It may still be too early to pen the postmortem on the New Economy. The final chapters on that episode are still being written. Nonetheless, Leon Levy’s discursive memoir, The Mind of Wall Street, is a first cut, perhaps inadvertently so, at disentangling some of the threads that helped create the great bull market of recent vintage. Levy is a
The consultation of oracles, a practice long thought dead, continues today in many forms, perhaps in a more subtle and less institutionalized than during antiquity, but powerfully nonetheless. In Michael Wood’s new book, The Road to Delphi, he explores this “extended metaphorical afterlife of oracles”. Wood draws primarily from history and
Today, it is taken for granted that the Federal Reserve System’s role is to manage the economy with the crook of monetary policy, as shepherds leading a flock to greener pastures. Therefore, Fed Governor Bernanke could state in a recent speech , “The ultimate objective of monetary policymakers is to promote the health of the U.S. economy, which
On Thursday, February 27, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging that we should tackle Social Security sooner rather than later, so as to avoid “abrupt and painful” revisions of the program when the baby boomers start retiring. Congress should, he said, consider things like raising the retirement age
A review of A History of the Federal Reserve. Volume 1: 1913–1951 by Allan H. Meltzer, foreword by Alan Greenspan Thomas Jefferson, an opponent of our first national bank, is reputed to have said that a national bank is a greater threat to liberty than a standing army. Here, in this interesting book about the history of the first few generations
Before there was the Federal Reserve there was the second Bank of the United States (1817–1836). Since the late nineteenth century, historians and economists have lauded this institution for its salutary control over the currency, its regulation of the state banks, its prudent stewardship of the government’s funds, and its example of a fruitful
In their election oratory politicians usually stress their love of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets. But as soon as they are elected they tend to discover a great number of exceptions that require more funding. President Bush clearly made the election pledge to avoid budget deficits, but, ever since September 11, 2001, his budget proposals
Since the introduction in 1912 of Ludwig von Mises’s Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) in his book, The Theory of Money and Credit , it has been subject to relentless criticism. According to the ABCT the artificial lowering of interest rates by the central bank leads to a misallocation of resources on account of the fact that businesses
The latest economic data indicate that the prospects for a sustained economic recovery have been further delayed. The low interest rate policy of the Fed remains the major factor behind this deterioration. Last Wednesday the Fed announced that it would keep the federal funds rate target unchanged at 1.25 %—at a 41-year low. Also, to encourage
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Thursday , during questioning by the Senate’s special committee on aging, that he does not believe that a housing price bubble exists on a national level in the United States. “The notion of a bubble bursting and the whole price level coming down seems to me as far as a national nationwide
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.