John Harris

Hayek and other real economists demonstrated long ago that government regulation of the economy is a farce, a primary aim of which is to protect large, established firms from competition by entrepreneurs. Matter Renner of Truthout provides a perfect illustration of the thesis in his interview with former SEC investigator Gary Aguirre, the man fired […]

I have many questions about the current financial debacle, but of one thing I am absolutely certain: Human beings allowed and perpetrated it. Understandably, certain individuals who were paid large sums of money and prestige, given fancy titles and offices, and vested with the power and responsibility to prevent the calamity, now wish to evade […]

Many have asked of the alleged Madoff victims, particularly of those who entrusted their life savings to the man, “What were they thinking?” Access International Advisors co-founder Patrick Littaye provides a clue to at least some of the thinking in an interview with Bloomberg’s Alan Katz: Littaye met Madoff in 1985 when a private banking […]

Many analysts blame insufficient government oversight for the present financial crisis and demand additional regulation in order to prevent future crises. Their belief in the powers of regulation is religious in nature. Evidence suggests that regulation fails at its stated purpose of protecting the innocent from the rapacious. At best, regulation lulls the innocent into […]

As I write this, the common stock of Goldman Sachs last traded at $61.17 (current chart), which equates to a market capitalization of $24.95 billion, according to Google Finance. Goldman reportedly received $10 billion in direct taxpayer support from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”), administered by former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson and, if reporting […]

Every day brings a new outrage – or several of them – but the FDIC’s decision to insure the debt of GE Capital ranks pretty high in the litany of despicable acts. From Bloomberg’s report on the matter: General Electric Co. said the U.S. government agreed to insure as much as $139 billion in debt […]

Now that former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson has used his powers as Secretary of the Treasury to bailout September’s $87 billion bailout of AIG – now led by former Goldman director Ed Liddy – with a new, $150 billion bailout, the time has come for Congress to ask a few simple questions in open […]

We know that several large, U.S. banks will receive $25 billion in taxpayer funds that Henry Paulson says they don’t need. Among the $25 billion beneficiaries is Wells Fargo Bank, whose chairman, Richard M. Kovacevich, is said to have protested strongly that his bank did not need a bailout. So massive and unprecedented is the […]

I must admit that prior to the widespread recognition of the massive pyramid scheme masquerading as Wall Street (“financial crisis”), I never got Bill Gross. He was either incredibly smart and lucky or else incredibly stupid and lucky – I couldn’t discern which. His infamous, trade-execution method – the “Pimco drive-by” – is moronic on […]

With the exception of the Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. partnership bank in New York, substantially all other U.S. banks are insolvent. They would be unable to redeem customer deposits on demand, as promised, and would be forced to default if more than a small fraction of their customers demanded return of their funds. Insolvency […]