Walmart: Yea or Nay?

Good discussion about Walmart going on over at Austro-Athenian Empire, one of my favorite places to hang out on the Net. Have a look. We don't know exactly how things would be in a laissez-faire economy, but I tend to think big companies like Walmart have a corporate-state advantage over smaller and yet-to-be-founded companies. I don't care that Walmart might look the same in a free(d) market. What matters is why it is in its current state. If a billionaire made his money through state advantage, no libertarian would say, "It doesn't matter because a guy that smart would be a billionaire in the free market anyway."

Robert Higgs Told Us So

According to Reuters:

The credit crunch is not nearly as severe as the U.S. authorities appear to believe and public data actually suggest world credit markets are functioning remarkably well, a report released on Thursday says.

As a result, governments are pumping masses of public money into the economy across the world because of the difficulties of a few big, vocal banks and industries such as car manufacturing, which would be in difficulty anyway, according to the report published by Celent, a financial services consultancy....

The report, much of which is based on U.S. Federal Reserve data, challenges a long list of assumptions one by one, arguing that there is indeed a financial crisis but that, on aggregate, the problems of a few are by no means those of the many when it comes to obtaining credit....

The picture appeared to be broadly similar in much of Europe and Japan, said the report, based on publicly available data on trends in bank lending to industry, households and among banks themselves in the so-called interbank markets. [Emphasis added.]

The taxpayers are on the hook for over $7 trillion in federal commitments that were supposedly critical to easing the credit crisis. We have been scammed.

Cross-posted at Anything Peaceful.

Hat tip: Steve Horwitz

No Need for Energy Subsidies

For a guy who claims to believe in limited government, President Bush is awfully good at dangling subsidies and threatening coercion when he wants to encourage or discourage something. That’s the lesson to take from his State of the Union Address.

Look at what he said about energy....

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "No Need for Energy Subsidies," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.