Corporatist Pigs!
Via Mises.org:
Throngs of tweenies rushed to buy their copies of the June 2009 issue of Rolling Stone, eager to read about the adorable Jonas Brothers. As they flipped it open, questions rushed through their heads: “Are they on tour?” “Do they have girlfriends?” “What do they look for in a girl?”
What those girls weren’t asking themselves was “How was Goldman Sachs, the world’s most profitable investment bank, involved in creating the current financial crisis?” But that didn’t stop Matt Taibbi from answering that question in the same issue of Rolling Stone, in his article, “The Great American Bubble Machine.”
Interestingly, in a November 9, 2007, interview with Marty Beckerman of Reason, Taibbi actually described himself as “more of a libertarian than anything else.” Unfortunately, in keeping with Rolling Stone‘s dominant line, Taibbi’s attack on Goldman Sachs was quite antimarket. He coolly placed the blame for the US financial crisis on the shoulders of this lone company.
However, he did manage to illuminate the bank’s relationship with government regulators and the Federal Reserve. As the saying goes, “even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
…Taibbi first characterizes the corruption at Goldman Sachs as an inevitable result of “free markets and free elections,” then argues that it was made possible by “the aid of a crippled and corrupt state.” So, which is it? The free markets or the state-sanctioned corruption? These are entirely different arguments and they must be carefully treated as such.
I will be the first to argue against the state aiding and abetting corporations. Among the advocates of the laissez-faire system, there is a clear understanding that such aid is corporatism or corporate socialism.
Yet in all such schemes, the hand of government regulators is disguised so well that when the scheme fails, most people see the puppet but overlook the puppet master. Perhaps Taibbi can be forgiven for the error. After all, we have been witness to numerous such shell games at the hands of government.
Read the full article here
Tags: politics-economcy
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