While attending the Agora Financial Symposium in Vancouver, I became aware that Americans enjoy some rights that Canadians do not: among them, the limited ability to carry weapons. Even private security guards seem unable to be armed in Canada.This does not make me feel safer. Quite the reverse. Private people who carry guns make me […]
Laissez-Faire Today
Mises Can Save the World
If they had listened to Mises in 1927, the world might have been saved. There would have been no Holocaust, Gulag, bombing of civilians, prolonged Depression and vast human suffering. That was then. What can we do now? We can revisit his great work Liberalism, drink deeply from its wisdom and apply it in our […]
Bernanke: Drug Pusher
Real economic growth has slowed to stall, even according to the official data. What will the central bank do now? Ben Bernanke says,”the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee] made clear at its June meeting that it is prepared to take further actions as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor […]
Floods of Fake Money
Vancouver is a wonderful place, a clean metropolitan city featuring both breathtaking scenery and fascinating diversity. The place is no longer cheap, a lesson for Americans in dollar degradation. Figuring I needed a few loonies for my stay and for paying for the cab ride to the Fairmont, I handed a C-note to the foreign […]
Condo Crazy: Canadian Edition
I’m here in Vancouver for Agora’s Financial Symposium, where there will be plenty of discussion of booms, busts and stagnation. Watching BNN this morning, Canada’s version of tout TV, a message crawled along the bottom of the screen: “RBC: Toronto, not in a condo bubble.” Fears of a condo bubble in Canada’s biggest housing market […]
Business Begging for Life
Even in this seemingly permanent recession, government is intensifying its regulation, taxation and harassment of regular business people. Business pages are filling up with pleas to government from real-life entrepreneurs. All these people are saying is give freedom a chance. An example is Seth Gordon, the co-founder and “TeaEO” of Honest Tea, which makes fabulous […]
The Financial Fish Rots From the Top Down
In The Dark Knight Rises, a cruel strongman rallies the people of Gotham against the corruption of the elites, instituting a violent dictatorship in the name of a people’s liberation. What’s troubling for the viewer is that the strongman is right about the corruption. In this case, and as usual, the fix is worse than […]
Where the State Is Nowhere to Be Seen
There were plenty of big names speaking at FreedomFest in Las Vegas last week. There were TV talking heads like Steve Forbes and Andrew Napolitano. Famous entrepreneurs like John Mackay came. Tea Party star Rand Paul attracted vast attention. But it was an unassuming woman, a brilliant author who rarely leaves her rural home in […]
The Miracle at Mon Ami Gabi
I became lost the other day, wandering around in Mon Ami Gabi, an upscale French restaurant situated within Las Vegas’ Paris Hotel. Standing somewhere between the outdoor patio and the bar that opens to the casino, I began to turn around in circles, looking in sheer awe of the size of the seated crowd, the […]
Obama Is Wrong about the Hoover Dam
In his famous “you didn’t build it” speech, President Obama cited the Internet, fire departments, the GI Bill, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam as examples of government action that helps business owners. Each needs addressing, but let’s start with the Hoover Dam. The president is riffing off of Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC commercial […]