SNB & CHF

Life after Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and the Time Theory of Moneyby George GilderRegnery Gateway, 2023; 212 pp.George Gilder looks at things in an original way, but this is not always a virtue. There is much good sense in Life after Capitalism, but to find it readers will have to wade through a great deal of mumbo jumbo. Let’s start with the good sense.Gilder contends that the contemporary American economy is dominated by an elite...

The Link between Economic Calculation and Human PersonalityEconomists and historians have clearly shown that the destruction of the value and function of money by hyperinflation makes economic calculation impossible and leads to economic and social disintegration and widespread poverty. What is not so clearly understood, even by many economists, is that during periods of rapid inflation, the inability to economically calculate undermines the very nature of property...

How Nations Escape Poverty: Vietnam, Poland, and the Origins of Prosperityby Rainer ZitelmannEncounter Books, 2024; xiii + 212 pp.Rainer Zitelmann has a well-deserved reputation as a defender of the free market; few, if any, can match his immense capacity for amassing relevant facts and using them effectively to support his arguments. This capacity is much in evidence in his latest book, How Nations Escape Poverty. They do so, Zitelmann says, by moving from socialism...

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....

The Misesian: It seems to many that Javier Milei was elected due to widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the economy in Argentina. Is this a correct assessment?Nicolás Cachanosky: Yes, I believe that is quite accurate. Argentina’s economy has been plagued by increasing inflation since 2007, reaching a world record of 210 percent in 2023. Additionally, the economy has been stagnant since 2011. Poverty rates are also troubling. Consider this: the younger...

Overview: The US dollar is mixed, but the spotlight is on the Japanese yen. It appears that with the market challenging Monday's intervention, Japanese officials entered the market shortly after the US equity market closed yesterday, as the Asia Pacific session got underway and sold dollars again. Initial estimates suggest the intervention amount was two-thirds of Monday's. The timing caught the markets wrongfooted. Tokyo markets are closed Friday and Monday, but...

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....

President Biden’s campaign will continue using the popular social media site TikTok even though the president supported a provision in the military aid bill he recently signed forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within the required time, TikTok will be banned in the USA. Biden’s continued use of TikTok to reach the approximately 150 million American TikTok users, is not the only example of...

This week, the House passed H. R. 6090, a bill sold to the public as an “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” but effectively outsources the definition of actionable Civil Rights Act “antidiscrimination” violations to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In doing so, the DC uniparty has granted a significant concession on the First Amendment at a time when its freedom of speech is facing a coordinated attack from powerful, globalist institutions.The bill itself...

It is the waning days of the Sunak premiership, and the Conservative party still has a stonking majority despite its cataclysmic capitulation in the polls. The government is effectively a lame duck; everyone knows it has no support, yet it will still be around for a few more months. One would think that since the Conservative party still has a large majority in the House of Commons that it would let loose with policy and attempt real reform so that the MPs have...