In his article, "The false ideology that caused our financial failure", Ed Martin attempts to blame our present economic problems on the nonexistent free market. Ignoring the fact that the problems were caused by government interference in the economy, a fact that can't be stressed enough. Markets can recover from this interference if left alone. The fact that the Great Depression got as bad as it did and lasted as long as it did compared to the shorter Panic of 1893, for example, are proof of this. In the former the government, starting under Hoover, intervened massively, in the latter the government repealed monetary regulation and the economy recovered.
Let's talk about Anheuser-Busch and InBev. Last I heard foreign investment was a good way to help the economy grow. Many countries seek it out. As Mr. Martin points out 1,185 jobs were already scheduled to end. He doesn't see that the Belgian money spent here will create other jobs in other companies and if they save Anheuser-Busch more jobs will be created there. As Henry Hazlitt put it in his book "Economics In One Lesson":
the art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
On the subject of regulation Mr. Martin says that Mr. Rockwell's view is, "...the only solution to problems caused by deregulation is no regulation at all." The self contradictory nature of this sentence is obvious. If deregulation had actually occurred there wouldn't be regulations to remove.
Another point, Mr. Martin says that US banks are unregulated:
"Rockwell ignores the fact that the US banks are not so prudent because of the market economy with no regulation or interference that is the basis of his economic beliefs,..."
Banks unregulated? That's like claiming that the moon is made of green cheese. Banks are very tightly controlled. Just go out and try to open the Martin Bank tomorrow and you'll see.
Mr. Martin's last paragraph really drives the point home:
The danger of Rockwell's ideology is that there are people who can be misled into believing in it and because of those misleading beliefs will do whatever they can to prevent the steps needed to be taken to reinstitute the regulations needed to prevent the fraud, manipulation, price gouging, cheating and stealing that is the obvious, direct result of the unregulated, Lew Rockwell style free market economy that has left us where we are today. As we have seen in the free market economy, the crooks, the liars, the thieves are given the perfect, unregulated opportunity to rise to the top.
Mr. Martin doesn't even know what he's criticizing. We are far from living in a libertarian free market, that's why Mr. Rockwell, et al write so many articles critical of the present regime. What we see today is the rising to the top of so many evil people through the government and it's interventions in the economy.
Also ignored in this article is the role central banking has played in creating the bubble economy that burst. This is obviously the government all the way. Mr. Rockwell has long advocated eliminating the Federal Reserve Board in favor of free banking.
It's this kind of ignorance that makes "The false ideology that caused our financial failure" so ridiculous.
