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Attention readers:

You may be interested to know that financial deregulation and pure unchecked greed were not the cause of, but are in fact the obvious solution to, the ongoing economic crisis. What’s more, none of this would have happened if not for the Federal Reserve and the 16th amendment — Hayek, Friedman et al predicted it!

If this strikes you as a compelling thesis, slap on a Ron Paul button, wipe the semen off your copy of Atlas Shrugged, and head on down to the IMU for what promises to be a stimulating series of conversations.

[AcadStudorg] Austrian Economics, book/discussion club!!
Students for Austrian Economics (UI) [austrian.econ.uiowa@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 11:08 AM
Attachments:
Hello,

In light of the near total meltdown of our banking and financial systems in Fall of 2008, much more attention is being paid to the field of economics. In particular, many more scholars are paying attention to the Austrian School of Economics, which unlike other economic schools of thought, saw our current crisis coming years ahead of time and have a theory to explain the events we have seen.

Are you skeptical of multi-trillion dollar deficits and debt?

Do you trust a monolithic, all-powerful central bank that centrally plans monetary policy and sets interest rates?

Do you believe that freedom, and not government, should be the driving force in the economy?

If you are concerned about any of the above questions, then you will likely be interested in attending the regular weekly meetings of ‘Students for Austrian Economics (UI)’

Come Join Us! Every Thursday at 6 pm, beginning this Thursday, September 10th, in the Kirkwood Room (257) of the Iowa Memorial Union.

We will be studying economics in the traditions of the great 20th century economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard!

We will begin introducing the basic concepts that make the Austrian School distinct and follow up with pertinent conversation about current events.

It will be a wonderful, intellectually stimulating time!
Thank you for your consideration,

-Students for Austrian Economics-

www.mises.org

Here’s a juicy quote from some corporate tax lawyer from a recent AP story on how Senate Republicans are blocking efforts to tax the AIG bonuses (surprise, surprise). It appears in the context of a discussion of the possibility that legislation preventing bonuses will lead to corporations raising salaries to match what employees lose in bonuses.

Here it is:

“‘If the vast majority of bonuses become fixed salaries that would harm the institutions because they would have higher fixed costs,’ Willens said. ‘What happens if the bank suffers through a poor year? It has all these fixed obligations they have to meet. That’s the beauty of the bonuses.’”

Um, I’d say the bank has suffered through a pretty poor year. A year so poor that it needed to accept billions of dollars of government bailout money to stop it from utterly collapsing. And yet it still felt obligated to pay out these ludicrous bonuses. How is that ANY DIFFERENT from what he’s talking about?

Seriously, how does this guy have a job?

There’s flip-flopping, and then there’s this. Pheeew.

But in all fairness to John McCain, the disconnect runs deeper in the GOP. How do you premise your entire economic platform on keeping government’s dirty mitts off our sacred financial institutions, then insist the government bail them out when they inevitably succumb to the too-predictable consequences of unchecked, boneheaded, myopic greed? How to reconcile the yawning discrepancy between these two postures? Let me give it a shot…

Everybody knows that free markets are identical with freedom and state planned economies are evil. Taking over an entire industry is about the most evil thing a government can do, but only when that industry is successful. See, when a foreign government dares to nationalize a critical economic resource — let’s say oil — because its private owners — who, just for fun, let’s postulate have their home offices on Wall Street — have failed to handle that national resource in a way that sustains that nation’s economy or benefits its people… well, that’s bad. Real bad. We go to war over stuff like that when other people do it.

But when our own financial institutions get into trouble, the government has to take control in order to right the ship. Otherwise, the economy would suffer! It may seem unfair to expect taxpayers to bail out companies that do stupid, evil things that ultimately lead to their own undoing. But things will be even worse if we don’t. It’s all about the public good!

And so you see, it’s not that Republicans are against government oversight of private enterprise. On the contrary, when the shit happens they advocate the same policies as guys like Hugo Chavez. It’s just that they draw a key distinction between assets and liabilities: when a business is successful, hands off! As long as somebody somewhere can theoretically be making money off it, any form of government intervention would be oppressive. BUT, the moment that moneymaking enterprise ceases to make money and instead creates problems, it’s on the rest of us to dig the moneymakers out of the hole they have dug for us all.

I hope that clears up any confusion. You may now resume voting Republican on the principle that they’re good with money.

I love how our Captains of Industry constantly call for the government to keep its nose out of the marketplace, and then as soon as all their awful decisions catch up with them it suddenly becomes to government’s job to bail them out.

Anyway, if you or anyone you know has any interest in buying a house in Greenfield, Mass. (Charlie? Got any family out here who want to move?) please send them my way. Before things get ugly. Please.

says G Dub.

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10872696&top_story=1

Open thread for all things economy