Booms and Busts

Kevin Duffy reads gold's bull market through an Austrian investor's lens — America's "imperial bubble" and the gold demand driving it from a rising East.

Bob returns to the fractional reserve banking debate to clarify a point the critics keep missing: in the Mises-Hayek-Rothbard framework, it's fractional reserve banking itself that sets the boom-bust cycle in motion, not merely central banks.

By convincing Congress to permit the government to take equity positions in private firms, Donald Trump has completed the transition of the economy from free markets to political capitalism.

The natural tendency of the state is inflation.

Bob reviews Murray Rothbard's 1988 essay "The Myth of Free Banking in Scotland," his sharp response to Larry White's influential account of Scottish free banking.

In this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan sits down with Mark Thornton to talk through the economic trends fueling today's unrest.

The Singer Building and the panic of 1907. The Empire State and the Depression. The Burj Khalifa and 2008. Lucas Engelhardt on why the world's tallest buildings keep opening at exactly the wrong moment.

Successful entrepreneurs are all Austrians, Per Bylund says. They just never had the words for it.

Even in a world of gold, silver, and costly mining, whoever got the new money first still came out ahead. Jeffrey Degner on why hard money doesn't repeal the Cantillon effect, and why fiat makes it far worse.

The recession isn't the disease, it's the cure. Patrick Newman on why the Austrians blame the boom, not the bust, and trace it all to one cause.