Why Congress Investigates Enron by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002 Members of Congress are certainly licking their chops over the Enron affair. Now why would that be? Could it be that they cannot resist investigating a company that apparently lied to the public, misrepresented its financial situation, kept lousy records, engaged in conflicts of interest, and acted covertly? Wait, that sounds ...
Bush Betrays Free Enterprise by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2002 There’s no longer any excuse for thinking that President Bush is a champion of free-enterprise capitalism. The week of March 4 sealed the question. He began the week by imposing tariffs up to 30 percent on imported steel. True, he didn’t give the industry and the steelworkers all that they wanted. He ...
Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: Freedom of Trade, Part 1 by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 BEFORE THE 19TH CENTURY, governments in the major European countries and their colonial empires around the world took it for granted that they had both the right and responsibility to control and direct the economic activities of their subjects. Indeed, the lands and peoples in these countries were considered to be the property of ...
Netscape Gets the Green by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2002 Imagine the nerve of a company that gives away its product in an attempt to knock off the dominant firm in an industry. I have one such company in mind right now. It went all out to make it easy for consumers to have free access to its product. You couldn’t ...
Slave to the Olympics by Bart Frazier February 1, 2002 Getting up to answer the knock at your door, you open it to find a police officer standing stiffly, fidgeting with his nightstick. “Mr. Jones, I am here for the soccer field”, he says tersely. “Soccer field?” you say. “I don’t get it.”
Farmers: Get a Job! by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2002 It kind of makes me wonder what country I'm living in when I pick up the newspaper and read this from the Associated Press: "With crop prices mired near record lows, the government says farm earnings will drop 20 percent this year unless Congress enacts a new farm program or approves ...
Government Needs to Lose Weight by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2002 How ironic that just as an already-bloated government is taking on major new powers, it is exhorting us to lose weight. But that’s exactly what Surgeon General David Satcher is calling for. In his recently released “Call To Action To Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity,” Satcher writes, “Our ...
What the Enron Bankruptcy Doesn’t Mean by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2002 A big company fails, maybe even commits wrongdoing, and in some people’s eyes that proves free markets are bad. This is what passes for logic these days. The full story on Enron is not known yet. But for the sake of discussion, let’s assume the worst: namely, that company management deliberately ...
Regulation Gave Us the Enron Scandal by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2002 When pundits and politicians say the Enron scandal demonstrates the need for federal regulation of business, you have to be a little suspicious. They think everything demonstrates the need for federal regulation of business. It’s a reflex, that’s all. What seems to have been forgotten in all the blather about ...
Anti-Dumping Laws by Robert W. McGee February 1, 2002 ANTI-DUMPING LAWS have been with us since the early decades of the 20th century. Ostensibly aimed at preventing unfair trade practices, they have in recent decades been used mostly to punish foreign producers for offering their products to domestic consumers at low prices. Rather than being used to protect the public (from low prices), they have been used to ...
The Value of Athletes by Bart Frazier January 1, 2002 Some people complain that professional athletes make too much money -- that the salaries they receive are ridiculously high, perhaps even immoral. But is this actually the case? Aren't athletes' salaries, like everyone else's in the private sector, ultimately determined by the desires or demand of consumers? Isn't that how the value ...
The Free Market Is Indomitable by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2001 Deep in the November 14 New York Times report on the liberation of Kabul there was this perhaps little-noticed paragraph: "Food appeared plentiful. A central market that lines the road leading into the city had large amounts of fresh meat for sale, fruit juices from Iran and even Coca-Cola, a ...