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
In the laboratory of history, great inflation followed by great disinflation opens the road to monetary regime change. Sometimes the road leads to a better place. Think of the US return to gold in 1879 following the inflationary issue of greenbacks during the Civil War; or the era of the hard deutsche mark when the German Bundesbank responded to
One of history’s greatest ironies is that gold detractors refer to the metal as the barbarous relic. In fact, the abandonment of gold has put civilization as we know it at risk of extinction. The gold coin standard that had served Western economies so brilliantly throughout most of the nineteenth century hit a brick wall in 1914 and was never able
It’s been said there’s no such thing as a controlled experiment in the social sciences, including economics. But we had something close to a laboratory experiment back in 1920–21 and 1930–31. In each of these periods there was a depression. Unemployment was high—for a while—it briefly was higher in the 1920s than in the 1930s. Prices fell in both
“The Earth speaks to us through the elements of nature. In every natural thing, we can find a hidden, powerful message.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson Every natural element with which the earth has been endowed has a usefulness—a purpose. If we listen to gold, its message is loud and clear—gold is money. To serve as natural money is gold’s highest purpose.
For those who would find relief knowing the Bible sanctions a market-derived medium of exchange, Gary North’s Honest Money will come as a godsend (no pun intended). Even for those reprobates who forswear a religious worldview, his book will provide a solid grounding in monetary theory and history. North’s vast understanding of money and banking
On October 7, 2022, US congressman Alex Mooney (a Republican from West Virginia) introduced a bill (the Gold Standard Restoration Act , H.R. 9157) that stipulates that the US dollar must be backed by physical gold owned by the US Treasury. The initiative clearly indicates that the increasingly inflationary US dollar is triggering efforts to get
Most economists believe that a general decline in the prices of goods and services is bad news because it is associated with major economic slumps such as the Great Depression. In July 1932, the yearly growth rate of US industrial production stood at –31 percent whilst in September 1932 the yearly growth rate of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI)
What would people use for money in a genuine free market? A lot of people answer the question in this way. We really don’t know the answer for sure. It would be up to the people who live in that society. Because in a genuine free market, there would be no state at all, there would be no money mandated by the state. People would compete to
According to the Austrian business cycle theory, the boom-bust cycle emerges in response to a deviation in the market interest rate from the natural interest rate, or the equilibrium interest rate. As a rule, it is held, the tampering with market interest rates by the central bank sets the boom-bust cycle in motion. Given this viewpoint, one might
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.