We lost one of the great scholars this week with the passing of Ralph Raico. A student of both Mises and Hayek, and a member of Rothbard’s legendary Circle Bastiat, Ralph was an intellectual giant whose legacy includes his books Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School and Great Wars and Great Leaders, countless articles, lectures, and recordings, as well as the English translation of Mises’s great work Liberalismus. As David Gordon remembered him this week: "Ralph was one of my closest friends for over thirty-five years, and I wish I could convey to those who didn’t know him his intellectual sharpness, wit, and kindness."
Elsewhere on the Mises Wire this week: the Federal Reserve finally raised rates, but their forecasts still aren’t being trusted, Jonathan Newman defended the value of Christmas gifts, Ryan McMaken explained why the Bill of Rights isn’t holding up, and while President Trump can’t stop marijuana’s momentum — he can move us to better monetary policy.
On Mises Weekends, Jeff is joined by John Williams of Shadowstats.com. With the media obsessed with fake news, it’s worth remembering that statistics issued by the federal government about the economy, from CPI to GDP, are themselves fake. John is a vocal critic of modern economic reporting, which is manipulated to make the economy appear stronger than it is. So he devoted his professional life to telling the real story, through statistics he painstakingly compiles himself. And his statistics paint an alarming picture: virtually all "growth" in the US economy since the Crash of '08 has been artificially engineered by the Fed, while the risk of debt contagion has increased. We discuss the "Fed tax," what a radical increase in the monetary base means for your financial future, and whether Janet Yellen will be forced to resort to more QE in 2017.
This is a must-hear interview if you're interested in sober economic reality.
In case you missed any of them, here are this week's articles:
- Six Steps Trump Can Take Toward Better Monetary Policy by Jp Cortez and Stefan Gleason
- Why the Bill of Rights Is Failing by Ryan McMaken
- Trump Won't Stop the Drug-Legalization Movement by Mark Thornton
- Is Holiday Gift-Giving Just A Big Waste? by Jonathan Newman
- Even After Rate Hike, People Still Don’t Believe the Fed by Tho Bishop
- New Jesús Huerta de Soto Resources in English
- Understanding the Trump Phenomenon by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
- How Inflation and Unemployment Are Related by Frank Shostak
- How Ralph Raico Met Ludwig von Mises by Jörg Guido Hülsmann
- Auburn Feature on Wall Street Journal by Mark Thornton
- Ralph Raico, RIP by David Gordon
- What the Federal Reserve Will Do Today by Paul-Martin Foss
- Beware of Governments Bearing Tax Breaks by Matthew McCaffrey
- Has "Market Failure" Caused High Health-Care Prices? by Dale Steinreich
- Have Trump Tweets Replaced Fed Speak? by Tho Bishop
- War on ‘Fake News’ Part of a War on Free Speech by Ron Paul
- The CIA Has Always Been Incompetent by Ryan McMaken
- Why Markets Produce "a Race to the Top" by Julian Adorney
- The European Miracle by Ralph Raico
- An Interview with Ralph Raico
