China again raises reserve requirements of banks . This was the fourth time in just seven months that they did this. If they keep this up, fractional reserve banking might be ended in China soon! No, not really perhaps, but it is clear that Chinese leaders are increasingly anxious to rein in credit expansion, especially since they’ve also imposed
When I surfed into the Yahoo News web site Business section , I saw the headline “Bernanke challenged on inflation”. “About time that happened” was my spontaneous reaction, but of course , when I actually read the article , it instead described a rather absurd discussion between Bernanke and top Democrat Barney Frank, where Frank criticized
In a previous post I discussed how Robert Samuelsson absurdly tried to attribute the tech stock and housing bubbles to lack of inflation rather than existence of inflation. Now he seems to have realized how “excess liquidity” (the source of both the tech stock and housing bubbles) was the result of the policies of the Fed and other central banks.
One myth upheld even by many people who has a basically sound outlook on monetary issues is the view that an inverted yield curve (where short term interest rates are higher than long term interest rates) will cause a recession. It is a well known fact that the yield curve tends to invert just before recession, so therefore many people have
In case you haven’t already read it, see my analysis of the American health care system which exposes some of the lies of Michael Moore by pointing out that it is far better compared to other countries’ health care systems than he would have you believe and that it’s real shortcomings is due to government
Alan Greenspan is in the news a lot currently because of the release of his new book. I haven’t read the book. Nor will I read it if it means that I have to buy it or if reading it means that Alan Greenspan in any other way will financially benefit from it. Enriching a hypocritical fraud like Greenspan goes against my principles. To see why he is
How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq. But there’s one thing Americans don’t talk about: the lives of Iraqis, or, rather, the deaths of Iraqis. It’s about time that we think about the numbers. Opinion Research Business, a highly reputable polling firm in the UK, has just
As late as 1999, oil was trading at $10 per barrel and gold at $250 per ounce, down from their nominal peaks in 1980 of $39 and $850 respectively. And that’s not even adjusted for the fact that the value of a dollar was a lot lower in 1999 than in 1980. Many pundits at the time argued that prices would continue to go down. The Economist had a
I have written in several mises.org articles — see here , here , and here — of the great imbalances of the US economy. Yet in all of my previous articles on the subject I have been unable to pinpoint when these imbalances will result in a bust. One can never be completely sure of the future, of course, as one does not have full information about
As late as 1999, oil was trading at $10 per barrel and gold at $250 per ounce, down from their nominal peaks in 1980 of $39 and $850 respectively. And that’s not even adjusted for the fact that the value of a dollar was a lot lower in 1999 than in 1980. Many pundits at the time argued that prices would continue to go down. The Economist had a
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.