Fed bails out Bear Stearns
From Bloomberg:-
Bernanke and the four Fed governors voted yesterday to become creditors to Bear Stearns Cos., a securities firm that isn’t a bank, by invoking a law that hasn’t been used since the 1960s. Three days earlier, the Fed said it would swap Treasury notes on its balance sheet for privately issued mortgage-backed securities held by Wall Street firms.
“It’s a re-drawing of the relationship of the Federal Reserve with the rest of the financial system,” said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Board. Risks of so-called moral hazard, where firms will now come to count on bailouts by a federal agency, “are considerable,” he said.
I don’t think taxpayers should bailout failing businesses and I don’t make an exception for banks. However if a central bank is going to offer finance to bail out a business such as this then I think they should do so only on the condition that they receive an equity stake (which they should offload on the market at some later point) and that the board sack the CEO. This would at least mitigate some of the moral hazard.
Where Are The Female Libertarians?
The ALS poll is currently showing a massive two women libertarian readers out of 63 who have voted. Is the ALS site a bastion of aggressive men asserting their dominance over their peers like my dog pissing on the boundaries of his territory? Or is it just that libertarianism is a guy thing?
If the latter (which i suspect is the case, because unlike that rowdy rabble at Catallaxy, we are all very polite over at the ALS and in touch with our feminine sides), then why are there so few women libertarians? Perhaps only a woman can answer this question. It would be wonderful to get a variety of views from female readers but sadly, if past history is anything to go by, i suspect it will largely be up to us guys to ponder this question amongst ourselves.
Lew Rockwell’s blog is a good place to start. A bunch of libertarian women looked at this issue a few years back. Allison Brown holds the view that the first step is to acknowledge the obvious truth that men and women are different creatures.
‘Women’s behaviour is governed by feelings whilst men are governed by logic. We are nurturers and we expect the ‘have’s’ to take care of the ‘have-nots”, the strong to take care of the weak. We want everyone to like us and we want everyone to like each other. Men, to put it simply, are more independent in thought and in action.’
Allison is unlikely to win first prize in the feminist’s annual convention.
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