So said Thom Hartmann in an article for the Huffington Post we all laughed at. They’ve since shut off comments on his article [!]. But here’s my full-fledged smash of Hartmann and his views on the financial crisis, taxation, the S&Ls, “deregulation,” and the rest.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/9866/mises-and-hayeck-sic-caused-the-crisis/
Mises and Hayeck [sic] Caused the Crisis
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{ 19 comments }
Wow, you really cocked the gun and pulled the trigger point blank at Thom with that article.
Someone who is only vaguely aware of economics (or any subject matter for that matter) is destined to make the post hoc ergo propter hoc mistake. I’m glad you cited this logical fallacy in Thom’s reasoning. It happens all to often with mainstream media ‘blockheads’.
Actually, there are more informed voices on the left. New Republican Jonathan Chait
READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW
Damn Tom. I sorta feel sorry for the guy after reading that. Talk about tearing someone a new one!
Thorn is a very sad excuse for a person…
“The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/the-real-boston-tea-party_b_187189.html
The good Lord saw fit to combine Henry Hazlitt and H.L. Mencken into one. Thomas Woods rules the day.
Good job. Sometimes you need to be loud with these kids.
Great response! People like Thom bug me to no end.
Daniel: I don’t know much about the history surrounding the Boston Tea Party. What is Hartmann wrong about? What actually happened?
ps. great article Tom. Hartmann is not a very precise thinker.
Pat,
For someone getting picky about what the tea party was about Hartmann got things even more wrong. Sure the tea party was not about “saving money by lowering taxes”. Then again it was not a protest against free market corporations like Walmart.
They were actually protesting the collection of taxes via a government sponsored entity, and the use of that money to install and support government officials over which the colonists would have little control. Little control because 1) They weren’t voting for them and 2) They were not controlling the purse strings.
It was a protest of the Townshend Duty, a tax.
Rewind to today and the tea party protests are in fact partially about disgust with GSEs, and about taxes that will result from the bailouts and spending.
Of course it is NOT about taxation without representation but I didn’t hear anyone shouting that or any signs touting that position at any of the rallies.
Great response, Dr. Woods.
Just one little thing:
Now I’m sporting enough to look past the fact that Hartmann makes two spelling errors in a single economist’s name.
Two? I see three.
“Similarly, the philosophy that playing the game of business and investment without rules (the technical term is Laissez-faire Capitalism) has driven our government since the election of Ronald Reagan, and went on steroids during the last two years of the Clinton administration and throughout the Bush administration. It’s equally wrong, flawed, and insane, and we’re paying a multi-trillion dollar price for it not unlike we are for the war.”
That’s it. The moron lost me right there.
“Tis better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it (Loudly on the radio and in print), and remove all doubt.”
While your reply was an interesting read, it was obviously is a wasted “wrestling with pigs” effort.
There is absolutely no way Hartmann has any idea who either Lionel Robbins or Richard Cantillon was. All you did was to give him two more names to smear via character assassination through association with the incoherent like Greenspin.
The linear flow of speech “was obviously is” a problem for my non-linear thinking!
glad to see the post was shut down guess we won
meltdown was great tom been trumpin every arguement.im young from in new zealand so i know lots of hippies.but hey they are turning or turned the logic getting to much for them.hope we ban our central bank b4 you fed
Look who gets credit for predicting the crisis.
http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/256589/the_thinkers_who_predicted_early_on_many_aspects_of_this_financial_crisis
Read this and see if you dont want to barf!!!
Holy smokes, I just re-read this. I didn’t realize that Hartmann actually said we have had “laissez-faire capitalism” since Reagan (!) and through Clinton’s presidency (!!!).
OUCH.
Holy smokes, I just re-read this. I didn’t realize that Hartmann actually said we have had “laissez-faire capitalism” since Reagan (!) and through Clinton’s presidency (!!!).
OUCH.
“”The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s”"
^I love how Hartmann says that like on practically every single broadcast of his, but it’s pure disingeniousness to imply that tax cuts on a corporation were the cause of the Boston Tea Party. It was anger from rival tea importers that GOVERNMENT had granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea importation, then cut the import tax thus further monopolizing the BEIC and crippling profit opportunities for black market tea importers.
So for Hartmann to take this act of GOVERNMENT monopolization and twist it to say that the American Revolution was about tax cuts for rich corporations either shows he’s consciously exaggerating or proves he’s one of the most ignorant political commentators in history.
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