Deliberately Misplaced Blame

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Let's play a game. I have a not-so-famous quotation to share with you, and then you guess who said it:

"We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic."

I'll give you a hint; it was spoken by a sitting US president. Not quite enough? How about multiple-choice? Was the speaker

A. Current president Barack Obama
B. Overseer of the first-round, $700 billion bailout George W. Bush
C. New Deal designer Franklin Delano Roosevelt
D. "Hands-off" free-market supporter Herbert Hoover

Ponder that for a minute or two, and we'll come back to the answer later on.

Geesh! Free-market, laissez-faire capitalism sure has been taking a beating in the press lately. The official story seems to be that everyone knows the financial crisis represents a failure of the capitalist system, and now only a "gigantic program of economic defense" will save us.

I suppose that would make plenty of sense, if only the details we're being told day in and day out were actually true.

Deliberately Misplaced Blame - Sean W. Malone - Mises Institute

 

[RodISHI]

Worth reading.

I sit here and look around the area and back to the year we planted soy beans in our field next to the house/shop. It was a farming experiment for me. I had heard that soy beans also add nitrogen to the soil so it sounded like a good thing to plant.

The seed cost was a few hundred dollars. A friend planted the seed at no cost to me. The crop was outstanding even though no chemicals were used and weeds grew with the beans. It came time the field needed to be harvested and no one wanted to harvest it for me. So the beans grew again the next year on their own. It was an even bigger crop the next year. I figured just let it keep self seeding what the heck. Then a guy came along and asked if he could harvest it for me for half. So I let him. The beans sold for a few hundred dollars more than the original seed had cost the year before. About double. I was told by several people that the yield was exceptionally high.

It all got me to wondering why in the world world anyone want to be a farmer. The cost of chemicals, seed and equipment to eat dust for a living and not even make enough to pay for the taxes on the land?

It did not occur to me that farmers recieve subsidy and assistance for planting the crops and without subsidies they would go broke.

So then I began to ask who really is being subsidized? Is it the farmer or the seed or is it the chemical companies?

The next step was looking at who owns these corporate entities. Mind boggling or is it simply greed in the vicious cycle people who are supposed to have liberty have allowed to grow?

Part of the problem, I think, lies in people's conflation of free-market capitalism and corporatism (what some in the media unfortunately like to call "crony capitalism"), where government colludes with businesses and provides special benefits and tax provisions, and looks the other way on accounting fraud and other crimes. From there, the further assumption is that people like Ayn Rand, Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were just shilling for large corporations, idolizing businessmen, and glorifying "greed," and thus would have approved of the bailouts and special handouts for the fat-cat bankers. But corporatism is no more free-market oriented than communism is — and all four of the supposed villains knew it.

 

[GHook93]

That was a famous speech by Herbert "Fucking Idoit" Hoover! Calling Hoover a Free market supporter is a very misleading, since as Commerce Secretary he had taken an active pro-regulation stance and he actively campaigned for more regulation (which wasn't a totally out of line since look how market crash 8 short months after he took office and the G.D. started right after it) and he even denounced laissez-faire thinking. He expanded the Federal Government to massive levels! He was in power during the passing of the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act! He was also in power for the Revenue (Increased Tax) Act of 1932 - This was one of the biggest tax increases in history on individuals and corporations! It spurned on the G.D.!

He was a bad bad bad President!

Let's play a game. I have a not-so-famous quotation to share with you, and then you guess who said it:

"We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic."

I'll give you a hint; it was spoken by a sitting US president. Not quite enough? How about multiple-choice? Was the speaker

A. Current president Barack Obama
B. Overseer of the first-round, $700 billion bailout George W. Bush
C. New Deal designer Franklin Delano Roosevelt
D. "Hands-off" free-market supporter Herbert Hoover

Ponder that for a minute or two, and we'll come back to the answer later on.

Geesh! Free-market, laissez-faire capitalism sure has been taking a beating in the press lately. The official story seems to be that everyone knows the financial crisis represents a failure of the capitalist system, and now only a "gigantic program of economic defense" will save us.

I suppose that would make plenty of sense, if only the details we're being told day in and day out were actually true.

Deliberately Misplaced Blame - Sean W. Malone - Mises Institute

 

[Agnapostate]

It would make more sense if capitalism was characterized by free markets.

 

[Iriemon]

Let's play a game. I have a not-so-famous quotation to share with you, and then you guess who said it:

"We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic."

I'll give you a hint; it was spoken by a sitting US president. Not quite enough? How about multiple-choice? Was the speaker

A. Current president Barack Obama
B. Overseer of the first-round, $700 billion bailout George W. Bush
C. New Deal designer Franklin Delano Roosevelt
D. "Hands-off" free-market supporter Herbert Hoover

Ponder that for a minute or two, and we'll come back to the answer later on.

Geesh! Free-market, laissez-faire capitalism sure has been taking a beating in the press lately. The official story seems to be that everyone knows the financial crisis represents a failure of the capitalist system, and now only a "gigantic program of economic defense" will save us.

I suppose that would make plenty of sense, if only the details we're being told day in and day out were actually true.

Deliberately Misplaced Blame - Sean W. Malone - Mises Institute

I'll guess Hoover. Rather than pushing real Govt intervention that might have made a difference, he proposed things to private business in the hope that private business would work its way out of the growing recession. And then, aside from passing a disasterous tariff, sat back while the economy went down the tubes.

Putting aside the tariff, he was like modern day Republicans, yammering like a bunch of chicks in the nest about the Govt's interventions to avoid a repeat, arguing that the Govt should stay out of it like it did until 1933.