In an emergency meeting yesterday, the Fed announced a new set of measures designed to combat the negative supply and demand shocks anticipated from COVID-19. The target for the benchmark federal funds rate (the rate at which commercial banks lend to each other) was cut to 0–0.25 percent and the discount window (the interest rate at which the Fed
John Calhoun, among the most influential of America’s nineteenth-century statesmen, was born on March 18. As someone who served as a congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice-president to two presidents with whom he strongly disagreed (and with whom he sometimes fought as president of the senate), he deserves attention.
Americans, finally facing the prospect of the mano-a-mano portion of the 2020 presidential campaign, have already learned that previous complainers about the negativity, underhandedness, and attack-dog nature of politics didn’t know how good they had it. Abetted by technologies that increase the reach and power of smear campaigns and by mechanisms
The issue of whether government in America can quarantine persons against their will, ostensibly for their own health and that of others with whom they may come in contact, requires a dual analysis—one of the powers of the federal government and the other of the powers of the states. For constitutional analysis purposes, since local and regional
I write this on March 18, now having watched a 180-degree reversal of how we think about contagious disease. Formerly, we would put sick people in quarantine and respect the right of healthy people to go about their lives. Now we are on the brink of martial law. In our zeal to fight the coronavirus, we are shutting down travel, public gatherings,
Michael Moore, patronizing saint of poisoned water wells, hospital waiting lines, and the Rust Belt, has decided to shill for the establishment while waxing poetic about the poor. He may get a lot wrong, but he was absolutely right in 2015 about Trump : people wanted to vote for him in droves because he symbolized the Molotov cocktail they could
Remember the Golden Age of Laissez-Faire, the grand epoch brought to a tragic end by the COVID-19 crisis, which laid bare its failures for all to see? Me neither. And yet the New Narrative is already being written. “ The Era of Small Government Is Over ,” writes Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times. US federal, state, and local government spending
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has a big idea, almost Trumplike with a T. Her proposal to save us from the Coronavirus and economic collapse involves giving every American $2,000 in a pre-loaded debit card, to be followed by additional $1,000 monthly recharges until the economy recovers (aka in perpetuity). This is simply a version of
Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to end their treatment. The condition that treatment will not be withdrawn until doing
George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen has penned a brief manifesto for what he calls “State Capacity Libertarianism” on the Marginal Revolution blog. In it he makes the case for libertarians to embrace “state capacity” in certain limited cases. You can read his essay here. My initial responses, in no particular order, are as follows: 1.
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.