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As reported in Business Week’s BTW section, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently studied the word associations people have with various free-market terms.

The results were not surprising; some terms that generally mean the same thing bring starkly different associations. The piece quotes Rich Thau, who ran the testing, as saying:

“There were those who associated ‘capitalism’ with greed and with the powerful dominating the vulnerable.” But those negatives, he says, didn’t apply at all to “free enterprise.”

Call it capitalism or free enterprise;…

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We’ve all heard it before: “Oh, capitalism may be better than some alternatives, but it is still a bad way to go.” This is a commonly held view by many people around the world, that although better than socialism, capitalism is not the best way to promote economic growth.

For advocates of the free market, this can be one of the most annoying things to hear. How could capitalism, the system of free enterprise that has created massive quantities of wealth…

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There are many reasons for free-market advocates to be unhappy about current affairs. With numerous pieces of legislation being proposed to put shackles on our economy, it can be quite easy to take a pessimistic outlook on the present state of free markets. But sometimes to be optimistic you just need to look for the silver lining on otherwise dark clouds. Today’s dark cloud: news sources are reporting that a widespread outbreak of blight, the mold responsible for the Irish…

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“Mars Sets Goal for Sustainable Cocoa Sources”

Another Washington Post story suggests that “sustainability” –whatever it may mean — still can stir the cold hearts of capitalist managers.  Utopians have long been distressed by the differential working conditions around the world.  Poverty does have less pleasant impacts than affluence.  The problem is that associated with all egalitarian policies.

Our desire to improve the plight of the poor too often merely cuts away the rungs on the ladder out of poverty.

…

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During the G20 summit something like 40,000 plus protesters slated to descend upon London. Of that number, there is a small but growing and prodigiously brave group of idealists planning to throw their message and bodies into the breach. They are not there to demand government action against climate change, stricter business regulations, nor are they requesting money for the poor, hungry, or infirm. Their message is simple, but profound: Get out of our way.

This small band, comprised mostly of university…

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With the G-20 meeting looming in the midst of a worldwide recession, President Barack Obama sent an essay published today in about 30 newspapers to urge world leaders to work together to take “bold, comprehensive and coordinated action that not only jump-starts recovery, but also launches a new era of economic engagement to prevent a crisis like this from ever happening again.”

In his essay, Obama puts blame on the financial institutions for causing the crisis and the “absence of oversight.”

We must put…

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I revoke my previous apology to the Swiss, and reiterate my previous disapproval.  As evidenced by the latest outcome in the U.S. tax case involving UBS, we have moved beyond troubling and into something much worse.

...the world’s largest wealth manager in terms of assets, agreed to pay a $780 million fine and disclose information about some of its clients to settle a landmark U.S. tax case.

As I said in my older post: “In direct contradiction to their own legal view of tax evasion. …

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Our friends at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights are hosting what promises to be a fascinating public lecture on the state of the U.S. economy and what it means for the future of capitalism. Former CEO and current Board Chairman of BB&T bank, John Allison, will explain the interventionist government policies that brought us where we are today and their anti-capitalist underpinnings.

Location and Details:

The Financial Crisis: Causes and Possible Cures
Thursday, January 29, 2009

National Building Museum—Great Hall
401 F Street NW
Washington,…

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Apple's 1984 "Big Brother" ad

An article over at Ad Age brings up an angle on the whole auto industry bailout probably not considered much before.  The fact that a yet-to-be-appointed “car czar” will have control over a multibillion dollar advertising budget for the big three.  Under the guise of “oversight,” this would effectively “Create World’s Most Powerful Marketing Exec[utive].”  

The draft rescue plan for Detroit sent to the White House by Congress yesterday calls for the appointment of a “car czar”…

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Our simplest and best answer to the whole bailout issue, it seems to me, is that creative destruction has to be allowed to take place. But creative destruction is destruction, and hurts a lot of people. When Mrs Thatcher closed down the horrendously inefficient mining and shipbuilding industries in my native North-East of England, huge numbers lost their jobs. In my home town there was 50% adult male unemployment. “Thatcher,” not the names of people who propped up the failing…

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With respect to the ongoing series of bailouts, my colleague Iain Murray pointed out that some sensible British commentators note that one of the ways to prevent entities from becoming “Too Big to Fail” is to engage in more vigorous antitrust activity.

I’m very, very skeptical of their idea, however. Speaking of entities Too Big To Fail, perhaps the gravest threat we face now is the federal government’s further collectivizing of risk, and unconstrained assumption of authority over virtually all…

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Did the free market cause the financial crisis?  Was it unbridled capitalism?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Taxpayers Union don’t believe for a minute that capitalism caused the financial crisis.  How can we be so confident?  Because capitalism doesn’t exist in the United States, especially in the financial sector.

Nearly every industry in the U.S. finds itself making regular pilgrimages to Washington to seek special favors—subsidies for this or that, regulations that harm competitors or smaller firms, or trade deals that benefit…

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It will actually divert money to the Treasury from commercial lending. Naked Capitalism has more, concluding:

When Paulson dumps out his 700 billion in treasuries it’s going to be at the short end. That will drive up rates for short-term treasuries. This will obviously draw even *more* deposits into the treasury MMs. That means even less in the commercial MMs and thus less working credit, the eventual commercial MM product. Hence Paulson’s billions remove working capital by competing for the deposits that…

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There are all sorts of people today who normally talk about free markets but who have got themselves into a tizzy over the failed bailout. We need to get one thing straight - the bailout was the wrong answer to the wrong question. To begin with, the plan was merely postponing the inevitable, as a letter in the Wall Street Journal pointed out this morning:

The lesson of past financial inflection points is that we must let the markets reallocate capital from…

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The glee in European capitals at the woes of “Anglo-Saxon” capitalism is tangible. Sarkozy and the German finance minister pile on, with Sarkozy saying, “Self-regulation as a way of solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.” Peer Steinbruck, meanwhile, claims that this would have all been avoided if Washington hadn’t laughed at German proposals for stricter regulation…

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Time magazine contributors Andy Serwer and Allan Sloan give us an article in the latest issue meant to explain what is going own with the current financial crisis (better explained here).    Serwer and Sloan, for all their “combined 65 years of writing about business” can’t seem to produce any coherent or unbiased reporting on this crisis and the reasons for it.  They just fall back lazily on an argument that has been circulating the last few days, placing the blame at the…

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Some people seem to think that having a mind for business and profit means you must be some kind of money-grubbing miser. Far from it, according to new research featured at the Insider Online. It seems that entrepreneurs give more generously to charitable causes, at every level of income, than non-entrepreneurs. Go figure.

Read the whole paper here.

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