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George Soros Is Out To Lunch
[Published in Financial Post on Feb. 21, 1998.]
Dear Editor,
Re: "Market Wizard Not Optimistic About the Future of Capitalism" -- Diane
Francis -- Feb. 14-16, 1998 -- Financial Post
Diane Francis appears to have bought George Soros's assertion that laissez-faire
capitalism is inherently unstable and that government intervention in the economy
is needed to prevent "boom and bust" cycles. Germany's currency collapse
of 1923 and the Great Depression of 1929 were cited as examples.
May I remind them that the U.S. government created the Federal Reserve in 1913 --
a serious blow to laissez-faire capitalism because it handed government, among other
things, the power to inflate the money supply. Germany's currency collapse was caused
by the inflationary policies of the German government, and the Great Depression followed
a period of enormous credit expansion by the Federal Reserve, designed, among other
things, to bail out Germany. The so-called boom and bust cycles are caused by governments
who inflate the money supply (which is only one means of robbing people of their
earnings to fund government spending) and then contract it to prevent runaway inflation.
Soros's proposal to create a "global deposit insurance company attached to the
International Monetary Fund" to bail out irresponsible governments and investors
(such as those behind the recent Asian crisis) and to pay for it by taxing "currency
trades and banking transfers" is no different, in principle, than our domestic
policy of forcing (via taxation) those who are productive and responsible to bail
out those who are not. It's welfare statism on a global scale.
Once again, laissez-faire capitalism gets blamed for the problems caused by statism,
and more statism gets offered as the cure for statism.
Cheers!
Glenn Woiceshyn
p.s. When someone is called a "socialist," the meaning is that he advocates
the principles socialism whether he practices them or not. But when someone like
Soros is called a "capitalist" the meaning is that he allegedly practices
capitalism even though he opposes the principles underlying capitalism. It's time
to be consistent and call Soros an anti-capitalist -- which is what he certainly
is. [Note -- the p.s. was not published.]
© 1998 Glenn Woiceshyn.
All rights reserved. This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
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