"The Final Absurdity" - J. R. Nyquist
On Tuesday President George W. Bush made a remarkable admission. He told CNN television, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” It is hard to believe, coming from a two-term Republican president. But there it is – proof positive that socialism is the wave of the future. President Bush does not believe in the free market. If he did, he would let the market function. He would have allowed the catastrophe to unfold according to market principles, trusting that the outcome would be better – in the long run – than the outcome of government intervention. For this is what market principles teach: that government planning cannot save an economy. The president indirectly proposes that the government knows better than the market. He is saying that the government knows how to save the market, namely, by violating the market. By way of analogy, this amounts to advocating promiscuity as a means for preserving virginity. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. “We’re in a huge recession,” said Bush, “but I don’t want to make it even worse.”
But President Bush has made it worse by throwing good money after bad, by redistributing the market’s losses, pronouncing in favor of moral hazard, and by making massive decisions for the market. What comes next is hyperinflation. According to a senior economist at Decision Economics, quoted in an AFP news story titled “Fed cuts rate to virtually zero, will expand stimulus moves,” the government is “pulling every lever and pulling them hard. They are going to print money until they get a reaction from the economy.” Well, the reaction has begun. The good faith and credit of the United States is over. Who is going to loan money to a government determined to inflate?
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