h/t to The Circle Bastiat
Detlev Schlichter reviews the new book by former Reagan OMB-head, David Stockman, called The Great Deformation. While I usually avoid books like this, I may have to make an exception for Stockman, who has been getting some attention with his promotion of this book via opinion pieces around the internet. Since I almost never watch television and listen to talk-radio less and less, I don't know if he has been making the rounds of the various shows or popping up on Fox.
From Schlichter's review, it appears that Stockman demolishes several systemic falsehoods (I love "myths" too much to have it sullied here) about the free market, the Federal Reserve, the gold standard, and sound money. Stockman documents and highlights what some of us sense and perhaps have trouble articulating. We are not operating in a "free market" system. The financial markets and the Federal Reserve are joined at the hip. Since the Fed is essentially funding and enabling the growth of government, we operate under a Frankenstein-like government-corporate amalgam which really does allow the gap between rich and poor to widen while decimating the productive middle and working class.
Giving "more control" to the government is simply moving the cattle prod from the right hand to the left.
Anyway, read the review. If I can pick up a copy of The Great Deformation, I may post some thoughts on it here. No promises, though, my free time is rapidly dissipating as the weather finally warms up.
Might be fun to read by the woodstove by the light of the Aladin lamp a few years hence.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad he mentions how the financiers' wealth is not honestly made. I've always thought they made too much money for what they did but I would then tell myself that I'm just being jealous and a man should be allowed to make what the free market will pay him. But if the market ain't free...
Exactly. They hid behind the illusion of a free market. We would never gripe about how much Bill Gates or Sam Walton or the CEO of General Motors had because -- whatever one might think of their products -- they were just giving people what they wanted. I do, however, object to being mugged regardless of the methodology.
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