In a recent speech to the Council of Institutional Investors, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin outlines who’s to blame for the current collapse. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t even mention the Federal Reserve or Fannie or Freddie. Here are some of his bigger howlers with my comments in brackets: Wolin Remarks before the Council of Institutional
Some argue that one should not have heroes, truth being its own witness. But truth doesn’t move through the ether by itself, it must be carried and honed and broadcast by people, usually people of courage, and it must be made clear. My heroes have all been great expositors of truth. I believe that there is nothing wrong with having intellectual
Homeowners have started to get wise to the fact that, even if they don’t bother making payments, lenders won’t be evicting the residents any time soon. For a while now, more and more articles have been appearing the press noting big increases in the number of people who simply stop paying their mortgages. In the past, however, the attention has
The national debt will soon be 100 percent of GDP. This isn’t a magic number, of course. Not a whole lot will be different than when the debt is 95 percent of GDP. But it does show that economic growth simply hasn’t been strong enough in the last decade to keep the debt below 100 percent in spite of all the claims that debt means nothing because
The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has now cost the taxpayer at least 146 billion. By the end, the bailout will likely cost anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion. The damage done by Fannie and Freddie is not limited merely to the bailouts. Fannie and Freddie were the main engines behind the securitization drive that drove so much of the
We’ve seen plenty of them in the totally ravaged markets like Las Vegas of course, but some have begun to wonder where all the commercial foreclosures are? We don’t hear about a lot of foreclosures in apartment buildings, for example. Well, apartment buildings won’t foreclosure in large numbers, because, as a substitute good for for-sale housing,
Here’s a question, paraphrased from Charles Calomiris via Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce : would those who protest globalization and the steady march of economic freedom change their minds if they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the globalization, economic growth, and economic freedom they’re
I can’t even bring myself to comment on this : The mounting iPhone 4 controversy has hit a receptive ear in Washington, as Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) Thursday wrote to Mr. Jobs urging Apple to come up with a “permanent fix” to the problem at no cost to customers. Mr. Schumer asked Apple to provide customers with a clearly written
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.