John Cassidy Fails in His Critique of Markets
I explain at Mises today:
While driving my son to school one morning, I heard a National Public Radio interview with John Cassidy, author of the new book How Markets Fail. Fortunately, we got to the front of the line before Cassidy let out the zingers. A few minutes earlier, and my son would have seen Daddy lose his temper.
Cassidy first caricatures the case for free markets, then tries to demonstrate the hypocrisy of a “free-market” financial bailout. Yet his arguments obviously don’t bear on whether markets fail or need government supervision. Indeed, Cassidy himself acknowledges that what happened at the end of the Bush administration was anything but the free market.