All of the industrial world’s central banks and public treasuries currently are engaged in an impossible exercise — trying to reinflate an artificially created boom through zero interest rates and deficit spending. The reality is that the current financial crisis was caused by central-bank money expansion, so it cannot be cured by further money
[An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Nathaniel Foote, is available for download .] Recently I was fortunate enough to have an entire day to myself in London, probably my favorite city in the world. Well, I had an entire day after filling my family’s tea order at Fortnum and Mason, plus buying cups, saucers, and plates approved by
If the word “ironic” doesn’t apply to bond-investing gurus, then it applies to no one. Former George Soros protégé Stanley Druckenmiller and Doubleline Capital founder Jeffrey Gundlach have warned that US government spending is unsustainable at current levels and that the ballooning deficit increases the likelihood of default. Bill Gross, manager
[The 2011 Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, given on March 12 at the Austrian Scholar’s Conference. An MP3 audio file of that lecture is available for download .] David Stockman The triumph of crony capitalism occurred on October 3rd, 2008. The event was the enactment of TARP — the single greatest economic-policy abomination since the 1930s, or
Feel the need for a good, old-fashioned horror story, one that will make your hair stand on end? Maybe one that will cause bile to rise in your throat? Well, don’t bother to reread William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist , Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , or Bram Stoker’s Dracula . For a detailed account of the descent of an entire country into despair
It is a great pleasure for me to present this book by my colleague Philipp Bagus , one of my most brilliant and promising students. The book is extremely timely and shows how the interventionist setup of the European monetary system has led to disaster. The current sovereign-debt crisis is the direct result of credit expansion by the European
The three years that have passed since the world financial crisis and subsequent economic recession hit have provided Austrian economists with a golden opportunity to popularize their theory of the economic cycle and their dynamic analysis of social conditions. In my own case, I could never have imagined at the beginning of 1998, when the first
Unhinged 2.0 This article originally ran on Tuesday, February 17, 2009. It was near the low of the last stock-market cycle and the economy had endured a year of unprecedented government interventions. The Federal Reserve had made a series of bailouts, Detroit had been bailed out, and we had the various stimulus programs. These measures were sure
In his speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on August 26, 2011, the Fed chairman disappointed most pundits. He did not promise another massive infusion of fake money, i.e., QE3. I suspect that a strengthening in bank lending is an important factor behind the Fed’s decision to postpone the pushing of more money into the economy. The yearly rate of
Political upheaval has hit Finland, and it’s merely a foreshadowing of bigger changes ahead. The core issue is whether Finland ought to be paying for bailouts for other EU states. In reaction to establishment support for the bailout, voters ousted the probailout ruling party and gave an upset victory to the bailout-critical conservative party.
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.