In a free market, demand is always a function of price: The higher the price, the lower the demand. What may surprise most politicians is that these rules apply equally to both prices and wages. When employers evaluate their labor and capital needs, cost is a primary factor.

“Crony capitalism” is a term often applied to foreign nations where government interference circumvents market forces. The practice is widely associated with tin-pot dictators and second-rate economies. In such a system, support for the ruling regime is the best and only path to economic success. Who you know supersedes what you know, and favoritism trumps the rule of law.

There is nearly universal agreement that the opening salvo of the Obama administration’s campaign to restore health to the financial system, delivered last week by new U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, fell with a loud and ugly thud. The most common criticism is that the announcement was short on detail.

In a speech before the London School of Economics a week ago, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke offered a perverse economic theory in his quest to gather support for never-ending Wall Street bailouts.

A few weeks ago, when the U.S. Federal Reserve announced a strategy designed to bring down long-term interest and home mortgage rates through unlimited Treasury bond purchases, government debt staged a spectacular rally.

There’s plenty of bullish sentiment around commodities here at Contrarian Profits.

Byron King says gold and oil prices are experiencing a correction, not a trend reversal, and that the long-term prospects for these commodities are bullish.

Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff goes even further. He reckons the outlook for gold and oil has never been brighter. That’s because the current dip in commodity prices – and the dollar rally – is a market ‘fake’ that Wall Street has bought into without a rationale. The fundamentals simply don’t support it…

Peter Schiff, economic adviser to the recent presidential campaign of Ron Paul, says conventional wisdom is wrong on the global slowdown.

Global economies are cooling off not because American consumers spending has slowed but because U.S. homeowners are defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of existing loans underwritten by lenders around the world.

This means, although foreign banks are suffering due to lending to the U.S., they can avoid future pain by refusing to lend to America anymore. This will torpedo the dollar. But Peter says this is precisely what must happen…

The housing bubble was former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s doing – plain and simple. He gave birth to it, nurtured it, protected it, and guided it during every stage of its development. In fact, if there were a deck of playing cards featuring the key players in this debacle, Alan Greenspan would be the ace of spades.