It is often claimed that the disaster was produced by deregulation. What deregulation you may ask? Well, mostly, the dismantling of Glass-Steagall. I don’t think dismantling Glass-Steagall caused the crisis, but it is undeniable that if Glass-Steagall had remained in effect, the crisis would have been far less severe, for Glass-Steagall restrained financial institutions from being too big to fail. It was the biggest institutions, the institutions too big to …
Mortgage Fraud, predatory borrowing:
There have been numberless highly successful prosecutions for predatory lending, even though there is no plausible evidence that predatory lending has ever happened in recent decades, nor has such evidence ever been presented in court, nor is it plausible that predatory lending could be profitable except for lenders who break the borrowers legs and arms in the event of default.
Once upon a time, the living dead were scary
Miller tells us that a society that has difficulty recognizing monsters in its art, will probably have trouble recognizing terrorists at its airports.
Why socialism needs killing fields
Bryan Caplan asked why socialism turned out evil and proposed three competing explanations. Volokh Conspiracy followed up, and a horde of socialists appeared out of the wood work, objecting to the premise of the question, claiming that socialism was just fine. So time to re-run my golden oldie: Why socialism needs killing fields.Â
In favor of war
Bad people are always willing to fight. If good people are not willing to fight, they will surrender in a succession of small steps, and bad people will rule. Without England declaring war, the Nazis would have ruled by 1942. Without Reagan encouraging a multitude of small wars, the communists would have ruled by 1990
Capital Controls
Capital controls are characteristic of third world dictatorships teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. And now America has capital controls.
How much ruin in a nation?
On the one hand, there is a lot of ruin in a nation. On the other hand, that which cannot continue, will stop. The present level of government spending is unsustainable. At what point then, do we get general collapse?
No moderate Islam, and not many moderate Muslims
How many Muslims are moderate? In the recent Iraq election, moderates gained, just barely, a plurality. Not a majority, a plurality. To govern, they will need the support of some violently immoderate people. They have a plurality because the various different kinds of extremist hate each other, splitting the extremist vote.
The Obamized future
America was the place where the future was created. All the world depended on America for progress. It ceased to be that place under Clinton, and things got worse under Bush. We cannot rebuild the two towers, we no longer have a human presence in space, and the next big thing on the internet, networked money that bypasses our legacy banking system, is coming from China, and, God-help-us, Africa. Remember …
No men on the left
A leftist women, who merely wants humans to return to the stone age, was publicizing her book criticizing the far left, who want to get rid of humans altogether (They want the stone age with no killing of non human animals, an arrangement where one’s life expectancy would be measured in weeks.) A bunch of far leftists attacked her. They did not throw pies at her, they punched her with …