The Securities and Exchange Commission took the very drastic step of outlawing the essential financial practice of short selling in an attempt to galvanize financial markets. (The SEC recently extended at least some portions of its initial ban through October 17.) But short selling provides essential information to market participants and helps us
I have two offensives to report in the Battle Against the Bailout. First, here is an mp3 of my interview with Mark Carbonaro on Friday morning. And here is my op ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune that ran yesterday. An excerpt: The government itself has made it rational for each bank to continue stringing along its investors. After all, why should
When I taught at Hillsdale College, I heard one of my colleagues (whose office was right next to mine, and our doors were open) listening to a student ask if he could take the class final early, because he wanted to go participate in a rally for newly-reelected President Bush. My colleague wearily asked, “Why do you support him? He’s not a
This is truly an awful op ed from today’s WSJ . I am hoping that a bunch of us can write Letters to the Editor, so maybe one of ours will get published. The writer claims that our periodic banking panics are the fault of Thomas Jefferson, because he didn’t understand commerce and hated rich people, and thus killed (through his disciples) a strong
The Free Market 26, no. 9 (September 2008) The Paulson bailout failed in the House. It wasn’t a death blow to the plan, but it should have been. This wasn’t an economic plan: it was a heist. It will go down as The Great Bank Robbery of 2008. The economics behind it were nonsense, but we are naïve if we spend much time even considering the
Although most commentators concede that the free market does a decent job providing regular goods and services day in and day out, for some reason they believe that when it comes to unlikely but catastrophic events, government intervention is necessary. An excellent example of this misguided mindset is the recent argument over what to do with the
[This Study Guide to Human Action , Chapter XIX is also available in PDF .] CHAPTER XIX. THE RATE OF INTEREST CHAPTER SUMMARY 1. The Phenomenon of Interest Originary interest is the discount applied to future goods versus present goods, and is ultimately due to the universal phenomenon of time preference. As chapter XVIII demonstrated, people
[This Study Guide to Human Action , Chapter XX is also available in PDF .] CHAPTER XX. INTEREST, CREDIT EXPANSION, AND THE TRADE CYCLE CHAPTER SUMMARY 1. The Problems The neutral rate of interest is the hypothetical, single rate of originary interest — i.e., the rate of markup on consumer goods compared to their factors of production — that would
David Frum — former Bush speechwriter, ambitious author , American Public Radio commentator, and all-around guru — has been lecturing Ron Paul supporters about the gold standard. After three such lectures (a National Review Online blog post , an NPR commentary , and finally a National Post article ) I decided to throw my hat in the ring and defend
Central banks around the world have painted themselves into a corner as of late, as their plans for injecting hundreds of billions of dollars worth of credit into the financial markets butts up against their desire to avoid massive price increases . Rather than take the blame for this predicament, the financial central planners have
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.