The world-wide adoption of a decentralized network that connects everything creates continuous technical, social and policy challenges that no one could have foreseen in 1969. Even as we take the Net for granted, the way we do the air that we breathe, decisions are being made by policy-makers, technologists and end-users that shape its future.
Instead of the left agreeing to cut social spending and the right agreeing to cut military spending, the right agrees to more welfare and the left agrees to more warfare. How long will it be before foreigners stop buying our debt, and hyperinflation arrives?
Many observers claim that the recent overthrow of governments in northern Africa and the Middle East will result in more liberty for individuals across those regions. I sincerely hope this proves to be true, but history is replete with revolutions that began as a cry for freedom against oppressive governments but ended badly.
Remember the late great Tea Party? The grass roots movement that made the political establishment quake? For one glorious moment it seemed as if a truly independent, average Joe/Joan movement might be gathering steam. A memory from that halcyon time: assorted TV pundits telling Republican leaders that Tea Party people “don’t like you guys either.” [...]
The $99 billion figure merely represents the amount that HR 1 reduces spending from the President's proposed Fiscal Year 2011 budget -- not reductions in actual spending. Trying to claim credit for a reduction in spending based on cuts in proposed spending is like claiming someone is following a diet because he had only five slices of pizza when he intended to have 10 slices!
But none of these explanations can answer why this crisis occurred. Why was there excessive borrowing? Why was there an explosion of subprime lending? Why were there failures in corporate governance? Why did virtually no one except Austrian economists see this coming?
With government now owning or insuring 97% of mortgage bonds via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), taxpayers are on the hook more than ever. And they're paying for new twists. Quoting mortgage fraud attorney L. T. Lafferty, a former federal prosecutor specializing in white collar crime, "fraud is ... perpetrated differently when there are different opportunities."
It should not be surprising that monetary policy is ineffective at creating actual jobs. It is the effects of monetary policy itself that cause the boom and bust of the business cycle that leads to swings in the unemployment rate.
Protesters fed up with political repression, corruption and poverty (particularly recent food price inflation) toppled the government of Tunisia. They threaten to do the same in other countries throughout the Mideast as pundits hail the "Twitter and Facebook revolution." But repressive governments have as much compunction about shutting down communication services as they do about torturing dissidents.
Unemployment continues to plague our economy. In spite of constant claims that we have just turned the corner into recovery, the jobs reports remain grim with no real signs of improvement. While Keynesian economists and big government apologists scratch their heads about persistent unemployment in spite of unprecedented government "investment" in the economy, free market economists understand the problem perfectly well.
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