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Strategies & Market Trends : Commodities - The Coming Bull Market -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (1417)	8/1/2002 10:14:47 AM
From: chomolungma	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

The rest of the arguments look full of holes though. All I can say is look at recent history. The Hawley Smoot Act was a disaster. Trade barriers = less trade = Less hot economy = recession imho. It's just like the people who argue that rent control works. They see that immediately there will be benefits (cheap rent) and don't see that in the long run they are damaging the very group they seek to protect (lack of housing). Free trade benefits all of society but there are always those who feel they are hurt. Remember the clamor to protect those UAW workers earning 80K almost 20 years ago? The fight to protect their luxurious lifestyles almost sunk the entire U.S. auto industry - far more damaging than reining in absurd wages. Free markets do cause pain and a compassionate society tries to ease that pain, but you can't eliminate the incentives that being exposed to the blunt edge of the free market produces. To do so destroys the mechanism by which the free market works.

To: maceng2 who wrote (1417)	8/6/2002 2:33:45 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

Interested in some views on this.. Message 17842547

To: maceng2 who wrote (1417)	8/20/2002 5:01:31 AM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

>> All I can say is look at recent history. The Hawley Smoot Act was a disaster. << oh really? why don't you tell us just how smoot-hawley was such a disaster. i'd love to hear the explanation. after you're done explaining to me how my country's smoot-hawley act was a disaster for world trade i can return the favor by explaining to you how your prime minister took england off the gold standard the following year and caused a massive run on american gold, which was the real reason for the trade wars that followed. >> Trade barriers = less trade = Less hot economy << i guess the founder of the new york tribune didn't agree with you. "Protection is the shortest way to get free trade" --Horace Greeley >> I look to the 1930's to see what the longer term effects are. << if you think the smoot-hawley tariff caused the massive contraction in world trade and the deepening of the depression then i have some swampland i'd like to sell you. anyone who claims that smoot-hawley caused or prolonged the depression demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of historical trade relationships. it only takes a few facts to expose how ludicrous the claim is.