Daily Articles

Know Your Government

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 1999

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has a new way to protect us and our banks. It proposes a mandatory program for insured nonmember banks called "Know Your Customer." (Member banks are presumably already under such an obligation.) This is not some friendly way for banks to serve us better. No, this is right out of Orwell. Here's what Big ...

Cutthroat Competition and Dead Chickens

by James Bovard April 1, 1999

President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal created much of the moral framework of contemporary political thought. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), a hallmark of Roosevelt's first hundred days in office, symbolizes blind faith in government as moral savior. In a May 17, 1933, message, Roosevelt called for Congress to "provide for the machinery necessary for a great cooperative movement throughout ...

The Costs of War

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 1999

I guess the president was right. He said he couldn't return the budget surplus to the American people because he was not confident we would "spend it right." If "right" means throwing the money down a Balkan rat hole, I am confident we Americans would not have spent it that way if we had been ...

FDR – The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 6

by Ralph Raico April 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Table of Contents In the course of the 1920s, Roosevelt had grown ...

Book Review: The Roosevelt Myth

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1999

The Roosevelt Myth: 50th Anniversary Edition by John T. Flynn (San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1998); 437pages; $24.95. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, there followed a vast outpouring of despair and sadness from one end of the United States to the other. For more than 12 years, FDR had occupied the White House, having won ...

The American Empire Strikes Back

by Sheldon Richman March 25, 1999

Has President's Clinton's renowned luck run out? It may well have. The president, who as a student protested the Vietnam quagmire, now appears to have found a quagmire of his own. His decision to lead NATO into combat against Serbia did two things that formerly looked nearly impossible: it lowered his ...

Preventing Holocausts

by Sheldon Richman March 2, 1999

Life is Beautiful, winner of Academy Awards for best foreign film and best actor (Roberto Benigni), is a remarkable movie. This story about a Jewish Italian father's attempt to shield his son from the Nazis is perhaps the most powerful movie ever made about the Holocaust. The movie makes its impression precisely because it focuses ...

A Libertarian Visits South America

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 1999

Last fall, I was invited to South America by two free-market think tanks — the Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (IEE — Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the Fundación Atlas para una Sociedad Libre (Atlas Foundation for a Free Society) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I thought the readers of Freedom Daily might find my experiences ...

Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 27: Milton Friedman’s Second Thoughts on the Costs of Paper Money

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 ...

Thank You, Mr. President

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 1999

Maybe we should be grateful for and to President Clinton. Not since Richard Nixon has a tenure in the White House illustrated the evils of the political class with such clarity. Every day brings a new lesson. Libertarians get it. Let's hope the rest of America does too. The last few months have been most enlightening. Through much of 1998, ...

Searching for Monsters Abroad

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 1999

In a major foreign policy address delivered recently in San Francisco, President Bill Clinton solemnly affirmed that everything everywhere is the business of the United States. If you ever entertained the thought that we Americans should be free just to live our lives, raise our families, and participate in our ...

Castro’s Abandonment of Socialist Principle

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 1999

Forty years ago, Fidel Castro began his quest to convert Cuba into a socialist paradise. Nationalizing the means of production, the Cuban government became the sole employer, and everyone was required to become a loyal employee of the state. Today, Cuba's socialist system is much like those old, dilapidated ...