John Jay Myers on government regulation

My buddy John Jay Myers posted this gem on Facebook yesterday.  He's running for Senate, and here's where you can go to send him some money. . 

Here's a beautiful John Jay rant on the general uselessness of government regulation:

 

When the SEC wanted someone to give lectures, who did they hire?
Bernie Madoff. The biggest crook they could find.
Nasdaq made him its chairman; the SEC appointed him to industry panels; Congress invited him to testify.

Unfortunately the more power to regulate you give to government, the more they regulate in favor of their cronies, crippling the real competition, this is why the only real answer is to limit what government can do.

 

I'm trying, and failing, to think of any scams that the SEC prevented before they became full-blown disasters.  There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that regulators knew that Madoff was running a house of cards, but no one had the cajones to say anything. 

Is it possible that the best regulation for Wall Street would be 1) requirements that everyone will do what they say they'll do, and 2) hanging a sign at each end of the thoroughfare that says "Let The Buyer Beware"?  In the present system, players generally believe that the government has their back.  They don't. 

For those against "the big banks" the easiest way to bring them down would be to deregulate them. Why? Because who would invest in a bank 2000 miles away if you didn't think the government had your back?

You would look for a safer place to put your money, like a local bank where you knew the people running it. A bank where you could verify that they had private insurance to cover their loans. Private insurers would do a much better job of regulating banks than the government because they have a strong financial incentive to do so.

Knowing the government is not giving these companies a pass you might consider investing your money in your local economy as opposed to investing it in the stock market. Isn't that what most people would really like to see? Money going right back into their community?

If the government was out of banking then you would get a fair interest rate for your money because they would finally need your money. Right now they can borrow from the Fed at 0%, why do they need your money?

Lastly regulation means that somehow we, the American people taking responsibility for the banking industry, that Americans are ALL on the hook. I don't want to be on the hook for what a private business does.

It means they make the profits and we take the losses.

 

Willingness to say things like that is why John Jay would make a great senator. 

 

 

Healthcare Hypotheticals

I read about the merits and demerits of the upcoming healthcare bill on a lot of other websites. The Comment Field debates usually wind up with the Statists accusing their opponents of selfishness and mean-spiritedness.

Well, let's assume that convicted swindler Bernie Madoff has been released from prison. Bernie gets together with Louisiana televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and former Chicago governor Rod Blagojevich.

These guys come up with a healthcare plan that will ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage. It's 2,000 pages long, and no one involved in the process of compiling the plan will admit to reading the whole thing. It's identical to the plan under review in Congress, but with Bernie, Jimmy, and Rod administering the system.

The U.S. government is seriously considering implementing the Madoff/Swaggart/Blagojevich healthcare plan, and allowing those three gentlement and their followers to run the program.

If you oppose this plan, does this mean you want to see uninsured babies die?

Does your opposition to this con game mean that you are mean-spirited or selfish?

Is their anything, anything at all, in the past history of Madoff/Swaggart/Blagojevich that leads anyone to believe they could honestly and effectively administer something as massive as the American medical system

And finally, the U.S. government has spent $12,000,000,000,000.00 more than its income. (That's 12 trillion, if you lose count of the zeroes.) At worst, Madoff/Swaggart/Blagojevich have cost their unfortunate followers 20 billion. At best, they have displayed a certain (ahem) entrepreneurial zeal.

Are you a selfish bastard if you oppose the genuine healthcare reform program or the M/S/B reform program? And if you had to choose one over the other, which one would it be?

The cool pics came from Photobucket.

The Forecast for the Free-Market: Stormy

My first guest blogger this week (while I'm on vacation) is Stephen Smith, caretaker of the Beginner's Guide To Freedom blog. (One of his earlier posts, which Stephen wrote shortly after his run as a Libertarian for the Texas State Senate, is the best thing I've ever read on the relationship between money, The Mommy and Daddy Party, and elections.)

In the following essay about the possible end of the Free Market that has done so much for us during the lastt two centuries, Stephen makes an unlikely analogy between The Chairman and unh...me. I'm not Frank, Dean-0, Sammy, or even the Joey Bishop of the local libertarians. I'm merely the Shawn Levy, doing his best to write down what is happening.
Here's Stephen:

This writing under a deadline stuff is hard. Unlike the author of The Whited Sepulchre, I’m not accustomed to writing on a daily basis. Usually I just wait for some item in the news to strike me in the right way, and I knock out a page or two whenever the mood is right. But, hey - when Frank Sinatra calls up Peter Lawford to open for him in Vegas, Peter doesn’t complain that he’s not “feeling it” that day. Peter just shows up and tries not to disappoint Frankie. So I’m happy to play Peter Lawford to The Whited Sepulchre’s Frank Sinatra today.

The topic this week is, “Whiter Libertarianism?” or something to that effect. I’ve been searching diligently for an optimistic angle here, but sadly I have found none. As I scan the economic landscape, all I see are dark clouds. As I write these words, the federal government is in full panic mode, desperate to print more money and nationalize ever-larger sectors of the American economy.

One of the big stories in the news this week involves Bernard Madoff, a Wall Street financier accused of defrauding investors of $50 billion. The Securities and Exchange Commission is describing Mr. Madoff’s activities as “the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.” Apparently the SEC has never heard of Social Security or Medicare. The SEC has also admitted to ignoring Mr. Madoff’s malfeasance for over a decade. In true Washington fashion, the SEC’s admitted incompetence is being used to justify increasing its budget and power. Maybe I should try that at my office. “Sorry, boss, but I just haven’t felt like doing much work these last few months. Guess that means I’m due for a promotion and a raise, huh?” It must sound better when pitched to a Congressional committee.

I don’t mean to make light of the Madoff story. If he is indeed guilty of fraud, then he should be prosecuted accordingly. But I find it fascinating that the press makes so much of a $50 billion private scandal while it enthusiastically cheers the $8 trillion public scandal being perpetrated by the federal government in the form of bailouts and outright takeovers of private sector enterprises. I’m no journalist, of course, but it seems to me that some basic questions simply aren’t being asked. Like, “Hey, Bernanke! Where are you getting the $8 trillion, exactly?” Or perhaps that question has already been answered now that the Fed has cut the federal funds rate to zero.

These issues do not bode well for us free-market types. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, “Laissez-faire is finished.” No doubt he is correct in his summation, but laissez-faire capitalism has been dead for nigh on a century. The idea that the current Keynesian nightmare threatening to plunge the planet into an even Greater Depression is somehow the result of free-market capitalism is patently ridiculous. The seeds of the crisis date back to at least the New Deal, and what we’re witnessing today is a perfect storm of decades of government intervention in the marketplace. The fact that President Bush has “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system” (just as he abandoned Constitutional principles of individual liberty to protect freedom) is simply one more nail in capitalism’s coffin. Since Barack Obama never had any free market principles to abandon, I suspect things will get even worse in the years to come.

As I have often said, libertarianism is for those of us who would rather be right than popular. The recent economic headlines have only confirmed that viewpoint. So it looks like we’re going to be even less popular over the next few years than we have been up to this point (if you can imagine such a thing). Nevertheless, we will continue to be right. We may have to work harder to make ourselves heard, but individual liberty and the free market go hand in hand - one cannot survive without the other. It will be up to us to defend both. No one else will.

That's what you get when you read "A Beginner's Guide To Freedom". Great, great stuff. Thank you, Stephen Smith !