Bailout Raises Libertarians' Market Value

[Blue_Tires]

The specter of the most titanic intervention in the markets since Franklin Roosevelt started sewing the safety net has folks at the Cato Institute reaching for something strong.

"I'm thinking of taking up drinking," says David Boaz, executive vice president.

He's kidding, of course. Just a little gallows humor from the author of "Libertarianism: A Primer," who has a Goldwater poster and two busts of Adam Smith in his office.

Instead, in their handsome building on Massachusetts Avenue, faced with a proposed $700 billion government bailout of Wall Street, this town's most gung-ho libertarians and free-marketeers are reaching for their coffee and their keyboards. They are invigorated. The prospect of doom and ruination for everything they hold dear only makes them stronger.

Like Boaz, so many of the 50 or so small-government and individual-liberty scholars at Cato have a twinkle in their eyes, and not just because libertarians have a sense of humor. (It reconciles the chasm between the country as they would like it to be and the country as it has been since the first bank bailout in 1792.) Their cluttered offices -- piled with papers, reports and multiple copies of their own books -- are like battle stations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403209.html

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straight up: libertarians are not from this planet, or this reality....

[Blue_Tires]

1. ttt