After three-plus years of floundering around, a consensus has finally arrived that we are back in recession. Growth is not happening. The meager statistical growth of the past few years — no one dared claim it amounted to full recovery — was probably illusory. There is real growth, and there are government statistics. The statistics have misled
You are uptown in a shopping district of a small community, and you pass by the meat shop, the wine shop, the coffee shop, two churches side by side, a coin shop, an antique store and hold it right there. A coin shop? This is irresistible, because, as implausible as this may sound, all political truth can be found in a coin shop. And not just
Barack Obama’s tax advisers recently posted a piece in the Wall Street Journal about their candidate’s tax plans. Their article was designed to triangulate, painting their candidate as a tax cutter and the Republican opposition as a secret tax raiser. It was well written and well argued — not that you can really trust anything you read about what
These are times when you just feel like yelling at the people who write the news, particular the business press. They are happy to report, word for word, what the Fed and Treasury Department, and their message is always the same: hey, it’s not our fault; in fact, we are fixing the problem! We are told that the economy has tanked because foreigners
The Free Market 16, no. 12 (December 1998) The phrase of the day is “moral hazard.” It’s something everyone seems to think is a bad thing, but few are willing to do anything about, certainly not Alan Greenspan. So far, he’s on record backing the Mexican bailout, the Asian bailout, the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management, and more IMF
David Henderson, writing for the Cato Institute , says that Greenspan ran a “tight” monetary policy. So of course he can’t be blamed. Robert Murphy has already responded to this claim in a wonderful article . Some additional thoughts. First: Second: But Henderson says that these are not relevant data. We should instead look at year-on-year change.
Bill Fleckenstein ( MSN Money ) says that the next Fed chairman should “Be well-versed in the so-called Austrian School of Economics.... a school of economic thought championed by, among others, Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrians deny that a central bank, such as the Fed, can work economic miracles by juggling interest rates. In
It’s Bernanke for the Fed . And here . His most famous comment: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so,
MAN Financial chief economist Dr Frank Shostak has a warning for investors. The Reserve Bank’s monetary policy is “out of control” and that means inflation is heading up, interest rates are set to rise and the share market is only being supported by excessive money supply. He believes the Reserve Bank uses incorrect definitions of inflation and
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.