David Boaz

Congratulations to Yang Zili, a Chinese advocate for political pluralism and human rights who has been set free after serving eight years in prison.

As I noted in the Fall 2007 edition of Cato’s Letter, Yang was an admirer of the libertarian thinker F. A. Hayek and described himself as a political liberal. A computer engineer by trade, Yang quickly recognized the power of the internet to spread ideas, founding a website, the “Garden of Ideas” (www.lib.126.com), where he forcefully condemned communism and argued for democratic reforms. “I am a liberal,” he wrote, “and what I care about are human rights, freedom and democracy.” Yang also participated in a discussion group called the New Youth Society, where he discussed the potential for political reform in China with young people who were similarly passionate. In 2001, Yang Zili and three of his colleagues were jailed for conspiring to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.

As the Washington Post reported in 2004, the small group met for only a few months, and during that time one of its members was reporting to the Ministry of  State Security. Indeed, the Post reported:

What happened to the New Youth Study Group offers a glimpse into the methods the party uses to maintain its monopoly on power and the difficult moral choices faced by those caught in its grip. The fate of the study group also illustrates the thoroughness with which the party applies one of its most basic rules of survival: Consider any independent organization a potential threat and crush it.

The eight members of the New Youth Study Group never agreed on a political platform and had no real source of funds. They never set up branches in other cities or recruited any other members. They never even managed to hold another meeting with full attendance; someone was always too busy.

And yet they attracted the attention of China’s two main security ministries. Reports about their activities reached officials at the highest levels of the party, including Luo Gan, the Politburo member responsible for internal security. Even the president then, Jiang Zemin, referred to the investigation as one of the most important in the nation, according to people who have seen an internal memo summarizing the comments of senior officials about the case.

Such is life in a police state.

Yang Zili spent eight years in prison for being brave enough to speak out against an authoritarian regime, which is 8 years too many in my book. Still, we can take comfort that he got out, and that his colleagues are slated to be released from prison next year.
Unfortunately, many young internet activists brave enough to stand up for freedom still languish in jail.

The Federal Reserve announced that it would create $1.2 trillion out of thin air and use it to buy mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds, even though

Some Fed leaders have resisted buying Treasurys in the past because they were unsure whether it would help reduce borrowing costs and because they feared that it would appear that the central bank was simply printing money to finance the government’s deficit, a hallmark of countries with poorly managed economies.

Get on a media list, and you get lots of emailed press releases. Like this one today:

APPLIANCE AND RETAIL INDUSTRY URGE QUICK ACTION ON CONSUMER REBATE PROGRAM FOR APPLIANCES

In case you’re wondering, it’s from the Association of Home Appliance Measures (AHAM). And it won’t surprise you to hear that “The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) urge the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to quickly disburse funding to state energy offices for the Energy Efficient Appliance Rebate Programs so that consumer rebates will be available for the summer months to purchase ENERGY STAR appliances.” Yes, indeed, that’s the way to get the economy moving again: get people out there buying new appliances.

You know what I think would really stimulate the economy? Federal tax credits for contributions to free-market think tanks. Nonprofits are facing diminished revenues and layoffs during these tough times. A tax credit would “create or save up to 4 million jobs.” OK, maybe not quite 4 million, but some number “up to” that. And by focusing the credit on free-market think tanks, you’d help to encourage sound long-term economic policy. It’s a win-win idea. I should get out a press release.

On Meet the Press last Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said

Those on the hard right say, “Cut government spending, let’s go back to the old Reagan days.” Well, the last president who did this when we were in this type of situation was Herbert Hoover.  Herbert Hoover said the government should do nothing when we were in a recession, not a depression.  We did nothing and it related [sic] to a depression.

Reality check: Did President Hoover cut federal spending during the recession that became a depression? Not by a long shot.

Source: OMB

Federal spending was $3.1 billion (those were the days!) in 1929, the year Hoover took office and the stock market crashed. It rose modestly for two years, then shot up in 1932. It dropped a bit in nominal terms in 1933, though deflation meant that the real budget increased. Then, presumably reflecting Roosevelt’s policies, it shot up again in 1934. In real terms, the federal budget was almost twice as high after Hoover’s four years as it was when he took office.

President Bush, President Obama, and Senator Schumer are all supporting Herbert Hoover’s failed policy of increasing spending to fight recession. Let’s hope they don’t have the same results and turn a recession into a Great Depression.

Cato adjunct scholar Ilya Somin dissects the “Herbert Hoover did nothing” fallacy at Volokh.com.

Back in 2007, presidential candidate Ron Paul generated a lot of talk, especially among libertarians, about monetary policy, the Federal Reserve, and the gold standard. As a longtime believer in sound money, I was surprised to discover how many smart young libertarians thought that talk of the gold standard was nutty. And perhaps more surprised to discover that they thought it was unnecessary now that the problem of central banking had been solved. As two of them wrote when I asked about their objections,

“The gold standard is the solution to no actual problem that is of concern to anyone. I think it’s a mistake to take a relatively professional and independent central bank for granted, but we have one. Inflation is low and predictable. The monetary climate is stable and amenable to savings and investment, etc.”

“What’s the beef with the Fed?  By my estimation, it’s been one of the most effective, restrained government agencies over the last twenty five years.  They’ve dramatically reduced the volatility of the business cycle while achieving low, reasonably constant inflation.” 

Well. How’s that confidence in central banking looking now? I’m reminded of Murray Rothbard’s comment in 1975 about what the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and stagflation had done to trust in government:

Twenty years ago, the historian Cecelia Kenyon, writing of the Anti-Federalist opponents of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, chided them for being “men of little faith” – little faith, that is, in a strong central government. It is hard to think of anyone having such unexamined faith in government today.

Partly in response to such criticisms of the gold standard, in February 2008 Cato published a paper by Professor Lawrence H. White, “Is the Gold Standard Still the Gold Standard among Monetary Systems?” White argued:

The gold standard is not a flawless monetary system. Neither is the fiat money alternative. In light of historical evidence about the comparative magnitude of these flaws, however, the gold standard is a policy option that deserves serious consideration.

In a study covering many decades in a large sample of countries, Federal Reserve Bank economists found that “money growth and inflation are higher” under fiat standards than under gold and silver standards.

A gold standard does not guarantee perfect steadiness in the growth of the money supply, but historical comparison shows that it has provided more moderate and steadier money growth in practice than the present-day alternative, politically empowering a central banking committee to determine growth in the stock of fiat money. From the perspective of limiting money growth appropriately, the gold standard is far from a crazy idea.

And he quoted a devastating line from an essay (p. 104) by Peter Bernholz:

A study of about 30 currencies shows that there has not been a single case of a currency freely manipulated by its government or central bank since 1700 which enjoyed price stability for at least 30 years running.

In February 2008 White’s study didn’t get much attention. Most people still thought the Greenspan-Bernanke Fed was doing a great job, so why talk about alternatives to fiat money? But now, after the crash of 2008 and the growing realization that Dow 14000 was the product of a cheap-money boom that led to the inevitable bust, maybe it’s time to think about the gold standard or other constraints on politicized money creation.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state who no doubt thinks of herself as “fourth in the line of succession,” tells a European audience how the Obama administration will pass an agenda that Americans have previously rejected: “Never waste a good crisis … Don’t waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security.”

As I’ve written several times, governments throughout the decades have taken advantage of wars and economic crises to expand their size, scope, and power. Bob Higgs wrote about “Crisis and Leviathan” long before Naomi Klein called it “The Shock Doctrine.”

But the striking thing about the Obama administration is that they openly acknowledge that’s what they’re doing — using a crisis to ram through their entire policy agenda while people are in a state of panic. Projects like national health insurance, raising the price of energy, and subsidizing more schooling — the three prongs of President Obama’s speech to Congress — have nothing to do with solving the current economic crisis. But the administration is trying to push them all through as “stimulus” measures. And they keep proclaiming their strategy.

First it was Rahm Emanuel: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” Then Joe Biden: “Opportunity presents itself in the middle of a crisis.”  Not to mention Paul Krugman and Arianna Huffington. And now Hillary.

Not since George Bush the elder told the media that his campaign theme was “Message: I care” has a president been so open about his political strategy. But these people are displaying a contempt for the voters. They’re telling us that we’re so dumb, we’ll go along with a sweeping agenda of economic and social change because we’re in a state of shock. They may be right.

But voters and members of Congress should remember Bill Niskanen’s sobering analysis of previous laws passed in a panic.

As the Washington Post sternly notes this morning, Democrats in Congress are trying to quietly force nearly 2,000 children back into the D.C. public schools. One parent whose children are using the federally funded D.C. voucher program to attend Sidwell Friends School along with the Obama daughters told the Post, “The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me.” But some people just can’t stand to think that kids might get educated outside the grasp of the government. 

The most honest, decent, and thoughtful Democratic president of modern times, Jed Bartlet, was surprised to find himself supporting vouchers on an episode of NBC’s “The West Wing.” Bartlet’s staff summoned the mayor of Washington, D.C., to the White House to plot strategy for his veto of a Republican-backed bill to provide vouchers for a few students in D.C. schools–and was stunned to discover that the mayor and the D.C. school board president both supported the program, as indeed Mayor Anthony Williams and School Board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz did in real life. Why? the president asked the mayor. “After six years of us promising to make schools better next year,” the mayor replied, “we’re ready to give vouchers a try….We spend over $13,000 per student — that’s more than anywhere else in the country — and we don’t have a lot to show for it.” (As Andrew Coulson wrote recently in the Washington Post, the real cost is actually much higher than that.)

Then the president summons his young personal aide to testify to the merits of D.C. public schools and gets another surprise:

Faced with the evidence, President Bartlet decided to do the right thing. He gave children a chance. Will Congress?

You can’t.

And the federal government knows it. On Tuesday,

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, told a House subcommittee that the government’s experiences in the reconstruction of Iraq, hurricane-relief programs and the 1990s savings-and-loan bailout suggest the rescue program could be ripe for fraud….

Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the U.S., told the subcommittee that a reliance on contractors and a lack of written policies could “increase the risk of wasted government dollars without adequate oversight of contractor performance.”

With the government having already allocated $700 billion for TARP, and $787 billion for “stimulus,” and President Obama now calling for $635 billion for health care and a federal budget soaring to $3.6 trillion — well, you’d think two government reports on the likelihood of fraud and waste would be news. But this testimony didn’t make the New York Times or the Washington Post. There was a small inside story in the Wall Street Journal.

One of Greg Mankiw’s readers worked on the new Department of Homeland Security and reported recently:

you cannot juice up a government agency’s budget by tens of billions (or in the case of the stimulus package, hundreds of billions) and expect them to be able to process the paperwork to contract it out, much less oversee the projects or even choose them with any kind of hope for success. It’s like trying to feed a Pomeranian a 25 lb turkey. It’s madness. It was years before DHS got the situation under control and between the start and when they finally assembled a sufficiently capable team of lawyers, contracting officials, technical experts and resource managers, most of the money was totally wasted.

Linda Bilmes, coauthor with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, analyzes the massive problems in three somewhat smaller government projects — the Iraqi reconstruction effort, Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, and the Big Dig artery construction in Boston — and finds that “in any organization that starts to increase spending very rapidly there are risks of waste, fraud and inefficiency.”

Saying “nobody messes with Joe” is not a solution to the inevitability of waste and fraud when an unaccountable bureaucracy is spending trillions of other people’s dollars.

Vice President Biden is the latest member of the Obama administration to declare the administration’s intent to use shock and awe to ram through their statist agenda in a crisis atmosphere:

“Opportunity presents itself in the middle of a crisis,” Biden said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

HT: Johan Norberg, the author of a devastating critique of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

The Bush administration used crisis tactics, too, of course, ramming through the Patriot Act, the nationalization of airport security personnel, the creation of the Homeland Security Department, and the war in Iraq after the shock of 9/11 and a bevy of bailouts during the economic crisis. As Steve Horwitz wrote:

Just as the Patriot Act was a bunch of laws waiting for a political “crisis,” so is much of the stimulus package a bunch of programs waiting for an economic “crisis.” 

Plenty of earlier administrations used the same tactics, from FDR’s first hundred days of frenetic legislation to LBJ’s forced march to the Great Society after the Kennedy assassination. The difference is, the Obama administration is the first one to publicly and proudly proclaim that they intend to use the crisis atmosphere to force through an agenda that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

The Bush administration was good to lobbyists, especially in its final year, when lobbyists earned $3.2 billion, the most ever. But the Obama administration promises to be even better, according to those who follow the field. Marketplace Radio reports:

Washington lobbyists earned a whopping $3.2 billion last year. That’s the highest amount in the decade tracked by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Executive Director Sheila Krumholz says interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying every day Congress was in session last year. And with Washington on a spending spree, companies are boosting their influence on Capitol Hill.

SHEILA KRUMHOLZ: There was this unique opportunity that government was handing out money and anytime that happens, companies will spend what they must to get in line to get a piece of the pie.

And that’s expected to continue. Craig Holman is a governmental affairs lobbyist with the non-profit group Public Citizen.

CRAIG HOLMAN: The amount spent on lobbying is not related to the disclosure or the regulation of the lobbying profession. It is related entirely to how much the federal government intervenes in the private economy.

That’s right. Even the Naderite Public Citizen understands that “the amount spent on lobbying . . . is related entirely to how much the federal government intervenes in the private economy.”

Marketplace’s Ronni Radbill goes on, “In other words, the more active the government, the more the private sector will spend to have its say…. With the White House injecting billions of dollars into the economy, lobbyists say interest groups are paying a lot more attention to Washington than they have in a very long time.”

Or, as F. A. Hayek explained the process 65 years ago in his prophetic book The Road to Serfdom: “As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power.”

And just who is doing all this lobbying? The Center for Responsive Politics says that health and pharmaceutical companies were the biggest spenders, which wouldn’t surprise lobby-watcher Tim Carney, followed by the finance, insurance, and real estate industry (even though many of those companies cut back their lobbying late in the year, after getting the moolah they came for). But, Marketplace also reports, “There’s a report out today from the Center for Public Integrity that says the number of green lobbyists has tripled in the last five years. There are nearly 2,500 people now employed trying to get their clients views heard on climate policy. Wall Street in particular sank a lot money into green.” With the economy slowing, banks were pulling back from investments in so-called renewable energy. “That is, until the stimulus package tossed it a lifeline.”

So the $3.2 billion bonanza for lobbyists in 2008 was just a precursor of the lollapalooza to come. Within three weeks of Obama’s inauguration, the Washington Post reported that more than 90 organizations had hired lobbyists specifically to influence the stimulus bill. Since President Obama has made clear that in his “blueprint for America,” the $800 billion stimulus bill is just the start of his money flow to and from Washington, we can expect lobbying expenditures to keep on rising. Federal spending will be directed by politicians to politically favored recipients. That’s just reality. If you want money flowing to the companies with good lobbyists and powerful congressmen, then all this spending may accomplish something. But we should all recognize that we’re taking money out of the competitive, individually directed part of society and turning it over to the politically controlled sector. Politicians rather than consumers will pick winners and losers. That’s not a recipe for recovery.

I’ll give the last word again to Craig Holman of Public Citizen: “the amount spent on lobbying . . . is related entirely to how much the federal government intervenes in the private economy.”