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
The Free Market 26, no. 8 (September 2008) 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
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
[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 .] I originally conceived of this talk — a case for abolishing the central bank — as an applied update to my 1995 lecture at the Heritage Foundation on “Why Austrian Economics
The new issue (on sale today) of Worth magazine features an article on “A New Golden Age” by Nathan Lewis which is a nice recap of the history of the gold standard showing that we (along with the Roman’s) thrived on a gold standard only to succumb to paper inflations. “It is practically a truism that the decline of currency quality is mirrored in
Ron Paul explains his position on gold money: One of the basic insights of the great Austrian economists, both Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises, is that money emerged by evolution from the market process. It was not invented by governments. There are basic economic forces today that are contributing to the further evolution of the monetary
Control-freak politicians abhor gold because it ignores them; it won’t do what it’s told. It defies economists and laughs at central bankers. The Telegraph on why the establishment hates gold
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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.