The latest figures on consumer credit from the Federal Reserve show that consumers are hunkering down, especially on credit card debt. Revolving credit outstanding – mainly credit card debt – fell at an annual rate of 9-3/4 percent in February 2009 from the month before. Revolving credit outstanding fell from $963.5 billion in January to $955.7 billion in February. Pools of securitized assets based on credit card debt fell from $448.1 billion to $440.3 billion. These balances are no longer carried…

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Your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist welcome back special guest co-host Michelle Minton for Episode 35 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We begin with a celebration of human achievement and a peek into the realm of secret government documents. We then investigate how the White House is going to waste another $1 trillion of your money and how the British beer tax has managed to kill off 20,000 jobs. Finally we focus on the history of the scandal-addled Sen. Dodd of…

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From the blog of the great New Jersey-based independent radio station WFMU comes “Little Paper Airplanes,” a music video by the experimental rock band the Sursiks, that should put a smile on the faces of Murray Rothbard devotees — though it is a tad worrying to see monetary disaster find artistic expression. (Notice: strong language.)

(Thanks to Marc Scribner for the WFMU link.)

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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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“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is basing hundreds of billions in emergency lending on credit ratings from companies that gave AAA grades to toxic securities. The Fed has purchased $308.5 billion in commercial paper and lent $631.8 billion” based on appraisals by the bond rating agencies Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch.  So reports Bloomberg News.

Before the financial crisis, we repeatedly warned in vain that these ratings agencies were failing in their job, and that regulations that prevented independent companies from competing with them should…

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The Wall Street Journal editorial got it exactly right:

The Federal Reserve cut rates to historic lows Tuesday, but today it plans to vote to tighten consumer credit — taking away with one hand what it gives with the other. On the agenda is a rule-making that would impose, for the first time, what amount to federal price controls on credit cards.

That’s what the Fed’s proposed amendment to Regulation AA would do. In changes pushed by consumerist groups and grand-standing lawmakers, the proposal would…

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“The dollar yesterday staged one of its biggest one-day drops against the euro and fell to a 13-year low against the Japanese yen as near-zero interest rates and the Federal Reserve’s plan to print vast sums of cash dilute the value of the greenback,” reports the Washington Post today.

“On Monday, the Fed cut . . . the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to each other, from 1 percent to a target range of 0 percent to 0.25 percent, and effectively vowed to print as much…

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Jacob Sullum’s recent column argues that Bush’s auto bailout plan is an unconstitutional violation of separation of powers.  We earlier argued that it was either illegal or unconstitutional. 

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve, with little public awareness, is attempting a financial system bailout far bigger than Congress ever authorized, resulting in one failure after another, as economics professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel explains in a recent editorial.  “All the emergency initiatives of both the Fed and the Treasury since the subprime problem first…

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The Federal Reserve has just cut the federal funds rate for loans to banks to an unprecedentedly low rate — ranging from 0.0% to 0.25% — well below its prior 1 percent rate.  After taking inflation into account, the Fed is literally giving money away.  The Fed’s low interest rates since 2001 helped spawn the current financial crisis and the mortgage bubble, greatly weakening the value of the U.S. dollar and reducing capital investment in the U.S.

The Fed’s rate cut will also have the effect of reducing already…

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Unfettered greed is the suspect many point at to explain the current economic crisis. To some extent, they are right, but it isn’t irrational greed on the part of bank managers or fat cat CEOs. It is the unwieldy bank regulations that forced the entire industry to walk the proverbial plank and then blame it for drowning.

Critics have alternately claimed that over-regulation and under-regulation are the causes for the current crisis. I believe one specific regulation, the Community Reinvestment Act…

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