Independent Review articles from September 2001

Independent Review archives from September 2001

Financial crashes in the globalization era.
September 22, 2001... On December 20, 1994, after more than a year of ballooning loan defaults punctuated by several political crises, Finance Secretary Jaime Serra Puche of Mexico announced that his government's target exchange rate for the Mexican currency would...

Conning Congress: privacy and the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
September 22, 2001... Despite a benign-sounding rifle, the 1994 federal Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) (1) is emblematic of today's ubiquitous government encroachment on the privacy of Americans. Although represented prior to passage as an...

To drill or not to drill: let the environmentalists decide.
September 22, 2001... High prices of gasoline and heating oil have made drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) an important issue. ANWR is the largest of Alaska's sixteen national wildlife refuges, containing 19.6 million acres. It also...

Market discipline in bank regulation: panacea or paradox?
September 22, 2001... Central bankers speak of three pillars supporting the achievement of their objectives: regulation, supervision, and market discipline. Recently, the third pillar--market discipline--has received greater attention as the increasing size and...

Mutual deposit insurance: other lessons from the record.
September 22, 2001... In the wake of the savings and loan crisis, many proposals to reform the deposit insurance system have been made. Bert Ely (1999) has advocated one of the more sweeping proposals: move to a system of private insurance in which banks would...

Taxation, forced labor, and theft: comment. (Controversy).
September 22, 2001... Libertarianism is not as monolithic an ideology as many people believe. though all libertarians would agree that taxes should be low, there is a strong purist view that taxation itself is illegitimate. As Edward Feser notes in the fall 2000...

Taxation, forced labor, and theft: reply. (Controversy).
September 22, 2001... In his comment on my recent article on taxation and theft (Feser 2000), James Rolph Edwards correctly notes that the provision of public goods--such as police protection, national defense, and courts of law--is an issue with which any critique...

Friedrich Hayek: a Biography. (Book Reviews).
September 22, 2001... Friedrich Hayek: A Biography By Alan Ebenstein New York: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xiii, 403. $29.95. Before reviewing Alan Ebenstein's biography of F. A. Hayek, I think it is perhaps appropriate that I provide some background. The...

Liberalisme.
September 22, 2001... Liberalisme By Pascal Salin Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 2000. Pp. 506. 180 F. Liberalisme is a beautifully written book that seeks to shock the French into understanding what freedom is and why it is important for creating prosperity....

The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. (Book Reviews).
September 22, 2001... The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice By Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton New York: Prima, 2000. Pp. xiii, 242. $24.95. The Tyranny of Good...

That's Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in the Twentieth Century. (Book Reviews).
September 22, 2001... * That's Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in the Twentieth Century By Steven M. Gillon New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. Pp. 288. $25.95 cloth. The achievement of the Founding Fathers continues to confound social...

A Prelude to the Welfare State: the Origins of Workers' Compensation. (Book Reviews).
September 22, 2001... * A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation By Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. xiii, 316. $37.50. Why has government grown so enormous? Given the colossal...

A Burning Issue: a Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service. (Book Reviews).
September 22, 2001... * A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service By Robert H. Nelson Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Pp. xvii, 196. $24.95. In A Burning Issue, Robert Nelson argues that the U.S. Forest Service is demoralized...

The Cold War Is Over, but U.S. Preparation for It Continues. (Etceteras ...).(Statistical Data Included)
September 22, 2001... As George W. Bush's administration took office in January 2001, you could almost hear the sighs of relief coming from the Pentagon and the corporate headquarters of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Litton...