It doesn’t take a degree in marketing to see that Wal-Mart has an image problem among the chattering classes. Few corporations in recent decades have been subjected to more relentless criticism, disdain, and fevered condemnation than what is regularly heaped upon the Arkansas-based retail giant. Wal-Mart has become the poster boy for everything
Last Tuesday, January 22, 2008, the US central bank lowered its federal funds rate target by a hefty 0.75% to 3.5%. The panicky decision to lower the fed funds rate target was made ahead of the Fed’s meeting at the end of this month. Last Tuesday’s cut by the Fed was the largest nonscheduled interest-rate cut in more than 20 years. We suspect that
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “They came in droves — high school students, retirees, young moms, the unemployed — all for a shot at a job at a new Wal-Mart on Memorial Drive in central DeKalb County. In just two days, and with virtually no advertising or even any signs, a staggering 7,500 people filled out applications for one of the 350 to 400
Just in case you might think that the curbing of free enterprise and individual rights is something new in American history, someone just sent me a headline from the New York Times dated May 30, 1918 . “Navy Man Indicted for Food Hoarding.” It reads as follows: Indictments were returned by a Federal Grand Jury here today against Medical Director
So says Mike Whitney , a “well respected freelance writer living in Washington state, interested in politics and economics from a libertarian perspective.” After discussing the housing bubble, capital consumption, and much else, Whitney concludes that prosperity will be restored only if we all start using things up: “America’s consumer culture is
Voiceover: “The Federal Reserve System virtually controls the nation’s monetary system, yet it is accountable to no one. It has no budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional Committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations.” These are the words of the late professor Murray N. Rothbard, economist and academic advisor of the
Gene Epstein, Econospinning: How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006 “Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.” — George Orwell Economists are familiar with the cliché “lies, damned lies and statistics,” which puts statistics at the top of the
Sometimes articles are so exasperating there is no sense in even attempting a response, but usually these don’t appear in the Wall Street Journal . Selection from Thomas Frank: What has overtaken America’s working people is not a natural disaster like “globalization,” and not even some kind of societal atavism in which countries regress
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.