Link
URL: http://jeffreymiron.com/2010/04/a-policy-trilema-maybe-not/
Quote:
Absent the moral hazards created by policy, private actors will be more cautious about risk. Absent the false assurances of regulation, financial market participants will exercise due diligience and diversification. The economy will experience ups and downs but not depressions, and financial crises will occur but not seriously damage the rest of the economy. This view is fantasy, you say? No, it’s a description of the U.S. economy – roughly – from its inception to the founding of the Fed in 1914. The policies that generate moral hazard were all but absent, and U.S. economic performance was impressive. Recessions and financial panics occurred, but none on the scale of the Great Depression or the Great Recession. Just a coincidence? I think not.
This view is fantasy, you say? No, it’s a description of the U.S. economy – roughly – from its inception to the founding of the Fed in 1914. The policies that generate moral hazard were all but absent, and U.S. economic performance was impressive. Recessions and financial panics occurred, but none on the scale of the Great Depression or the Great Recession.
Just a coincidence? I think not.
Hope someone finds this useful in a debate. (:
Political Atheists Blog
nice find
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
From Harvard? Wow.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
I'm pretty sure Miron is one of the last (if not the last) academic economists to actually believe the "seasonal cycles" version of the business cycle. Though he isn't an Austrian, he is staunchly in favor of free markets.
I have a book by Miron called Drug War Crimes that I used in a paper arguing against the war on flowers, I mean, drugs.
He's a fellow at the CATO Institute. I've seen him many times in debates on FOX and CNN. He's a pretty good debator but you can tell he doesn't have a lot of patience with stupidity. I always look forward to see him. He's also done several educational and libertarian speakings at CATO.