Many industries in the modern economy are ridiculed for the financing strategies they employ.  Only marginal cost pricing is defended as a legitimate practice.  Yet it is infeasible for industries with high fixed costs and low production costs to rely on marginal cost pricing.   The diverse approaches of these industries include: bundling/unbundling as with service contracts and supporting software, market segmentation by Saturday night layovers, time release strategies for books and DVDs,  encryption, intellectual property rules, specialized marketing channels as…

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Oh, Happy Day! And it certainly is for all those who value freedom, responsibility and the true free market in which individuals are free to profit from their risks on the condition that they don’t stick the rest of us with their losses.

It’s not hyperbole to say the Republican and Democratic backbenchers who defied both parties’ leadership to defeat this $700 billion package of Wall Street socialism literally saved America. Whatever their reasons, this defeat (or rather victory for freedom),…

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Rad Berky of NewsChannel 36 in Charlotte, North Carolina reports that fears of Hurricane Ike disrupting the supply of gasoline has caused massive runs on gas stations. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by CEI’s Vice President for Policy, Wayne Crews, who is currently with family in North Carolina and witnessing the shortages first hand. Berky reports that:

Even with the higher prices, [CITGO station owner Bipin] Ganhdi ran out of gas by mid-afternoon Friday. He is hoping his next shipment…

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On the front page of the Washington Post, writer Steven Pearlstein contradicts himself by writing that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being “rescued from the harsh discipline of markets and the consequences of their own misjudgments,” undercutting arguments for “privatization, deregulation, and a faith in free markets.”

But the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is hardly an indictment of the free market: Fannie and Freddie are “Government-Sponsored Enterprises,” not products of the free market or the…

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