http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/03/23/geithner-on-aig-bonuses-i-should-have-known-earlier/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

During this talk, Geithner actually said that one of the causes of this recession was that people have been playing in the market without “adequate adult supervision.” Unbelievable. So, the government is like a life guard at a kiddy pool watching after children. I suppose this was supposed to be a joke, but it’s actually pretty insulting.

Other things he kept repeating: “We will get the balance right,” speaking about the balance between regulation and markets. Presumably, that “balance” needs to be skewed towards regulation…always.

He repeated all the typical misunderstanding of this market crisis, supporting Greenspan’s nonsensical “saving glut” analysis.

One thing he got right is that he said that we can’t under estimate the rage of the people about this recession. But this rage, at least from my perspective, is greatly compounded when it becomes so painfully clear that the people in charge, Geithner especially, have absolutely no idea what they are doing, yet speak with the confidence of arrogance, perfectly willing to impose their misguided prescriptions for increased regulation on everyone, assuring us all the while that, “we’ll get this right, don’t worry.” Personally, I find this the most troubling aspect of the whole affair.

http://www.reteaparty.com

http://www.schiff2010.com

Precisely. The problem being how to go about starving the beast. It’s difficult for the typical law abiding citizen to even contemplate some facets of such a thing.

The trouble with politicians is that they only know how to put their hand in other people’s pockets. If they had to be truly accountable to shareholders, which is what taxpaying citizens should be, it’d be a different story.

Golly, just imagine, an IPO of government, buying and selling shares. What would the market trend be? Heh.

Doubtful….and even if you were able to haul them up before some board or court, it would undoubtedly be stacked with folks–not unlike themselves–whose criminal negligence and pathetic ignorance created our current morass…political opportunists whose sole purpose in life appears to be the passage of new, untested laws and regulations…and, of course, reaping the benefits thereof.
However, there is a way. It\’s spelled out fairly clearly, if a bit verbosely, in Atlas Shrugged. i.e. the underground economy. The only way to kill this beast we\’ve created, as far as I can tell, will be to starve it to death. By and large, at its core, the government is a refuge for cowardly weaklings whose marketable skills are nil–and though we treat it as though it is the almighty master of the universe, it is really a house of cards–not unlike the Soviet Union just before its collapse. It derives ALL of its power from the people it fleeces and imprisons, you and I. And when those of us, whose energy and wealth it drains away like a cancer, finally decide \"enough\’s enough\" it WILL be forced to turn against us, just as Obama is promising every time he swaggers up to another podium.
They\’ll call it the War on Greed, and virtually every productive entrepreneur and businessperson will be its target. They\’ll have no choice, really; having already doomed the economy to perpetual failure, they\’ll be forced to \"appropriate\" more and more and more and more…until finally there is no more wealth within reach of their grasping claws to steal….which is when they\’ll come a-snoopin\’ for that shoe box full of gold and silver you\’ve got hidden under your bed.

And this will be its death knell.

Especially if they have explicitly added provisions making those bonuses untouchable!

I too have a complaint about the analysis related to the FDA, though it comes from a different angle. Libertarians have overemphasized the degree to which the FDA slows down drug development and approval, while at the same time underemphasized the FDA’s role in preventing the rise of safer, more effective natural treatments which compete with Big Pharma. A great overview of this phenomenon is presented in the documentary: Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime.

This too shows the lethality of the FDA. The agency has two settings only for a drug: safe/effective and allowed on the market or not safe/effective and not allowed on the market. Obviously that is simplistic and inappropriate to people’s individual situations. Safety is not black or white. Today if a drug is allowed on the market, people are led to believe it is safe (“otherwise they wouldn’t allow it on the market”). This is the false sense of security I referred to. In contrast, the free market would have competitive certification and safety ratings for drugs (Consumer Reports versus Underwriters Laboratories). One would be free to buy drugs that had a range of risks and testing. People along with their doctors could make decisions based on their own particular circumstances, not on the basis of a one-size-fits-all social policy. A terminal patient would be willing to take risks that a moderately ill person would not. The FDA is a blunt instrument, and therefore hazardous to our health.

Regulation is lethal. We’d best be without it.

I\’m only mentioning this because great Libertarian writers, such as yourself, can clearly see how pumped up economic systems cannot work out. But they do not yet understand how the integrity of the closed system of the body, the result of jillions of years of evolution, must also not be disturbed by the inflation of body functions brought about by the swallowing of pharmaceuticals. It does not occur to economic writers that the body\\\’s self-correcting system — just as is the free market — is only harmed by the addition of synthetic drugs which the body cannot understand as nourishment, and therefore stores in various places of the body adaptable to storage at the time to eventually boomarang into something neatly described as a defined disease.

I have finally made this comment because so many Libertarian writers use pharmaceuticals and the art — not scientific — of the practice of medicine to back up their economic clains. The fact remains that Libertarian economics and philosophical values are best to let stand alone. They are far sounder than anything that can be dredged up as medically acceptable comparisons, which I see, whenever they are used, as weakening any straight-forward, stand-alone Libertarian argument.