The demand for building permits and the other related “services” that can only be purchased at city hall in Las Vegas has plummeted. The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that building permit activity in the City of Las Vegas is but a third what it was in 2004. So, of course, city officials are proposing a 65 to 70 percent hike in fees for building
Over at the Atlantic Daniel Indiviglio writes that the government’s current CPI numbers “should serve as a reminder that inflation isn’t what we should be worrying about at this time.” After all, the index rose only 0.2% in January and fell 0.1% if food and energy are stripped out, the first ngative reading since the 1980’s. Meanwhile, John
The Mortgage Bankers Association is selling their building in Washington DC for $41.3 million, which sounds like a lot, except the trade group bought the building for $79 million in 2007 with the help of a $75 million loan from PNC Financial. A year ago, the folks at Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers described the office market in the nation’s capitol as
[ The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales From Evolutionary Economics • By Michael Shermer • Macmillan, 2007 • 308 pages] People seem to do the craziest things when it comes to money. Whether it’s chasing stock-market bubbles or paying good money after bad on a home that’s hopelessly underwater, the idea
Anyone who follows financial markets has to wonder at times, “What are people thinking? How did they come to make those decisions?” It’s hard to imagine that John Muth and Robert Lucas came up with what’s known as the “rational-expectations theory,” wherein, as explained in Wikipedia, it is assumed that outcomes that are being forecast do not
“At over 225,000 tons and capable of accommodating nearly 6,300 passengers, serviced by 2,165 crewmembers, the Oasis is the size of five Titanics.” Just what is the ultimate symbol of excess that signals the peak in a market? The point when hubris takes over. When, as Christopher Wood writes about boom-time Japan in The Bubble Economy , “a
Economics professor Bernard Malamud not once but twice invited the crowd in Las Vegas to visit nearby Hoover Dam to see for themselves an example of the productive assets that were created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal. Professor Malamud was recruited to plead the Keynesian side of the argument in an “FDR’s Depression Policies:
[ Alchemists of Loss • By Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson • Wiley, 2010 • 432 pages] Worrying that their friends on Wall Street are liable to blow themselves up any day with complex financial products and strategies, Congress has passed and Obama has signed 2,300-plus pages of financial reform that provides “an architecture reflective of the
The Obama stimulus and bailouts haven’t decreased unemployment rates or bankruptcy filings while home prices and home sales have fallen and can’t get up. PIMCO’s Bill Gross told Bloomberg this can all be fixed with nearly zero interest rates and additional debt to stimulate the animal spirits of investors and entrepreneurs. The federal-funds rate
“There are a lot of Deadheads in finance,” claims CNBC’s big-government cheerleader and economics reporter Steve Liesman. On the financial network’s website, he relates a story about having “really good seats at a Dead show once, and I was never so recognized because of all the Wall Street guys had all the upfront tickets to the show. They were as
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.