Government And Business

Finance Isn’t Free and Never Really Was

Now that Trump is in office there is talk that his administration will support repealing or revising Dodd-Frank — the government’s regulatory response to the financial crisis of 2008. The bill was sold as a way to protect ourselves from future crises by making the financial system more stable.
Government And Business

Insider Trading: The Rule of Unreason

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Salman v. United States, a case that illustrates the vague, arbitrary, and capricious nature of insider trading “laws.” Insider trading laws restrict people’s ability to buy and sell securities based on “material nonpublic information.” But what the government considers insider trading is often so nebulous that it amounts to ex post facto law: in many cases, it is impossible to know whether you’ve committed a crime until the government says you committed one.
Government And Business

Previously on The Yaron Brook Show: George Selgin on Free Banking

In this episode of The Yaron Brook Show, Don Watkins interviews George Selgin, senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia. Together they discuss the ethics and economics of fractional reserve banking, the cause of inflation and instability, pre-Fed “panics” and the Fed’s role in the financial crisis of 2008.
Government And Business

The Yaron Brook Show: Free Banking and Monetary Freedom

Tomorrow, September 24, Don Watkins is sitting in for Yaron Brook to discuss the virtues of free banking and monetary freedom with George Selgin, senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia. Join Don Watkins tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. Eastern to learn about the ethics and economics of fractional reserve banking, the Fed as the cause of inflation and instability, the cause of pre-Fed financial panics, the origin of the Fed and the Fed’s role in the financial crisis of 2008.
Government And Business

The Debt Dialogues [Episode 50]: Yaron Brook on Finance (Part 3)

The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, the third of a three-part interview, I talk to ARI’s executive director, Yaron Brook, about the financial industry — one of the chief targets of the attacks on economic inequality. Topics include: the myth of financial deregulation, why the Federal Reserve should be abolished and the vital need for a moral defense of finance.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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