Mr. Kuttner,
Leftists
often analyse history and highlight institutional conflicts better
than purblind Rightists (after all, the whole doctrine of the
former is about the clash of class interests competing for economic
control), but they always fail at the juncture of true cause and
effective remedy.
Though nearly
all of what you have to say regarding the marrow-deep corruption
of the present era is true, what you give no hint of understanding
is that government itself brought this about, not a market
which is therefore decidedly not a 'free' one.
Government
allowed deposit banks to function as "fraudulent warehouses"
in the first place. Government extended them and other corporate
bodies the privileged protection of limited liability for doing
wrong. Government forced its subjects to accept its IOUs as money.
Government founded the Fed. Government went off gold. Government
favoured debt over equity (both via preferential tax treatment
and perpetual inflation). Government set up agencies to over-promote
home ownership. Government instituted the next great office of
"moral hazard" with the FDIC of which you so approve.
Government routinely bails out and reinflates all failures which
repeatedly shake the gimcrack system which has been its result.
So, no, Mr
Kuttner, we will not remove all conflicts and enhance stability
by a return to the Depression-extending, soft tyranny of your
beloved, Mussolini-inspired New Deal, but only by a return to
sound money and the strict and consistent rule of law.
Banking and
money are themselves the intrinsic problem. The question of whether
or not the rules and regulations of the day are doing a good enough
job of covering up the flaws inherent in banking’s anomalous legal
and economic framework is merely a post hoc diversion from a much
more fundamental issue.
Taking but
a few of the present evils to which you allude, if banks were
forced to obey the rules applied to all other custodians of property
– and if, additionally, money were hard and therefore potentially
subject to the same consequences of scarcity as any other good
– highly-leveraged, destabilising speculation would be well nigh
impossible (or, at worst, it would be confined to a kind of specialized,
self-contained, private gambling club); inflationary booms would
be precluded, and capital would be both unblinkingly supervised
– lessening "agency problems at source" – and scrupulously
invested in genuine enterprise, not in the kind of destructive
and debauched financial trickery you so correctly denounce.
Oh, and as
hugely beneficial side effect, overweaning government – the true
bane of our existence, as well as the "bankster's" sword
and shield – would perforce become rigorously constitutional,
minutely accountable, a great deal smaller, and far less intrusive
and arrogant into the bargain!
The cause
of both liberty and prosperity would be enormously advanced as
a consequence and artificial layers of cloying, stable-door bolting
"regulation" could be safely relaxed, with only the
effective oversight of a watchful and self-reliant citizenry needed
to restrict malfeasance and to see that malefactors receive their
just desserts.
You never
know, Mr. Kuttner, but if enough of your fellow Americans come
both to endorse your indictment and to yet to reject your prescriptions,
we might be afforded the chance to put the above assertions to
the test. I say this, for the inescapable conclusion is that,
in all good conscience, your compatriots could only then vote
for the one true alternative to the yelping pack of statist, unimaginative,
self-serving political jackals vying to secure their own four
years as Ozymandias in your upcoming Presidential elections –
namely the estimable Ron Paul.
~ Sean Corrigan
