Should the government subsidize buying houses that cost $1.2 million? The answer is obviously no. But the government is going to do it anyway through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) has just increased the size of mortgage loans Fannie and Freddie can buy (the “conforming loan limit”) to $970,080 in “high
Runaway house price inflation continues to characterize the U.S. market. House prices across the country rose 15.8% on average in October 2021 from the year before. U.S. house prices are far over their 2006 Bubble peak, and remain over the Bubble peak even after adjustment for consumer price inflation. They will keep on rising at the annual rate
Mises Institute Senior Fellow Alex Pollock joined Chicago’s Morning Answer this morning to talk about the failures of mainstream economics and the reckless policies of the Federal Reserve. Finance and Philosophy: Why We’re Always Surprised is available now on
Switzerland’s central bank, the Swiss National Bank (SNB), lost $3.6 billion in 2023, after a gigantic loss of $150 billion in 2022. But after booking these losses, and properly subtracting them from its capital, the SNB still had positive capital of over $70 billion. This gives it the quite respectable capital to total assets ratio of 7.9%. All
The Federal Reserve creates and manipulates the dominant fiat currency of the world. It produces the inflation of its supply and the continuous depreciation of its purchasing power. It manipulates dollar interest rates and the cost of debt, makes elastic the availability of credit (especially during financial crises), finances the government, and
Published in The Wall Street Journal : Mr. Levy describes the Fed’s permanent problem: It doesn’t and can’t know what the natural rate of interest is. Everyone should pity the members of the Federal Open Market Committee, who must inwardly confess that they can’t know the answers, yet have to play their parts in the Fed melodrama nonetheless. Alex
In The Price of Time , Edward Chancellor has given us a colorful and provocative review of the history, theory, and the profound effects of interest rates, the price that links the present and the future, which he argues is “the most important price of all.” The history runs from Hammurabi’s Code which in 1750 BC was “largely concerned with the
The Federal Reserve has officially reported a loss of $57 billion for the first six months of 2023. Quite a number! So the “ Federal Reserve Banks Combined Quarterly Financial Report as of June 30, 2023 ” (CQFR)—a little-known document—is especially notable for its red ink. We can anticipate an annual loss of over $100 billion for 2023 and for the
While the nation is rightly worried about the proliferation of antisemitism on its college campuses, another higher education abuse also needs prompt attention. On Dec. 6 – St. Nicholas Day – President Biden handed student loan defaulters another $5 billion gift in debt forgiveness. The administration’s eagerness to win the votes of student loan
Although manipulating housing finance is not among the Federal Reserve’s statutory objectives, the U.S. central bank has long been an essential factor in the behavior of mortgage markets, for better or worse, often for worse. In 1969, for example, the Fed created a severe credit crunch in housing finance by its interest rate policy. Its higher
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.