The Free Market 20, no. 12 (December 2002) There are many characteristics that Alan Greenspan shares with Benjamin Strong, the New York Fed president during the 1920s. Both decided US monetary policies during eras of massive, unsustainable growth in the business cycle. Both played major roles in creating asset bubbles that eventually resulted in
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) With Greenspan’s widely reported “rate cuts” this fall, most people would probably be surprised to find out that the federal funds rate is not set by Greenspan. It would also probably surprise these same people to learn that only weeks after short-term rates hit rock bottom, longer-term rates rose
Ready for “Pinkbacks,” that is, for Federal Reserve notes with a pink hue? Yes, the Federal Reserve is continuing to experiment with new, more difficult-to-counterfeit paper money. First it was BIG FACES (along with the introduction of a variety of other counterfeit-proof characteristics into our Federal Reserve notes). Next, maybe, it will be
In the latest issue of The New Republic magazine, Peter Eavis calls Enron “a uniquely bad company,” and I agree with him. From everything I have read, I think that its upper management was comprised of a smarmy group of individuals, many of whom may find themselves in one of those country-club jailhouses in the not-too-distant future. I
Due to some incredible competition over the last two weeks, this year’s Hubris in Monetary Policy award will go to someone other than Alan Greenspan. To be sure, it looked like Greenspan would retain his trophy after his now-notorious speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo. It was here that The Chairman pulled out the big guns by arguing that monetary policy
In a recent article, Paul Krugman pines for the lost America of the 1950s and 1960s, which he characterizes as a “middle class society”. While inequality existed, Krugman tells us, it was not nearly as bad as the Gilded Age where robber barons ran roughshod over the less fortunate. It is Krugman’s contention that the United States has returned
The following extract neatly sums up why monetarists and Keynesians are both wrong in their prescriptions about the need to use easy money and Big Government to boost “effective” demand. From The National Federation of Independent Business April Survey: “The economy is splitting with the services sector improving and the goods sector suffering,”
Corrigan heads Capital Insight , a financial consultancy. He was interviewed at the Mises Institute prior to his lecture on the “What Happened to Recovery?” MISES.ORG : It seems like the Austrian story of the boom is getting out there. CORRIGAN : My sense is that many Austrians have described the process of the boom very well. The literature deals
Forget Greenspan’s timorous optimism about the economy—after all, ask yourself when, in the course of the whole dirty dozen of futile rate cuts, he last talked its prospects down ? No. Just like the tired old stock promoter he is, Bookie Al always thinks better days are ‘round the corner, so puh-leeze, People, let’s perform our own analysis
This speech by the president of the Mises Institute was given before students, professors, trustees, and others at an awards dinner sponsored by the Adam Smith Club, Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina, April 4, 2002 . Rockwell and entrepreneur Lewis Fetterman received the club’s Free Enterprise Award . Free-market economics, of which
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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.