Author: Douglas French

While Nevada’s public is spared excessive lawmaker interference as its Legislature only meets every other year for 120 consecutive days, this year will be the third in a row the Legislature will be called into special session to vote on a handout for a billionaire. There was a time Nevada was thought to be libertarian, with no income taxes, bars that never close, and good gamble always available. The government was relatively small and the government handouts for business few. When the recently passed Perry Thomas began making bank loans to gambling halls, replacing union slush funds and mob money, … Continue reading →

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Equality is never worshiped so fervently as in an election year. As I write this in the spring of 2016, both the Democrats and the Republicans have competitive races even as the first pitches of the major league baseball season have been thrown. Every stump speech is televised and every politician’s tweet is analyzed.  TV cameras capture lines of hundreds of people, rich and poor, talented and dull, informed and ignorant, all equal (they are assured), in the eyes of their state’s’ election commission, waiting for hours to cast individual votes that mathematically must be inconsequential. The Supreme Court just … Continue reading →

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Equality is never worshiped so fervently as in an election year. As I write this in the spring of 2016, both the Democrats and the Republicans have competitive races even as the first pitches of the major league baseball season have been thrown. Every stump speech is televised and every politician’s tweet is analyzed.  TV cameras capture lines of hundreds of people, rich and poor, talented and dull, informed and ignorant, all equal (they are assured), in the eyes of their state’s’ election commission, waiting for hours to cast individual votes that mathematically must be inconsequential. The Supreme Court just … Continue reading →

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“It’s a straightforward announcement that the Southern District is still in the insider trading prosecution business,” Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, who is now a professor at Columbia Law School told the New York Times when Billy Walters was recently indicted. Business, hardly, someone should let the Securities Exchange Commission and the FBI in on the obvious: “knowing more than the other guy is what free market capitalism is all about,” Murray Rothbard told the 1989 Michigan Libertarian Party Convention. “Insider trading laws are a direct assault on free markets, free enterprise, private property and all the rest of … Continue reading →

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Time certainly flies. Seven years ago a dear friend to liberty, LRC, and yours truly, Burt Blumert, passed away.  At Burt’s passing, Gary North wrote, “He offered a kind of homespun wisdom, or maybe New York garment district wisdom, with a libertarian slant.” I’ll never forget when my wife Deanna first met Burt, handed him a wafer-shaped rock and asked if it was actually gold (she didn’t believe me). Wafer in a palm, he moved his arm up and down and said “yea, it’s gold, about .8 ounces. Just to make you more comfortable, I’ll trade you a 1-ounce gold … Continue reading →

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Not so long ago the idea of negative interest rates seemed absurd. Now, as The New York Times reports, over $7 trillion in debt the world over make lenders yield instead of the other way around. But negative rates haven’t stimulated anything but the occasional bubble.  What monetary treachery do the money mandarins have up their sleeves beyond creating enormous amounts of central bank credit and driving rates underwater? It’s those large bills that are the problem says Larry Summers. Benjamins and the 500 euro note make the world a more dangerous place.  “The fact that — as [Peter] Sands … Continue reading →

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The holidays brought a slight twinkle of hope to the scourge that is America’s 100-year drug war. No, the ex-hippies, now that they’re in charge haven’t reverted back to their peace-loving consciousness-expanding selves. It’s a money issue. The ridiculously named Department of Justice can’t, for the time being, make payments under the “equitable-sharing” asset forfeiture program, due to budget cuts. The war on drugs has turned into policing for profit by giving police the option of prosecuting asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law. “Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep … Continue reading →

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Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short is among my favorites. When it was announced Adam McKay, the director of “Talladega Nights” and “Anchorman,” was directing the film version of what I consider Lewis’s second masterpiece (the first was Liar’s Poker) I shuddered, remembering the cinematic debacle that was made of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Happily McKay didn’t make a mockery of Lewis’s work, although, at times, he tried. Lewis admits he’s baffled by Hollywood  and didn’t expect “The Big Short” to be made for the screen. It’s more than ironic the movie begins with the primary subject of … Continue reading →

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