Economic debates seem to have their own growing seasons. For stretches of time they may disappear, only to reappear in later years covering the same old ground again. The debate about the effects of deficits on interest rates, though temporarily stunted by the frosty winters of the Clinton years with its visions of budget surpluses, is back with
In the grep cat American game of poker, the best players think in terms of mathematical expectation and long-term probabilities. It is the hallmark of a bad player to think in terms of immediate results to the exclusion of the long-term. Poker players well understand that the best players can be beaten in any specific instance. In a famous and
It may still be too early to pen the postmortem on the New Economy. The final chapters on that episode are still being written. Nonetheless, Leon Levy’s discursive memoir, The Mind of Wall Street, is a first cut, perhaps inadvertently so, at disentangling some of the threads that helped create the great bull market of recent vintage. Levy is a
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” - Shakespeare, Macbeth Humphrey Neill’s little gem of a book, The Art of Contrary Thinking , was groundbreaking in at least one respect. Published in 1954, it gave the English-speaking world a new word, at least according to the lexicographers of the Oxford English Dictionary .
The specter of universal health care coverage has emerged again, as Democratic presidential candidates grope around for vote-getting ideas. Each of the candidates has put forth a plan and they are similar in at least one respect. As The Washington Post reports , “all are big and ambitious, and are far costlier than anything that has been proposed
A common economic view predicts that the aging societies of the West portend lower economic growth in the future because these older populations are likely to save more (and consume less) than younger populations. Increased savings, then, is viewed as unfriendly for growth. Higher levels of consumption, conversely, are viewed more favorably. Also
“History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.” –William Graham Sumner Sumner was referring to the seemingly endless attempts to harness the power of the state to further one’s own ends at the expense of other people. All human types — generals, millionaires, priests, scholars and so on — have made these attempts. The disease is not confined
The consultation of oracles, a practice long thought dead, continues today in many forms, perhaps in a more subtle and less institutionalized than during antiquity, but powerfully nonetheless. In Michael Wood’s new book, The Road to Delphi, he explores this “extended metaphorical afterlife of oracles”. Wood draws primarily from history and
Today, it is taken for granted that the Federal Reserve System’s role is to manage the economy with the crook of monetary policy, as shepherds leading a flock to greener pastures. Therefore, Fed Governor Bernanke could state in a recent speech , “The ultimate objective of monetary policymakers is to promote the health of the U.S. economy, which
“The world is in permanent monetary crisis,” Murray Rothbard once observed (in Making Economic Sense ), “but once in a while, the crisis flares up acutely, and we noisily shift gears from one flawed monetary system to another.” Monetary systems built on floating fiat currencies are fragile things. Most of the world currently operates under this
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.