There are some real gems in Alan Greenspan’s new book, The Age of Turbulence.

Aside from shamelessly running away from the charge that the Fed, under his guidance, created the funny money housing boom that has since gone terribly bust,Greenspan drops at least two other whoppers. One, is that he now believes that “there can be little doubt that global warming is real and manmade.” { p. 454} (No footnotes, no citations). Worse, several pages later Greenspan asserts that he is now in favor of sharply higher gasoline taxes to help “wean us off gasoline powered motor vehicles.” Higher gas taxes unpopular? No big deal says Alan. “I consider the argument that gasoline tax hikes are politically infeasible irrelevant. Sometimes the duty of political leadership is to convince constituencies that they are just plain wrong.” {462}

Presidential election years usually are not recessionary but next year will be an exception. Several economic factors are colliding in an almost perfect storm to markedly slow the general economy and the stock market.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to “inflate” our way out of this recession this time. We will simply have to take our lumps and let market forces liquidate the bulk of the malinvestments caused by the unprecedented Greenspan money bubble. This liquidation process will not be pretty but it is necessary to restore a sustainable economic recovery in the years ahead. FULL ARTICLE

The medical marijuana case decided June 6th (GONZALES v RAICH, ET AL.) in favor of the government (6-3) was an easy slam dunk. Still, there are many problems with the majority opinion written by Justice Stevens. As Justice Thomas argues in his brilliant dissent, if growing 6 marijuana plants on your own property for your own consumption is “economic activity” that can “affect” interstate commerce, then there is absolutely nothing under the economic sun (including pot luck dinners) that cannot be regulated by the federal congress. But, clearly, that was not the intent of the framers of the Constitution. FULL ARTICLE

One of the most controversial areas in Austrian economics is monopoly theory. The differences are not merely semantic, nor are they confined to detail or some minor theoretical implication. Rather, there are major and fundamental disagreements: wholly different theories concerning the definition of monopoly, the origins of monopoly, and the supposed effects of monopoly on consumer sovereignty and efficient resource allocation. FULL ARTICLE

European antitrust regulators have taken the worst of American antitrust “analysis” and made it even worse, that is, even more blatantly protectionist of competitors and dismissive of consumer welfare. Antitrust law is one U.S. export that both U.S. and European consumers could well do without. The recent EU attack on Microsoft shows why. [Full Article]