheme.” Perpetrators of Ponzi schemes lead clients to believe their money is invested and that their profits are the fruits of the money manager’s savvy. But in fact the [...]
1Apr2009 | John Stossel | 2 comments | ContinuedRegime Uncertainty
Nothing can stifle economic activity like uncertainty about what the government will do next. Robert Higgs has written a good deal about how “regime uncertainty” kept the U.S. economy from getting out of the Great Depression. In fact, it’s what made the depression “great.”No one knew what FDR would come up with day to day.We’re [...]
12Nov2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Fed Should Inflate to End the Financial Crisis?
The current housing and financial crisis has many people blaming “greed and market forces” for unleashing a panoply of evils on the unsuspecting middle class. This has led to many bad proposals to solve the crisis, such as the April 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed “The Inflation Solution to the Housing Mess” by John Makin, [...]
1Jul2008 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Stock Market Is a Swindle?
Jude Blanchette is a freelance writer living in China. Michael Kinsley, founding editor of the online magazine Slate, columnist for the Washington Post, and American editor of the Guardian (UK), is a smart guy. His columns are often witty and incisive. Even where Kinsley is wrong (and he often is) he provides the reader a [...]
1Apr2007 | Jude Blanchette | 0 comments | ContinuedHow Wall Street Created a Nation: J. P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal
When traveling from the Atlantic Ocean entrance of the Panama Canal to the canal’s exit into the Pacific Ocean at its other end, what direction are you going? Most Americans would respond, “That’s easy. It’s east to west.” But they would be wrong. Check a map. The shape of the Isthmus of Panama and the [...]
1Oct2002 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomics on Trial
In today’s robust global economy, the wheat represents genuine prosperity—the new products, technologies, and productivity generated by capitalists and entrepreneurs. It represents real economic growth and when harvested, reflects a true higher standard of living for everyone. Under such conditions, stock prices are likely to rise.
1Sep2000 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | Continued-
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