
 |
|
March 19, 2010
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
JWisdom.com Love me not?
with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle
with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children
with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
March 9, 2010
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me!
with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How!
with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
March 4, 2010
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
March 2, 2010
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One
with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Feb. 25, 2010
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life
with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Feb. 23, 2010
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment
with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Feb. 22, 2010
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Feb. 19, 2010
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up?
with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality
with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours?
with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 10, 2008
/ 3 Adar II 5768
How government makes things worse
By
Jeff Jacoby
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
What do ethanol and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? On the
surface, nothing at all. But dig down a little, and each is a good reminder of
that most powerful of unwritten decrees, the Law of Unintended Consequences
and of the all-too-frequent tendency of solutions imposed by the state to
exacerbate the harms they were meant to solve.
Take ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel made (primarily) from corn. Ethanol has
been touted as a weapon in the fashionable crusade against climate change,
because when mixed with gasoline, it modestly reduces emissions of carbon
dioxide. Reasoning that if a little ethanol is good, a lot must be better,
Congress and the Bush administration recently mandated a sextupling of ethanol
production, from the 6 billion gallons produced last year to 36 billion by
2022.
But now comes word that expanding ethanol use is likely to mean not less CO2 in
the atmosphere, but more. A lot more: Instead of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions from gasoline by 20 percent the estimate Congress relied on in
requiring the huge increase in production ethanol use will cause such
emissions to nearly double over the next 30 years.
The problem, laid out in two new studies in the journal Science, is that it
takes a lot of land to grow biofuel feedstocks such as corn, and as forests or
grasslands are cleared for crops, large amounts of CO2 are released. Diverting
land in this fashion also eliminates "carbon sinks," which absorb atmospheric
CO2. Bottom line: The government's ethanol mandate will generate a "carbon
debt" that will take decades, maybe centuries, to pay off.
Actually, that's not quite the bottom line. Jacking up ethanol production
causes other problems, too. Deforestation. Loss of biodiversity. Depletion of
aquifers. Deadlier fires (ethanol fires are harder to extinguish than those
fueled by gasoline). More ethanol even means more hunger: As more of the US
corn crop goes for ethanol, the price of corn has been soaring, a calamity for
Third World countries in which corn is a major dietary staple.
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa bloviates that everything about ethanol is
"good, good, good," but it plainly isn't, isn't, isn't. Which is why the fate
of ethanol, including how much of it is produced, should be determined by the
decentralized process of free exchange the voluntary interactions of
countless consumers and producers, buyers and sellers, each acting according to
his best judgment and in his own best interest. Instead, Congress and the
president, convinced as always that they know best, imposed a single,
inflexible, ham-fisted directive from above. The result is that the carbon
dioxide they aimed to reduce will be increased, and many people will suffer
unnecessary misfortune.
The subprime mortgage collapse is another tale of unintended consequences.
The crisis has its roots in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a
Carter-era law that purported to prevent "redlining" denying mortgages to
black borrowers by pressuring banks to make home loans in "low- and
moderate-income neighborhoods." Under the act, banks were to be graded on their
attentiveness to the "credit needs" of "predominantly minority neighborhoods."
The higher a bank's rating, the more likely that government regulators would
say yes when the bank sought to open a new branch or undertake a merger or
acquisition.
But to earn high ratings, banks were forced to make increasingly risky loans to
borrowers who wouldn't qualify for a mortgage under normal standards of
creditworthiness. The CRA, made even more stringent during the Clinton
administration, trapped lenders in a Catch-22. "If they comply," wrote Loyola
College economist Thomas DiLorenzo, "they know they will have to suffer from
more loan defaults. If they don't comply, they face financial penalties . . .
which can cost a large corporation like Bank of America billions of dollars."
Banks nationwide thus ended up making more and more "subprime" loans and
agreeing to dangerously lax underwriting standards no down payment, no
verification of income, interest-only payment plans, weak credit history. If
they tried to compensate for the higher risks they were taking by charging
higher interest rates, they were accused of unfairly steering borrowers into
"predatory" loans they couldn't afford.
Trapped in a no-win situation entirely of the government's making, lenders
could only hope that home prices would continue to rise, staving off the
inevitable collapse. But once the housing bubble burst, there was no escape.
Mortgage lenders have been bankrupted, thousands of subprime homeowners have
been foreclosed on, and countless would-be borrowers can no longer get credit.
The financial fallout has hurt investors around the world. And all of it thanks
to the government, which was sure it understood the credit industry better than
the free market did, and confidently created the conditions that made disaster
unavoidable.
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe," warned Mark Twain, "while
Congress is in session." Mark Twain was a humorist, but that was no joke.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Froma Harrop
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|