Writing pseudonymously in a series of articles for Faith and Freedom in the 1950s, Murray Rothbard took on the question of whether or not the United States should defend Formosa (Taiwan) from attack by mainland China. While his conclusions will surprise no one familiar with his work (that war is the health of the state, that individuals concerned with the fate of Taiwan should do as they will privately, but that their lives and property are not for the government to command), a review of the articles’ contents are worthwhile, nonetheless. For apart from such typically memorably Rothbardian lines as “only those who want to socialize America really look forward to the third and perhaps last World War,” we find many of the same ludicrous rationales for war with China

One excuse that political elites give when they drag nations into war is that the conflict was "inevitable" or "unavoidable." Ralph Raico knew better.

Original Article: "The Outbreak of World War I: A Libertarian Realist Rebuttal"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

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As you may have noticed, those dreaded “forces” seem to have rematerialized—in the headlines, in the journals, in the pages of bestsellers: those historical, material, political, or ideological forces that supposedly make conflict between some set of groups, classes, or states “inevitable.”
But as the great libertarian historian Ralph Raico never tired of telling, such collectivist narratives are often little more than convenient scapegoats or outright inventions to cover for bad decisions made by powerfully situated individuals who could and should have done otherwise.
To illustrate the point, take the most typical of those terrible and “inevitable” conflicts so frequently invoked by the interventionists as the justification for their continued efforts toward US

As it always does, the State of the Union (SOTU) address dominated the media cycle for several days before and after. Now that the period has (gratefully) passed, and the issues raised have faded from the headlines into the background, it is worth taking a look at some of the policies that featured heavily in Biden’s speech, and which have reemerged to become so vogue among both Democrats and Republicans.
Specifically, protectionism.
Indeed, with practically the only bipartisan moments of applause during Biden’s SOTU coming after the predictable paeans to the great moral virtues of “Buying American,” the protectionism made mainstream by Trump looks set to continue.
So how are these efforts faring?
Further, why have the policy, business, and political establishment

American and European political elites seem to be wanting the Russia-Ukraine war to be fought to the last Ukranian and have done nothing to bring peace. It’s time for a change.

Original Article: "Just Say No to the New Forever War"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

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Between 2019 and 2022, the fortune of India’s Gautam Adani swelled from $9 billion to $127 billion. As the value of his seven publicly traded companies—providers of everything from natural gas to digital services—soared, he was briefly the world’s second-richest person. His meteoric rise caught the attention of Hindenburg Research, a small US investment firm devoted to profiting by exposing corporate malfeasance.
Viewing with suspicion the several-hundred-percent year-on-year gains of many of Adani’s companies, Hindenburg Research secretly began a two-year investigation into his sprawling corporate empire. Last week, they published their findings: Adani and his associates, many of them close family, have been engaged in a series of massive frauds.
The report,

In a piece of news that shocked the mainstream media, but which shocked no one familiar with the academic industry writ large, retired US Army general John Allen was forced to resign as president of the Brookings Institution after it was revealed the FBI was investigating him for lobbying on behalf of the Qatari monarchy.
Of course, the real news, scarcely noted by the Washington Post, New York Times, or any other purported paper of record, is that Allen was only really in trouble because he hadn’t fulfilled the pro forma legal requirements for those lobbying the US government on behalf of a foreign agent or government.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), under which such activities are regulated, includes several exceptions that allow for such activities

With the acknowledged national debt now a politically and economically unpayable $30 trillion (in reality, its unfunded liabilities are far greater), Americans should start to become acclimated to the realities of the United States’ eventual, inevitable default. While it may seem unfathomable, and the results too catastrophic to imagine, in fact the likely damage to everyday Americans would be minimal in the short term and unquestionably a net plus in the long term.
This is far from surprising and not a new problem. As Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff detail in their comprehensive review of the subject, history shows that great powers defaulting on their debts was long the rule, not the exception, and that the long-term implications of various

It has become a familiar sight over the past decade and a half: a supposedly venerable member of the financial elite tells us with utmost calm that what we think we are seeing isn’t really all that bad. The Fed already knows all about it and has already taken all necessary steps. Further, they are monitoring the situation closely and are ready to make any necessary adjustments with ease and alacrity.
Reading the Fed’s meeting minutes and picking through its actual activities reveals a much different picture. They are panicked and pushing every button: upping the federal funds rate, running off the balance sheet (quantitative tightening), maintaining the Fed’s overseas backstopping, and raising the interest rate paid on reserves. Surprise, surprise things are

Over the years observers of Turkish politics have become somewhat inured to erratic swings in policy coming out of Ankara. Particularly since the political reforms of 2017, his high degree of control over the primary functions of the state mean President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces few hurdles to executing abrupt changes he views as correct or necessary. This lack of any effective institutional check to his authority is, at present, leading the country off an economic cliff.
Already since 2018 the country was mired in a multifront crisis. Characterized by stagnation, unemployment, dramatic swings in the price of the lira, rising inflation, a declining balance of trade, growing borrowing costs, and an increase in corporate defaults, Erdoğan’s present interference