As everything the government has been doing in a vain effort to reverse the economic collapse amounts to nothing more than public relations, we’re sure to see more of the kind of outlandish responses such as congressional hearings on the Standard & Poor’s system. It won’t surprise me to see some yahoo politician suggest that the real problem lies in the way the Dow Jones Industrial Average is determined: “Why should the present handful of stocks be used as the measure? What about a court action to require the Dow Jones organization to use a different mix?” That’s a variation on Mises’s metaphor about smashing a car’s temperature gauge to deal with an overheated engine!
Should this approach not work, we might next expect the Justice Department to bring criminal actions against those who express “negative” views about the state of the economy. Perhaps the Austrians will be charged with “conspiring to destroy the American economy.” If that doesn’t work, the statists may try to employ Kurt Vonnegut’s ultimate criminal indictment: “suspicion of intent to conspire.”
9:43 am on August 10, 2011
