Yesterday I blogged about economist Steve Fazzari and his arguments on behalf of the Obama administration’s $8 billion in loans to automakers Ford, Nissan and Tesla to make electric and fuel-efficient cars. Today, an opposing view comes from Russ Roberts, a libertarian economist who is a professor at George Mason University, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the host of the excellent podcast EconTalk and a blogger at www.cafehayek.com.
Steve, Russ and I spent time together recently at a retreat for journalists and economists organized by the Murray Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis. What struck me was how smart, thoughtful economists can see the world so differently. If you’d like to delve further into these issues, you can listen to my podcasts with Steve and Russ at The Energy Collective, or listen to an in-depth conversation about Keynesian economics between Russ and Steve here at EconTalk. A correction to my podcast: Although I say that the administration is giving loan guarantees to the automakers, the government in fact is making low-interest loans directly to Ford, Nissan and Tesla—a concept that Russ finds troubling, and not just because Tesla builds $100,000 sports cars for millionaires.
Tesla roadster
The economy’s a mess, Russ Roberts says, in part because the government promoted cheap credit and fueled a housing bubble. The Fed kept interest rates too low for too long, while government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac poured money into risky mortgages. So, he goes on, “it’s kind of ironic that, as we try to cope with that mess, we continue with the same fundamental idea–let’s try to artificially alter the rate at which people can borrow so they can do more of what appear to be good things.”
“In the past, it was home ownership,” he says. “Now it’s manufacturing and green technology.”
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