New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

That's the Austrian school of economics my friend, and in terms of "growing field" there's a lot of internet libertarians and the like that are "growing" into the field, with Ron Paul as their champion of the anti-FED.

However, amongst actual economists, the field isn't taken very seriously, because of many of its adherents semantic arguments (re-defining "inflation" outside of the standard scope, to make their argument) and its ability to ignore lots of contradicting reality. (Like, the fact that no, the Great Depression wouldn't have ended quickly, because Deficit Spending != More taxes, and our debt ratio after WWII was MULTIPLE times our GDP, and yet, our industry was booming.)

The major problem is that the American economy had become entirely dependent on consumer spending, which, because of a lack of real wage growth among the bottom 80% led to a massive expansion and dependence on credit. When the housing bubble burst, credit went cold turkey, and many defaulted on their debt because of their inflated lifestyle.

As a result, everyone suffered. Consumers stopped spending, which lead to businesses credit lines being downgraded, leading to a halt in manufacturing and importing. The global ripples of having a force (like credit) simply disappear are obvious, just as they were right before the first great depression.

Not unless one overcomes the barriers to pharmaceutical access.

Because of the same market forces you're arguing for. And we are seeing new antibiotics. SARS, for example, didn't kill everyone. Although as a side-effect, the drug used to treat SARS killed all their living bone marrow.

So developing a curative anti-biotic that germs aren't already resistant to, that doesn't box liver/kidneys/bone endocytes is a largely complex, potentially intractable problem.

The two new techniques we're seeing is RNAi "wipes" to prevent transmission of the Herpes Simplex Virus (a potentially new anti-viral drug -- and a technique to develop more anti-viral drugs), and studying Alligator Blood. Alligator's "White Blood Cells" are extremely powerful, and we may be able to synthesize proteins that are safe for humans, and yet equally powerful.

So yes, new antibiotics are here, or they're coming. They just don't warrant commercials because you're not going out to ask your doctor about the new antibiotic the same way you're going to ask about Viagra. You could argue that "nothing new is happening with battery technology? Where are all the new battery technologies?" You'd be right (nothing new worth marketing about) but you'd also be wrong (plenty of incremental improvements over the last 20 years that've dramatically changed battery performance.)

>Their growth was stunted by govt action because they weren't meeting their "lend to folks who can't pay back" quota.

Again, wrong. BB&T's CEO has stated they didn't join in the Bubble for reasons other than government regulation. Their growth was stunted in the sense that you were getting a sensible 6% return instead of the 9% you'd get with BoA or Citi. Except now your investment is still around, your competitors isn't. Its one of those "When I'm excluded from the bubble I'm losing money, but now that its over I'm raking it in" things that just happens. Its also what fuels bubbles: If your competitor is shortchanging his customers, but delivering superior returns, your customers will seek him out. So you can lose business, or your engage in short term, unsustainable thinking just like everyone else. They choose the former.

>Huh? Somewhere north of $2 Trillion is being pissed away because of govt regulatory failures and you think that my money is safe?

Again, Investment Banks != Deposit Account Banks. If you were investing in a mutual fund, there was risk. That's what you were trading higher returns for -- the risk you might lose money. If you simply dumped your money in a depository account -- something FDIC and 0% risk, then no, you couldn't have lost money. Nobody has.

And again, that's one of the reason why depository banks have been incredibly stable since the last great depression: They can survive bank runs, and even if they become insolvent, the government has $44 million of insurance money to ensure you get your money back with little hassle.

Again, after reading the URL you gave me, I think you're babbling non-sense. Yes, I get the point: The CRA allows the bank to lend to people who otherwise couldn't get loans. But the claim "Wells Fargo took a huge hit when it stayed out of the subprime mortgages. Regulators refused to let WF enage in unrelated activities (acquisitions, opening branches, etc.)because WF didn't "play ball", activities that said regulators let cooperative institutions do." is NOT substantiated by the article you linked. More HOW and WHY, less WHAT, please.

Oh, and a zero regulation environment? There's always going to be liability for "your drug killed people". In a zero regulation environment that cost is going to be incredibly high. Or your placebo drug is going to CAUSE economic damage by killing productive workers.

Your model of regulation/no-regulation is far too simple. As always, there is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where both the public (consumer) and the corporation (producer) benefit.

And as always, if the cost of new drug (say an AIDS cure) is prohibitively high, a government may subsidize the process. Or even simply provide capital incentive (say a $2 billion winner take all prize, like an X-Prize for drugs).