In the last week there have been several interesting developments involving gold. The price of the yellow metal set a new record, breaking through the $1,300 barrier. Meanwhile, a German firm is preparing to install gold vending machines in the United States. The German firm won’t be stocking the machines with gold purchased from European central
[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .] Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) The honor — if that be the proper term — of being the first English mercantilist writer should have gone, for
[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .] The “Bullionist” Attack on Foreign Exchange and on the East India Trade Having survived the assaults of ignorant moralists before the
In his interview with the CNBC on November 9, 2010, a highly regarded Wall Street economist, Nouriel Roubini, the cofounder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, said that a gold standard is unlikely to stabilize the financial system. On the contrary, holds Roubini, such a standard can only make things much worse. For instance, argues Roubini,
[In this essay from 1896, Sumner addresses the arguments of supporters of bimetallism, and instead supports a gold standard.] William Graham Sumner Some of the silver fallacies were stated by Mr. St. John in his address before the silver convention with such precision that his speech offers a favorable opportunity for dealing with them. He says
[An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Keith Hocker, is available for download .] In his extraordinary book Democracy: The God that Failed , Hans-Hermann Hoppe points out that the process of civilization is stopped when government continually violates property rights. The natural process of civilization comes through delaying
[Edited transcript of a Mises Circle speech given on November 13, 2010, in review of Joseph Salerno’s Money: Sound and Unsound .] Joseph Salerno, my friend and colleague at the Mises Institute , published a book this year entitled Money: Sound and Unsound . The book consists of 26 chapters, which were based on articles he wrote in publications
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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.
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