How the World Was Made Safe for Crony Capitalism

Mises Daily: Tuesday, November 05, 2013 by Robert Batemarco

For most of US history, crony capitalism has been in a struggle with free-market capitalism for the heart and soul of the American economy. For the past half century, crony capitalism has been gaining the upper hand. There are many reasons why, all of which can be traced to the insatiable desire of the state to gain and hold power.

As Bob Higgs has pointed out in a lifetime of scholarship, crises are the health of the state. Whether these crises are unavoidable or manufactured by the state, either deliberately or through mere bungling, the state rarely misses an opportunity to use them to its advantage.

David Stockman’s recent book, The Great Deformation, escorts the reader through a welter of ideas, institutions, and crises that the state did, indeed, use to its advantage to funnel billions of dollars from the general public into the pockets of the well-connected. Stockman’s chief culprits are the ideas of Fisher, Keynes, and Friedman; the institutions of the Federal Reserve System and the presidency; the crises of the Great Depression; the run on US gold of the late 60s; the stock market crash of 1987; and the financial crisis of 2008, to name a few…..To Read More….

My Take - As you read this article please think of people like Pelosi who claim there's nothing left to cut. Do we really believe that? Do we really believe they are unaware of the information presented here showing the corruption?  These are the people passing laws that create these special privileges for their friends. Are we to believe they don't know what they're doing? Please allow your mind to run down this road for a while and extrapolate the potentials.  In 1913, one hundred years ago, the 16th and 17th amendments were passed ,and that was the beginning of the end.  This laid the foundation for corruption at such massive levels the nation will eventually collapse under its weight.