FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 24, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
'Black hole' discovered ... but not in outer space
In prepared testimony delivered to the House Banking Committee Sept.
21, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers argued it's better to install a few
new safeguards in an attempt to limit further diversions of aid to the
Russian government than to simply sever economic ties with what
increasingly appear to be a bunch of opportunistic thieves.
Cutting off all support to the Yeltsin government "would raise the risk
that the United States and the West would be labeled as scapegoats for
Russia's failure to address its problems," the secretary warned.
Well, yes, people sometimes try to blame the bank for their problems when
the bank declines to loan any more money to a failing enture. But who
would wish to own stock in a bank that kept piling up such bad loans just
to avoid being made the "scapegoat" for a borrower's failure?
Then, as if that weren't bad enough, the secretary proceeded to explain
to the congressmen that the U.S. backed previous IMF loans to Russia --
yes, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook when Russia inevitably defaults, her
leaders having simply smuggled the funds into their own private accounts
(start ital)in the same New York banks(end ital) -- "not because we
expected that Russia would be rapidly transformed into a market economy or
that corruption would be eliminated overnight, but rather on the view that
to quarantine, contain or write off Russia as too corrupt would ill serve
our national interest."
Do I have this straight? The way to teach the benighted victims of
Communism the value of a free market is to allow them to continue to
believe that some sugar daddy will continue to send them dough for hanging
around and "pretending to work" (as the old Russian joke would have it),
rather than letting them witness in starkest relief the inevitable rotting
carcass of collectivism, circling around to give it a few kicks?
Rather than allowing Russia the utter economic collapse her 70 years of
terror have earned her -- at which point the Russian people might finally
foreswear collectivism forever, pick themselves up and start again,
possibly after having arrested, tried, and executed a fair number of the
thieves in charge -- the U.S. government co-signed and guaanteed loans
with "no expectation that corruption would be eliminated overnight"?!
Why didn't we just loan the money to the 100 inmates serving the longest
U.S. prison sentences for extortion, graft, and fraud? At least our
long-suffering prison guards would have ended up with a little of it.
History proves again and again that such costly coddling only "enables"
the thieves and their victims to continue in denial and self-deception.
When the British adopted free trade in the 1850s they did so unilateally
and overnight, in exasperation at trying to convince their trading partners
to reduce tariffs uniformly. The result? Britain's economy dominated the
world for 60 years, forcing her trade partners to reduce their own
protective tariffs, just to compete.
When a West Germany freed of Allied occupation decided to get rid of wage
and price controls in 1949, economics minister Ludwig Erhard defied
predictions of "economic chaos" and short-circuited all schemes for a
"gradual rollback," instead opting to free his nation's economy overnight.
The resultant economic boom stunned the world with its speed and power, and
is still being felt in Germany's economic dominance over her European
trading partners, today.
But we wouldn't want to allow the sputtering, rusty wreck of a derailed
socialist economy that is Russia to simply breath its last, challenging the
Russian people to invent a brand new, free-market economy in its place,
would we?
Oh no. Instead we keep shoveling coal into the steaming wreck. In fact,
the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday: "The latest IMF loan, a $4.5
billion deal signed this summer, is just sufficient to keep Moscow from
defaulting on its debts to the IMF itself; the money never even leaves
Washington."
Now there's a neat trick. Let's all try calling our banks, explaining
we're broke and have no more collateral, and then ask for an additional
loan "just large enough to pay my mortgage and credit card bills for the
next couple of months. You don't even have to send it to me," we could add,
"just do the paperwork and pay yourself. Interest rate? Gee, I don't care,
since I'm never going to pay it anyway. Er, that is to say ..."
There's only one bank we know of that would make that loan: the giant
slush fund for world tyrants run by Uncle Sam.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping
through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; by dialing
1-800-244-2224, or via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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