The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Long Arm of the Law School

9.22.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

After all, I have a CVS and a Walgreen's within three blocks of each other. No violence occurs between them, and I bet they don't engage in human trafficking. You see, legal businesses do not engage in this kind of behavior.
-- Charles Campbell
Austin, Texas

WHY STOP AT 100?
Re: Lawrence Henry's How to Read a Hundred Books:

Stop reading crap.

Try:

Alan Furst: His WWII-era spy novels are unsurpassed.

Patrick O'Brian: His Aubrey-Maturin series of sea novels are treasures of language and wit.

Arturo Perez-Reverte: Available now in English, his work in translation is better than many written in English.
-- Mike Walsh

Have you tried any of the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser?
-- Merlin Perkins
Bridgeport, Washington

Mr. Henry, next time you are perusing T. Jefferson Parker books, let your eye wander down to fellow Bostonian and the greatest living detective/mystery writer alive today, Robert P. Parker. If you are disappointed, the why will be a mystery to millions of readers.
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

Try reading Wolfwhistle by Lewis Nordan...
-- Dan

BANKERS WILL BE BANKERS
Re: Barron Thomas's After the Earthquake:

In response to Barron Thomas's "After the Earthquake," I would say that it's popular, and fun, to characterize Wall Street execs as mischievous boys who the Feds have to spank, but reality is much different. Wall Street execs are very smart, usually much smarter than the regulators overseeing them. That begs the question that if they're so smart, why do they make mistakes that appear so dumb in hindsight? And why do they all make the same mistakes at the same time? Shouldn't some have made mistakes while others didn't?

You won't find the answers to these questions in mainstream economics. Only Austrian economics (Mises, Hayek, Rothbard) offers any explanation. According to Austrian economics, the Federal Reserve distorts prices, such as interest rates, with loose monetary policies, which cause unnaturally low interest rates. Anyone sucked into borrowing money at the low rates will regret it later when rates rise again, and they always rise again because the low interest rates cause price inflation. Some of the Wall Street execs are smart enough to see the trap, but for a while (maybe years) their competitors make a lot of money by borrowing at the lower rates. Eventually, shareholders, board members, and the financial press, all of whom envy the high returns of the competition, put enough pressure on those execs that they cave in and borrow at the low rates. After everyone has borrowed and invested at the artificially low rates, price inflation raises its ugly head and the Feds are forced to raise rates to kill the monster. Or rates naturally rise without Fed action because inflation is a major component of interest rates. In addition, the low interest rates have spurred overproduction in some areas, such as housing. When that overproduction becomes widely known, the prices of those items, such as housing, collapse.

So I don't think Wall Street execs are just mischievous boys. They're intelligent men sucked into a trap laid by the Federal Reserve every time the Feds think they can stimulate the economy. The Feds aren't stupid, either. They just follow a flawed economic model.
-- Roger D. McKinney
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

The only way to fix the financial scourge on Wall Street is to first start with the root cause of that problem, and that problem is government and its extensive and vast network of political cronyism. During the 1990's social engineering was the rage of the day. Social engineering was going to be nuclear device of the left to forcibly correct through the police powers of the government and put right all the envisioned social injustices.

Letter to the Editor

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