In 1930, Congress passed the Tariff Act introduced by Sen. Reed Smoot (R-Utah) and Rep. Willis Hawley (R-Ore.). The bill raised tariffs -- or taxes paid on imports into the United States -- on more than 20,000 imported goods. Against the advice of more than 1,000 economists, President Herbert Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law.

Positive economic news in recent months point towards an economic recovery. But, excessive government interventions are holding down growth and monetary manipulations threaten to derail any long-term economic stability.

With President Obama's umpteenth (twentieth, if you're counting) pivot back to jobs and the economy, there has been a lot of trotting out of the concept that meaninful economic recovery must begin with the "middle class". Politicians, economists, and pundits alike have all revived the meme, but almost none are directly addressing that fact the "middle class" has reached the mythical status of unicorns or free health care for all. 

This week, a global warming climate change alarmist group decided it would be great fun to petition the World Meteorological Organization to start naming violent storms after prominent deniers of their theory, despite a complete lack of evidence that violent storms are any more numerous today than in other years: "[W]e propose a new naming system, one that names extreme storms caused by climate change, after the po

The Obama administration is fond of reminding the American public that private sector jobs have grown by 4.1% over the past 28 months. The detail they are leaving out, however, can be found in this Commentary by the Joint Economic Committee Republicans . Though private sector jobs have been growing, as the President claims, this is the slowest recovery in American history. 

Mario Rizzo at NYU has a great article has a great article in this issue of the Freeman explaining how Keynesian stimulus packages can't restore confidence to an economy.  He argues that in order to restore confidence in the market, which Secretary Geithner has claimed is the goal, we have to fix the causes of the problem rather than the symptoms.  A stimulus package does not correct, even in Keynesian terms, the "collective irrationality" that lead to a housing bubble in the first place.