Politics

Short Memo on AIG Bailout

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Bailouts are wrong, but the government had always implied that it would stand behind mortgage securities sold by the GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The deeper wrong was the government’s creation of the GSEs, which financed homes for the poor on promises of someday robbing the rich. That day has come. And now the […]

Politics

AIG is Left Holding the Government’s Bag

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1. The U.S. government, armed with the Community Reinvestment Act, forces banks to make home loans to people who cannot afford to repay the loans. At the same time … 2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)—create a credit-scoring formula with a very low qualifying score. They give this formula to banks and say, […]

Politics

The Surge in Ayn Rand

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Betsy Speicher alerted me yesterday to the fact that “As of right now, Atlas Shrugged is the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in the category ‘Literature & Fiction.’” At the same time, another edition of the novel was ranked #6, and The Fountainhead was ranked #23. As of this morning, three different editions of Atlas […]

Politics

Madoff is Small Potatoes …

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… Compared to Governments. Bernard Madoff has confessed to a Ponzi scheme whereby he swindled investors of billions of dollars. “In court documents, prosecutors say Madoff reported he oversaw $64.8 billion.” Multiply that staggering amount of money by 3,000, and you get roughly the amount of money that Americans have lost over the past two […]

Politics

Immoral, Impractical Socialized Medicine

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In his March 7th weekly address, Obama said this: [B]ecause we cannot bring our deficit down or grow our economy without tackling the skyrocketing cost of health care, I held a health care summit on Thursday to begin the long-overdue process of reform. Our ideas and opinions about how to achieve this reform will vary, […]

Politics

To the Wealthiest Five Percent

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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke to the joint US Congress in Washington yesterday, and received numerous standing ovations. Here is an excerpt of what Brown said. My father was a Minister of the Church and I have learned again what I was taught by him: that wealth should help more than the wealthy, that […]

Politics

Tyrant at “the Helm”

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In a press briefing with Gordon Brown yesterday, Obama said The Prime Minister has taken the helm of the British economy. One can only conclude that Obama thinks there is a “helm” to the American economy too. In a free society, the economy is the sum of production and trades of goods and services. There […]

Politics

Obama vs. Ayn Rand

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In his Weekly Address yesterday, Obama said, “I didn’t come here to do the same things we’ve been doing … .” After all, Obama is for “change.” Before Obama took over the country, and even before Bush’s 2008 financial bailouts, federal, state, and local governments were spending the astronomical sum of roughly $5 trillion dollars […]

Politics

Obama Seeks “Cure for Cancer” …

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… by Stamping Out Freedom. In his address before a joint session of Congress last night, Obama dictated his plan for America, to be financed and “serviced” by productive Americans. Obama will take from individuals the wealth that they created and needed for their own plans. The dictator’s plan comes first. Obama: “[T]he budget I […]