The very size and scope of the United States federal government is likely something that Ludwig von Mises could not have imagined, despite writing the book which foretold the results of such a behemoth, Bureaucracy . Early on Mises wrote, “Congress has in many instances surrendered the function of legislation to government agencies and
Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto , included ten planks required to create a socialist dictatorship. Number five on the list is “Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” America’s Federal Reserve satisfies this requirement, especially the modern version, which
The financial covid crash of 2020 came and went in a month as the US government threw every monetary and fiscal trick it had at the government-imposed flash panic. We’ll never know which malivestments would have been cleansed. We live on with goods and labor shortages and with higher prices we’re assured by experts are transient. Supply chain
Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF) of FTX fame has been sent to Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) for attempted witness tapering. These accommodations are a far cry from the comfy confines of his parent’s 3,000 sf home in Palo Alto. Just last December the crypto wiz was living in a $40 million beachside penthouse in the Bahamas. The new digs
The south edge of Elkhart, Kansas (population 1,884) is the Kansas-Oklahoma state border, and the city is just 8.5 miles from the Kansas-Colorado border. As removed as Elkhart is, the Kansas Office of the State Bank Commissioner showed up Friday (July 28th) along with the FDIC to close Heartland Tri-State Bank. The deposit insurer estimates the
After ninety-nine years in business, Yellow, one of the nation’s biggest trucking companies, shut down. The company has more than twelve thousand trucks and employed thirty thousand, with twenty-two thousand of those jobs held by Teamsters. If you are a taxpayer, you know all this, your government being a 29.6 percent shareholder of Yellow and
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. There was once something called the Hemline Index introduced by economist George Taylor in 1926. The idea was that the hemline of women’s skirts signed where the economy and/or the stock market were headed. Short skirts meant good times; a falling economy was signaled by longer
The 4.2 percent Consumer Price Index (CPI) bounce for April sent a chill through some traders and financial commentators who had expected a tamer number like a 3.6 or 3.9 percent from last year’s covid price level air pocket. The MarketWatch headline screamed, “U.S. Inflation Soars in April to Thirteen-Year High, CPI Shows, and Reveals Fresh
“If the market continues to see wild swings based on Elon Musk tweets, it’s going to be a big setback for this asset class,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co. told Bloomberg . “The fact that it sees such wild swings to the tweets from one person takes away the legitimacy of the asset class.” Reminds a bit of a financial
This spring Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes asked Fed chair Jerome Powell, “And you believe the system, because of the oversight of the Fed, has the wherewithal to stand a significant shock to the markets?” After pointing out that the markets survived a 25 percent drop in GDP and the loss of 30 million jobs last covid spring, Powell admitted
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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.