It costs money to make money. This fact is not only true for businessmen, investors, and entrepreneurs, but also for the moneymakers themselves — the Department of the Treasury. To print bills or mint coins, the United States Mint and Bureau of Engraving and Printing must purchase all sorts of resources, including paper, ink, equipment, and
Reminiscent of a juvenile accepting a dare to do something stupid, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Christopher Dodd, crowed to reporters the other day that committee members had done what many thought would be impossible: the committee agreed to legislation that would rescue homeowners facing foreclosure. Not to disappoint
After months of higher fuel and food prices, I would have expected the outcry to happen sooner than the past week. Usually screams of despair about the cost of living come from special-interest groups representing the aged or the poor. But the siren came this time from my 88-year-old father-in-law. When the topic of the economy surfaced during a
Headlines blare about the relentless selling pressure and historic declines in value that have hit stock exchanges around the globe. The free fall has financial pundits and politicians wailing about the trillions of dollars lost in the US markets. Ironically, these were the same people who warned us that failure to legislate a financial bailout
“Liberal” economists are overjoyed by the bursting of the housing bubble, for it provides them with what they believe is another “market failure” story. “Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure,” Robert Gordon gleefully declared in the April 7 online edition of The American Prospect magazine, edited by Robert Kuttner. Gordon
[An MP3 audio version of this article, read by Dr. Floy Lilley, is available here .] Ask yourself this question: was the housing price bubble, which has burst, caused by (a) a Fed policy of too much liquidity, which caused artificially low interest rates, which in turn caused a great deal of malinvestment, or (b) a Fed policy of too little
As soon as the federal government announced its trillion-dollar bailout (for starters) of Wall Street plutocrats, defenders of the bailout pulled out what they apparently believed was their secret weapon: the myth of Alexander Hamilton as the alleged inventor of American capitalism. Hamilton, they said, would approve of the bailout. Case closed.
As a Swede I get to hear a lot of the myths of how wonderful a country Sweden supposedly is — the “ prosperous socialism “ it stands for, a role model for the rest of the world. For instance, quite a few friends from around the world have commended me on Swedish recycling polices and the Swedish government’s take on coercive environmentalism. The
Markets are ruthlessly efficient, meaning in large part that people will not undertake investment projects with risk characteristics that are not aligned with savers’ preferences. All profitable opportunities will be exploited in equilibrium, and no potentially profitable projects will be left undone. One of the unfortunate consequences of
In the wake of the recent flooding in Iowa, the state’s attorney general has announced that Iowa’s rules against price gouging are now in effect. These rules prohibit businesses from “substantially raising the prices for needed goods or services without justification” in the wake of a natural disaster. According to a June 23 press release from the
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.