Fiatch

Both major-party presidential candidates keep spouting their silliness about interventions and disruptions, tax plans and rescue schemes.  If only one of them had the wisdom to call for government to Get Out Of The Way, Dramatically Shrink in Size and Scope, and Stop Doing So Much Horrendous Damage.

Even as Senators Obama and McCain prattle on about change, socialism, and the very wrong-headedness that brought us here, not all are so fooled:

• The CSM included an op-ed (I assume) that stated “government regulation, not greed, caused this crisis.  When government distorts incentives, the invisible hand can become a fist.” A very visible and damaging fist, indeed.  The writer concluded, “Good intentions are not enough in designing public policy. Regulations designed with the best of intentions are likely to lead to more crises if they distort incentives and thereby cause individual ‘greed’ to undermine economic growth and harm millions. History is full of examples of politicians adopting short-run solutions without seeing the harmful long-run consequences. Today, the calls to ‘do something’ are loud. Yet amid the cacophony, there are a few voices urging not more, but less; not faster, but slower; not short term, but long term; not intent, but outcomes. Those are the voices we should heed, because if we had listened to them 15 or 20 years ago, we might not be where we are today.”

• Even the WP weighed in on behalf of markets.  While one may differ with their view in certain key respects, at least they established that “The market that failed was not exactly free… government interventions of all kinds, from the defense budget to farm supports, shaped the business environment. No subsidy would prove more fateful than the massive federal commitment to residential real estate…” and “over the long term, business works best when it is subject to market discipline alone.”

• Please also study George Reisman’s excellent “The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis.”

• In addition, please read “The Confidence Game” by James Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer via the WSJ.

Not all are fooled.  Not all is lost — despite the mounting evidence (see links above) and building consensus that our government has seriously failed, continues to fail, and plans feverishly to fail yet more spectacularly.

Though not all is lost, we likely will endure much worse before conditions improve.

Though we likely will endure much worse before conditions improve, we must begin and become the recovery, starting now.  It will not come from Washington, from your state’s capitol, from your city government.  There is no such rescue.

Mark Cuban focused properly on the motor that must power recovery.  Start your engines.  If you want, get angry.  Even better, engage, learn, and get moving.

Finally, study the actual economics of capitalism because “some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.”

If looking for a starting point, try:

• Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson
• F. A. Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit: The Errors Of Socialism
• George Reisman’s Capitalism: A Complete And Integrated Understanding of the Nature And Value of Human Economic Life

[source of the quote in this post’s title]