2010 EPJ Economist of the Year

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Murray Rothbard has been named, post-humously, the 2010 EPJ Economist of the Year, specifically for his work surrounding power elite and their influence on government.

In this day and age of the Internet, it is relatively easy to track and report on the comings and goings of bankers, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan, as they trek to the White House and Treasury for power influence sessions. And, it is relatively easy to see and understand how they operate and dole out cash to themselves, but anyone, who read Rothbard years ago, would have been aware and understood back then.

For example, Murray Rothbard wrote in 1984 (more than 25 years ago!), my emphasis:

Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

Man, Economy, and Stat... Murray N. Rothbard Best Price: $22.75 Buy New $25.00 (as of 07:50 UTC - Details)

Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs.

In 1992, Rothbard wrote (My emphasis):

What is less well-known is that this Big Business – Big Finance – Big Labor – Big Intellectuals and Media alliance has been going on for a long time: certainly since the New Deal. It is little known, for example, that such crucial New Deal statist "reforms" as the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act of the mid-1930s were put into place by a powerful and malevolent alliance of left-technocratic New Deal ideologues, and powerful Big Business leaders: notably John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Industrial Relations Counselors and its successors, and W. Averill Harriman’s Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce…

We can rest assured that the power elite, the crucial special interest groups we have been analyzing, have no sentimental attachment to party labels. Republican? Democrat? Who cares, so long as they are under control by the "right" people. "What’s good for the ______ " is the overriding consideration, and you can fill in the blank with any one of these power elite groups.

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January 3, 2011