Unfree Market Indeed

In a press release today, Dr. Yaron Brook of ARI has succinctly stated the proper answer to all the pundits and commentators who have been casting about, looking for the causes of the recent problems on Wall Street. It is an answer to all the politicians and "economists" that the journalists have been interviewing, the people who say that the problem is greed, or the "failed policies of deregulation."

It's an answer to Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank, who, after salivating about all the new banking industry regulations he wants to impose, said casually, "I don't want to see a nationalization of the banking industry. I don't think that's healthy." That's your only concern with that idea? That it's not healthy? (i.e. pragmatic at this point in time) That is truly frightening.

The answer to this crisis is not more of the poison that is the root cause of the sickness on Wall Street.

The Unfree Market Has Failed
September 19, 2008

Washington, D.C.--“Everyone is blaming ‘the free market’ for today’s financial crisis,” observed Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. “But we should be blaming the unfree market. The mortgage and financial markets have been thoroughly controlled by government--and that is why they failed.

“It was the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, that contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments.

“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘supervision.’ What we need to do is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”