Exhibit A : Jeremy Grantham, a highly respected and successful value investor, wrote :: I would say that anything of which 75 per cent sits idly and expensively in bank vaults is, as a measure of value, only one step up from the Polynesian islands that attached value to certain well-known large rocks that were traded. Elsewhere , Grantham
John R. Talbott’s new book The Coming Crash in the Housing Market makes a case that we are in a residential housing bubble, and offers some steps that home owners might take to protect themselves from what he sees as an inevitable fallout. To his credit, he sees what very few analysts of the housing market see - that the government-sponsored
Aaron Trask of TheStreet.com writes about overcapacity . But if you read it carefully, he is really talking about malinvestment, and the Fed’s role in preventing the liquidation of the misallocations that have occurred in some sectors. “Certainly this current availability of easy money through many of these convertible bond deals has made it less
At the recent meeting of the bank of central banks, the BIS, central bankers met to discuss unconventional measures to fight deflation, such ass buying financial assets. After having massively inflated financial markets, they are now worried that the situation is unsutainable. http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/29/news/international/bis.reut/index.htm
A few people are asking tough questions about the Fed’s insane policy of lowering short term interest rates. Perhaps the problems with the economy cannot be solved by more money, rather, “the economy, particularly in Silicon Valley, must face an even stronger dose of free-market capitalism: A shake-out that weeds out weak, money-losing companies
Richard Benson explains in this piece -- Government Statistics: Lessons in Cooking and Spinning -- how most government statistics are fabricated, padded, tweaked, or otherwised pushed and squeezed to come out more favorably than what the data shows. One example is that in the CPI, inflation is made to look lower by replacing house prices, which
A lengthy profile appearing in four parts in The Atlantic Monthly profiles wine critic Robert Parker. Parker publishes a wine periodical that rates thousands of wines according to Parker’s own tastes. The article describes how in the past, the pricing of French wine had been mostly conventional based on a fixed and unchanging hierarchy of the
Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times reports that Mortgage Markets are Out of Control . The mortgage-backed securities market is the place where bundles of home mortgages packaged into debt securities are traded. The MBS market is now the largest debt market in the world, having eclipsed the US Treasury market. The two Government Sponsored
Barron’s ($) economics writer Gene Epstein explains how the Fed destructively expands credit beyond available savings , and why we don’t need it at all.
An article on the Larouche in 2004 web site analyzes the housing bubble. LaRouche’s political agenda is not Austrian at all. It consists of a vast infrastructure boondoggle and other forms of central planning. However, some of the analysts on his site have interesting things to say on specific topics. The article, ( ‘Fannie and Freddie Were
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.