What Would Mises Do?: Confessions of a free-market, anti-bailout operator

Their argument: “Something has to be done.” One old friend went so far as to blame FreedomWorks for the 750 point loss in the stock market Tuesday, the “freezing” of capital availability to small businessmen, and all of the economic misery to come, all because we have loudly objected to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s $700 billion-plus bailout for failing investment banks on Wall Street…

I joked to another Beltway friend who was actually against the bailout that you could now fit the remaining community of free market capitalists in Washington, D.C. in the back of my car.

So my question to my critics is simply this: What good are principles if you are willing to throw them out the window every time they prove inconvenient? As a trained economist, I have often relied heavily on principle when the data is confusing and conflicted. Finally, temptation got the best of me, I pulled down some dusty books from the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek. …

Continued here: What Would Mises Do?: Confessions of a free-market, anti-bailout operator