Fresh Produce 6.9.09

1. Does the current US govt hate business? "The economically illiterate partisan Democratic view is that this practice is unpatriotic and bleeds jobs from the U.S. The economic reality is that American companies use this approach to acquire market share overseas. The alternative is losing the business to foreign competitors."

2. "The Federal Reserve intends to hire a veteran lobbyist as it seeks to counter skepticism in Congress about the central bank’s growing power..." Apparently Ron Paul is having an effect.

3. This interview with Gerald Celente conjures images of Ozymandias in Watchmen with all his video feeds. Excerpt: "Washington has declared 'Economic Martial Law'. Wall Street is putting Main Street out of business. The key to watch is Christmas sales. They’ll fail. Christmas will be when reality sets in."

4. A Socratic dialogue on free markets and social welfare. One of the studies quoted therein:

A conservative estimate of the welfare gain to a moderately skilled worker in the median country of our sample moving to the US is P$10,000 per worker, per year, roughly double income per capita of the developing world in aggregate.

Barriers to entry in labor markets keep people poor and unemployed. Unintended consequence, of course.