“I hate to say it, but before TV people spoke better and were better read than we are,” Terence Winter tells the New York Times . “They were probably more literate.” What Winter, who along with Martin Scorsese, is an executive producer of HBO’s upcoming Broadway Empire , is referring to is, “Books, of all things, are prominent props in Boardwalk
Nevada Federal Credit Union has no use for depositor money . “The depressed economy has dried up lending opportunities that Nevada Federal normally has,” credit union CEO Brad Beal told the Las Vegas Review Journal . Nevada Federal members who only have CDs with the credit union will not be paid any interest. Those that do have other accounts,
The two government-created creatures to spur home ownership have turned into the largest homeowners in the U.S. of A. according to the New York Times . The GSEs combined portfolios were close to 164,000 at the end of March, a quarter where the entities took ownership of a home every 90 seconds. “Our business is the American dream of home
Yesterday two readers of the Wall Street Journal weighed in against hard money. Steve Connor rejects the idea of a gold-backed dollar because the supply of gold can’t be controlled, using the hypothetical example of “a technological breakthrough enabling inexpensive extraction of gold from seawater,” with the result being a a gold-water
The National Credit Union Administration has packaged $50 billion of distressed securities for sale as $35 billion in government guaranteed bonds in order to bail-out the non-profit sector of the banking industry. Bloomberg reports , “Credit unions in the U.S. may absorb as much as $9.2 billion in losses over the next decade as the industry
Palladium prices are up 74% this year and platinum is up a couple hundred bucks an ounce from a year ago. So Catalytic converter thefts are on the rise. “It takes about five minutes and you make 100 bucks,” said Det. Tim Yancey with the Henry County (Georgia) Police Department. Thieves slide under the car, make two cuts with a battery-powered saw
As the economy attempts to cleanse itself of the malinvestments of the decade-long bubble, jobs dominated by men have been sacrificed: construction, finance, and manufacturing. Hanna Rosin writes in the Atlantic , “The recession merely revealed—and accelerated—a profound economic shift that has been going on for at least 30 years, and in some
With oil prices off their highs, his country in a recession and prices soaring, President Hugo Chavez devalued the bolivar and “vowed to fight speculation and price increases that could result from the devaluation.” At Caracas’s middle-class Sambil shopping mall, lines at cashiers reached 50-deep. Carmen Blanco, a 28-year-old accountant, waited to
BP PLC just announced it was canceling its dividend for this year in order to fund $20 billion in compensation to those harmed by the spill. Matt Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy says BP has about a month before they declare Chapter 11. They’re going to run out of cash from lawsuits,
Shoe magnate Tony Hsieh (Zappos.com) has made a deal to buy the City Hall building from the city of Las Vegas. Anyone who has visited downtown Vegas has noticed the curious building just off Glitter Gulch but with few windows facing the teaming activity on Freemont Street. After they move in, a thousand Zappos employees will be able to walk a
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.