As a precondition to joining the European currency, member states had to abide by quantitative fiscal criteria, explained below, sharply limiting their room to maneuver. Since the adoption of the fiscal pact and the launch of the euro, many countries chose to flaunt it, to the chagrin of others that steadfastly adhered to it. This article explains
Much has been written about the famous debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the constitutionality of America’s first central bank, the Bank of the United States (BUS). This was where Jefferson, as secretary of state, enunciated his “strict constructionist” view of the Constitution, making his case to President George
“In bypassing Congress in this way, the American public has shown that it realizes only too well that Congress has been the major culprit in budget deficits.” [From the Libertarian Review , May 1979, Rothbard provides a well-rounded discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of a balanced-budget amendment and assesses the significance of the
[The Freeman , 1970] On a recent journalistic junket to West Germany the group with which I was traveling had a mass interview with Ludwig Erhard, the former chancellor who, as Dr. Adenauer’s Minister of Economics in the first post World War II government of his country, was responsible for the “German economic miracle.” The talk turned to the
During my 15-odd years working in municipal government, I often felt like an undercover agent infiltrating the mob. It became increasingly clear that my belief system and that of the bureaucracy were opposed. The bureaucratic “mob” kept pressuring me to do things contrary to my free-market principals. But like a good agent, I always exerted enough
Argentina’s default came as no surprise. The amazing thing is not that the collapse of the Argentinean economy finally occurred, but the length of time it took to happen. Why have private and public lenders extended loans for so long a time? Why have they continued doing so even when all warning lights were flashing red? How did Argentina manage
Social security is neither social nor secure. It is not social because the transfer system provokes the very dependency it is said to heal, and it is not secure because the comprehensive modern welfare system undermines economic prosperity. As a coercive system of transfers from the active to the inactive, from the saver to the consumer, and from
The great failing of the Obama administration is that it is packed with people who show no apparent knowledge of the essential truths of liberal theory. That theory — which is the core of the American political contribution to, and the driving force of, modernity itself — is that freedom is the foundation of and the reason for social and economic
[This article was originally published in Review of Austrian Economics 1 (1987): 181–86. ] Over the past two decades, economists have observed and become professionally concerned with falling rates of economic growth. To many young people today trying to establish homes and raise families, that concern is not merely professional. Despite their
Robert Shiller In a recent New York Times op-ed , economist Robert Shiller (coproducer of the famous housing-price index) recommended that the US government begin to sell claims on fractions of Gross Domestic Product. Besides the practical problems with his proposal, it rests on the premise that the US government owns the entire economy. It will
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.