<http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/CafeHayek> ------------------------------
- Fed Up <#1234c16ab07e0e6e_1> - Power Corrupts — and Incites Hypocrisy <#1234c16ab07e0e6e_2> - Laissez Faire – Not! <#1234c16ab07e0e6e_3> - Let’s Not Go Postal <#1234c16ab07e0e6e_4> Fed Up <http://cafehayek.com/2009/08/fed-up.html> Posted: 23 Aug 2009 02:16 PM PDT Did the Federal Reserve Bank save the economy? “No!” says George Selgin in this interview with the *Atlanta Journal-Constitution*<http://www.ajc.com/business/fed-didnt-save-the-121009.html>. Here’s the nutgraf: Selgin believes the Fed, after helping fuel the housing bubble, has morphed from central banker into central planning agency with a corporate welfare department. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=2RQmcdYVqbY:p5AaZ0krge0:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=2RQmcdYVqbY:p5AaZ0krge0:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=2RQmcdYVqbY:p5AaZ0krge0:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=2RQmcdYVqbY:p5AaZ0krge0:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=2RQmcdYVqbY:p5AaZ0krge0:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Power Corrupts — and Incites Hypocrisy<http://cafehayek.com/2009/08/power-corrupts-and-incites-hypocrisy.html> Posted: 23 Aug 2009 01:35 PM PDT Here’s a letter that I sent today to the *Washington Post*: Reviewing Adrian Goldsworthy’s book on the fall of ancient Rome, Diana Preston notes that “Goldsworthy completed his book before the real extent of the world’s current financial crisis was known, but he quotes a complaint by the Emperor Diocletian that seems especially relevant and shows that human nature may not have changed much since Roman times: ‘There burns a raging greed, which hastens to its own growth and increase without respect for human kind.’ Goldsworthy sensibly concludes there’s nothing to suggest the United States must inevitably decline, but that it’s up to those at the top – our 21st-century emperors – to ensure it doesn’t” (”Rome Wasn’t Destroyed in a Day Either<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101112.html>,” August 23). How ironic for Preston to point to Goldsworthy’s quotation of Diocletian – a rapacious hypocrite whose reign serves as an ideal lesson in why bestowing power and glory on ‘leaders’ is a fool’s game. According to the Roman philosopher Lactantius, under Diocletian “tax collectors began to outnumber taxpayers, and, after exorbitant taxation sapped their initiative, farmers abandoned their farms and plowed fields grew up into woods. In a policy of terrorization the provinces were cut up into scraps, a multitude of governors and hordes of directors oppressed every region – almost every city; and to these were added countless collectors and secretaries and assistants to the directors. Judges seldom had civil cases before them: they tried (not frequently, but incessantly) condemnations, confiscations, and requisitions of every kind of property, and unbearable inequities in the imposition of taxes…. Diocletian’s boundless greed would never allow his own treasury to be tapped, so he constantly piled on new taxes and contributions in order to keep his personal hoard intact” [quotation found here<http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/roots-of-economic-understanding/> ]. Beware whenever those with power pompously decry the ‘greed’ of others. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=D3d4axZQkN8:0EzXhaEd2_8:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=D3d4axZQkN8:0EzXhaEd2_8:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=D3d4axZQkN8:0EzXhaEd2_8:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=D3d4axZQkN8:0EzXhaEd2_8:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=D3d4axZQkN8:0EzXhaEd2_8:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Laissez Faire – Not! <http://cafehayek.com/2009/08/laissez-faire-not.html> Posted: 23 Aug 2009 05:10 AM PDT Some myths never die. I sent this letter yesterday to the *New York Times*; it addresses only one of the many flaws in David Leonhardt’s article: Suggesting that President Herbert Hoover followed laissez-faire policies, David Leonhart writes that “we can’t rerun the past year with a Hooverite economic strategy” to see what its outcome would have been (”Theory and Morality in the New Economy<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/books/review/Leonhardt-t.html?scp=1&sq=Hooverite&st=cse>,” August 19). No need to do so, for the past year *was* run “with a Hooverite economic strategy.” From Pres. Hoover’s 52 percent increase in government spending to his running the third-largest budget deficit then in U.S. history – and from his creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to his signing of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act – Hoover’s hyperactive intervention nearly 80 years ago was not very different from Bush’s and Obama’s hyperactive interventions today. Hoover himself, campaigning for re-election in October 1932 <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=23269&st=&st1>, bragged of rejecting the advice of “reactionary economists [who] urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until it had found its own bottom.” Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=YKEpr8DhDZQ:5T4spCR-fnE:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=YKEpr8DhDZQ:5T4spCR-fnE:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=YKEpr8DhDZQ:5T4spCR-fnE:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=YKEpr8DhDZQ:5T4spCR-fnE:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=YKEpr8DhDZQ:5T4spCR-fnE:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Let’s Not Go Postal <http://cafehayek.com/2009/08/lets-not-go-postal.html> Posted: 23 Aug 2009 04:54 AM PDT Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the *Baltimore Sun*: Jerrold Brotman is right to worry<http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bal-ed.le.letters222aug22,0,7017288.story>that government-run health care will be no more efficient than the U.S. Postal Service (Letters, August 22). Worker productivity today is four times greater than it was at the end of World War II, and – with the advent of the jet engine, the Interstate Highway system, and other advances in transportation technologies – transportation costs are much lower. So a postal service responsive to consumer demands would today supply its services more efficiently and, hence, at lower costs. Alas, however, the inflation-adjusted price of a first-class stamp is today 22 percent *higher* than it was in 1945. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux UPDATE: from Carpe Diem (via Coyote Blog)<http://coyote-blog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/stamps.jpg> . <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=UhGAE-VPutI:GqetLatpBMk:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=UhGAE-VPutI:GqetLatpBMk:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=UhGAE-VPutI:GqetLatpBMk:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=UhGAE-VPutI:GqetLatpBMk:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CafeHayek?a=UhGAE-VPutI:GqetLatpBMk:gIN9vFwOqvQ> You are subscribed to email updates from Cafe Hayek<http://cafehayek.com> To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now<http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailunsubscribe?k=RD87GWo2xMyNcdDv2g6ct6FC7Lk> . Email delivery powered by Google Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. 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