Éste es el dictamen de Jacob Weisberg en su artículo The End of Libertarianism, publicado en Slate. Weisberg ataca, sin embargo, un hombre de paja:
A source of mild entertainment amid the financial carnage has been watching libertarians scurrying to explain how the global financial crisis is the result of too much government intervention rather than too little. One line of argument casts as villain the Community Reinvestment Act, which prevents banks from "redlining" minority neighborhoods as not creditworthy. Another theory blames Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for causing the trouble by subsidizing and securitizing mortgages with an implicit government guarantee. An alternative thesis is that past bailouts encouraged investors to behave recklessly in anticipation of a taxpayer rescue.
Y se trata de un hombre de paja porque ninguna de esas dos explicaciones es el argumento central de los liberales, al menos de los más ortodoxos. Los liberales arguyen que leyes como la Community Reinvestment Act o las empresas Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac patrocinadas por el Estado han contribuido a la crisis, pero no son su causa principal. El origen de la crisis hay que buscarlo en las políticas de expansión crediticia de los Bancos Centrales.
En el blog del Mises Institute ya le han llamado la atención: "Central Banks Don't Exist".
Professor Jake teaches us that there's a "natural tendency of lending standards to turn permissive during a boom." And we're the ones who supposedly lack an explanation of what happened. A "natural tendency." It just sort of happens. It has nothing to do with all that cheap credit the central bank is flooding the economy with.
