Economic Parables

Got a medical problem, go to the doctor.

Got a pastoral problem, go to your pastor

Got an economic problem, go to your wealth creators.

Simple really, ain't it? This is how we solve our economic woes, and we got to tell the politicians and the protesters that what they say ain’t so!

Reading all the doom and gloom in the media and listeningto the chattering classes you’d think we are facing an economic Armageddon. So to cheer you all up, I can commend some reading to suggest things are truly better than they seem, and refute the economic trash filling the airwaves.

Let me taking you into my virtual doctor’s waiting room and share some literature with you. Specifically, I am heartened by four reports I read this morning.

The first is about the Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro, who states America currently has the “most anti-business administration in my lifetime.”

This is good, because after the protests on Wall Street and elsewhere it is about time the business leaders started speaking up and defending what they do, and go on the attack instead. Business will create wealth and this is the only thing that will get the economy moving.

The second piece is by Thomas Sowell, who writes “Like so many people, in so many countries, who started out to"spread the wealth," Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty.”

This is good, because those of us who defend Capitalism do so on the basis that it creates wealth, and has done more to lift humanity out of poverty in the last 250 years or so than any other form of economic management. It’s not perfect, but it is the best we got. It’s not perfect, because people are not perfect.

The third piece is in the Dealbook pages of the New YorkTimes, where Timothy J. Sloan, Wells Fargo’s chief financial officer, said in an interview, “The narrative that banks aren’t lending is incorrect,” “Lending is strong, and based on what we’re seeing,” he added, it will “continue togrow.”

This is good, because it highlights what I argued in blogs these past few days that the real economic issue is the talking down of the economy. As Sloan adds poignantly, "New lending numbers suggest that while the economy remains extremely fragile, the confidence of consumers and businesses may be more resilient than many experts had believed."

Last, but by no means least, is a piece by Robert Higgs in which he writes, "A major factor behind the weak recovery and gloomy outlook is a climate of policy-induced economic uncertainty. An index we devised . . . shows U.S. policy uncertainty at historically high levels." Higgs is expanding on work he did back in 1997 about economic policy and regime change.

This is good, because it chimes with my argument that the double-dip recession we are experiencing coincides with the double-dip electioneering of Candidate and President Obama.

It is time for the defenders of Capitalism to make these points and beat down the defeatists who parade in the streets or keep whining on TV.

I commend these articles for you, and in order of appearance in this article they can be found at:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/17/consumer-electronics-chief-says-obama-regulators-l/

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/10/18/random_thoughts

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/banks-start-to-make-more-loans/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

http://biggovernment.com/rhiggs/2011/10/12/important-new-evidence-on-regime-uncertainty-and-government-failure/