French assignat , 1795 First printed in 1896 and as unfortunately pertinent today as it was then, Dr. Andrew Dickson White’s Fiat Money Inflation in France chronicles the national suicide of an imposing empire that choked to death on one of mankind’s more foolish delusions — the stubborn belief that money does grow on trees. Dr. White’s style
Multimillionaires like Hillary Clinton and Lou Dobbs butter their bread by defending middle-class Americans. They are correct about the problem, but their suggested remedies — protectionism, welfare, regulation, subsidy, and tax reform — would only make the problem worse. The middle class actually faces many important economic problems, but in
[This talk was delivered at the Mises Institute’s Supporters Summit, November 1, 2008, Auburn, Alabama. An MP3 audio version of this talk is available for download .] Today we stand at a point in time that is the beginning of the end of an economic era when the US dollar dominated the global economy. The dollar still dominates world financial
You are uptown in a shopping district of a small community, and you pass by the meat shop, the wine shop, the coffee shop, two churches side by side, a coin shop, an antique store and hold it right there. A coin shop? This is irresistible, because, as implausible as this may sound, all political truth can be found in a coin shop. And not just
Barack Obama’s tax advisers recently posted a piece in the Wall Street Journal about their candidate’s tax plans. Their article was designed to triangulate, painting their candidate as a tax cutter and the Republican opposition as a secret tax raiser. It was well written and well argued — not that you can really trust anything you read about what
In the midst of the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, some economists are currently trying to come up with answers as to how to stabilize the financial system. Most experts are of the view that greater control of financial markets is the answer. The late professor Milton Friedman would have been dismayed by such ideas. He
True Money Supply Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute When central bankers blast central banks for being reckless, you know the problem is serious. Indeed, it seems that everyone suddenly really cares about inflation. Everywhere you go, this is the talk, at the grocery, the gas station, among your neighbors. Price increases have been persistent in
The first conference hosted by the Mises Institute was on the gold standard. How well I can recall the names we were called in Washington, DC. Reactionaries, Neanderthals, irrelevant to the modern debate, worshippers of a barbarous relic, throwbacks, pipe dreamers, and the rest: all designed to make us shut up about the most important issue in
[This talk was delivered on September 13, 2008, at the Vancouver Mises Circle .] This past week, the government announced that it would take Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the mortgage giants, under conservatorship, which is a nice way of saying that they will be nationalized. We don’t use the word nationalize any more. We can try an experiment and
For believers in liberty and sound economics, it has been a series of devastating weeks. The crisis of fiat money, long foretold by the Austrian school, finally came. But there turns out to be no great satisfaction in saying “I told you so.” If it would do any good, it would be worth it. But Treasury officials and central bankers are proceeding as
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.