This is the fiftieth anniversary of the demise of the gold standard and the beginning of the current fiat paper standard. Many will say “good riddance” to gold and “thank goodness” for the “good ole greenback”! Reflection, however, produces an alternative conclusion. To be sure, the opinion of current experts places great weight on paper money.
Wouldn’t it be nice to permanently rid ourselves of economic crises? In a previous article, I showed that the waste of the boom and the cost of the bust are brutal even using the best recovery policies available. Here I unveil the reason for the ongoing boom-bust cycle and how to eliminate the cycle crisis permanently. Most people think that the
The nickel, the once popular US five-cent coin, is known for its nickel content (25 percent nickel and 75 percent copper). It originated as a type of fiat money in that its intrinsic metal value was far less than the purchasing power stamped on it. The final act in the illustrative monetary career of the nickel is expected to be extinction, as
[This talk was delivered on October 27, 2006, at “Imperialism: Enemy of Freedom,” the Mises Institute Supporter’s Summit. It is available in MP3 audio from Mises Media .] People poke fun at Austrian economists because we support the gold standard. They cannot understand why we would “cling” to this “relic” of history. They view it as going
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
If you examine the attached graph one factor that might jump out at you is that the current “recovery” has been the worst one since WWII in terms of the percentage job losses and the time necessary for a full recovery in the job market making it, already, the most expensive since WWII. Another less clear, but equally valid observation is that the
Volume 6, No. 4 (Winter 2003) It seems odd that economists would find the idea of falling prices to be a bad thing. Likewise, it is peculiar that policymakers would fear deflation and be willing to take drastic measures to insure the so-called “defeat” of deflation. Policymakers and politicians, after all, would supposedly want the general
David Howden is interviewed on the GoldMoney show with Andy Duncan. “Howden thinks that the Euro will hold together in the short term, but he is rather pessimistic on the long term outlook of the common currency. One at a time countries which were formerly regarded as “stable” are being dragged into the debt hole. Though he assesses the problems
Thorsten Polleit delivered a speech at the Austrian Economics Research Conference entitled “The Gold Standard That Never Was.” Thorsten was interviewed by GoldMoney’s Andy Duncan. The speech is discussed in this podcast . The conditions that he sees as being necessary for a gold standard to be compatible with free market principles are discussed.
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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.