The Conservative Muse amuses with a clever poem entitled “An Open Letter to Comrade Obama.”
free market
Posted by E!!
on September 21, 2008
Corruption and Greed, Economy, Fleecing the Taxpayers, Government Spending, Housing, Liberty, Moral Busybodies, Not Good / No Comments
Corruption and Greed, Economy, Fleecing the Taxpayers, Government Spending, Housing, Liberty, Moral Busybodies, Not Good / No Comments
George Will recalls how in 1983 the U.S. government created Fannie Mae to advance its objective of increasing homeownership among Americans.
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In the midst of the dialectic maelstrom re: government bailouts (housing, investment banking, and now the auto industry), it is worth noting that if the matriarchal Nanny State had not baked her sugary, icing-laden Fannie Cake for the homeowner-less masses in the first place, we would not be suffering from these terrible stomach aches today.
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The creation of a quasi-governmental agency that implicitly guaranteed its obligations vis a vis the cash coffers of the American taxpayer so egregiously violated free market principles and common sense that I can scarce fathom how anyone thought it was a recipe worth mixing up to begin with.
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When a legislative prescription calls for one part socialism, we should tear the page to pieces while muttering, “We don’t serve that poison here.”
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I am reminded of this quote:
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”No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” – Mark Twain (1866)
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I shall now go chew on some Pepto tabs and try to quell this ache in my gut…
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(Hat Tip for the Twain quip to this list of 99 great libertarian/free market quotes by the guys over at All American Blogger.)
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(NOTE: The cooking analogies are dedicated to my new friend Kat who is a healthy cooking expert and the lovely much younger trophy wife of Blue Collar Muse. When she gets her blog up and running, I will link it up.)
Posted by E!!
on July 18, 2008
ANWR, Energy Policy, Global Warming, Moral Busybodies, Oil, Senate, Washington D.C. / No Comments
ANWR, Energy Policy, Global Warming, Moral Busybodies, Oil, Senate, Washington D.C. / No Comments
!!
Did anyone else feel the urge to choke the living daylights out of Chuck Schumer this week? If not, you must have missed the Senate floor speech in which he re-opined the tired line that if only the Saudis would produce “half a million barrels more oil a day, the price [of oil] would come down a very significant amount.”
Why does this statement make my blood pressure rise and my fingers twitch?
Because the tiny impact area within ANWR – a size ratio equivalent to a dime on a 4 x 8’ table – is projected to produce ONE MILLION barrels a day, every day, if only we would drill. And because Schumer’s (true) statement that a greater immediate supply would reduce prices falls short of saying what is also true: that even the ANTICIPATION of a greater FUTURE supply would decrease prices in the Now.
Schumer’s other infuriating comment – that more drilling would “stop the speculation that keeps driving up the price of oil” – also missed the proverbial mark. Speculators wouldn’t “stop” if the Saudis drilled more, because speculation in free markets never stops.
Instead, speculators (also known as investors, also known as buyers and sellers, also known as people trying to earn money for their families and futures) would anticipate the increased oil supply, begin to sell for less, continue to drop prices as volume increased, and thus reverse the current market trend of charging a per barrel premium for what is currently a too-scarce commodity.
Perhaps “speculation” would then stop being a dirty word and be seen as what it really is: the natural response of the market to the forces of supply and demand.
For those not convinced that these tenets of ECON 101 are true, please note that we’ve already seen the evidence. As Larry Kudlow reported the other day on NRO, oil prices dropped $9 per barrel the day after the offshore drilling moratorium was lifted by the president. This is no coincidence. It is case-and-point and perfectly illustrates what speculation really IS – not a crime against humanity, but the market doing what markets tend to do: try to anticipate the future and adjust.
It is maddening that the same people who want to spend billions on economy-choking “climate change” measures that might (MIGHT!) reduce temperatures by one quarter degree over the next one-half century cannot see the wisdom of opening a tiny piece of ANWR in return for a sure thing over the next one to ten years.
