04 Feb Some Non-Covid Links
(Don Boudreaux)
No one specifically decided to give the Redditors a smackdown. So everything’s great, then? No! The regulatory environment is not meant to help the little guy. It rigs the system in favor of Big Playerscand incumbent interests. As I have explained elsewhere, “The Dodd–Frank Act creates a regime of discretionary regulation.” It is discretionary because “the regulatory requirements on a nominally private institution vary from firm to firm in ways that are difficult to rationalise or anticipate.” Thus, the regulators are discriminating among individual market participants and applying different rules to different parties even when they have the same legal charter. (That’s how NSCC got classified as “systemically important.”) Not all is for the best in the best of all possible regulatory worlds.
I think we need reform in the regulation of financial markets. But we should reject the error that the problem is “free markets.” When Elizabeth Warren says “It’s a rigged game,” she’s not wrong! But her call for “the SEC to get off their duffs and do their jobs” is asking the fox to do a better job guarding the henhouse. We don’t need moreregulation; we need better regulation. We need the rule of law not only in monetary institutions but in financial markets too. We need to replace the “regulatory leviathan” in financial markets with “a regulatory constitution.”
At this point, I still think zero dollars is the correct amount of stimulus. Based on past experiences, we close the gap by encouraging growth in the private economy, not encouraging growth of government.
Hans Bader also warns against more so-called “stimulus.”
But United Teachers Los Angeles, a union adept at ideological opportunism, says: First things first. Among the preconditions for its members’ returning to classroom teaching, for which they are being paid, the UTLA wants a moratorium on authorizing charter schools (these are public schools, emancipated from micromanagement under collective bargaining agreements that unions negotiate with school districts), a state wealth tax, defunding the police and Medicare-for-all.
Richard Ebeling rightly decries Joe Biden’s spasm of executive orders.
Chris Edwards ponders Biden and labor unions.
John Stossel understands socialism’s ugly reality.
Read the Full Article here: >Cafe HayekCafe Hayek