SNB & CHF

Suppose an addict had the ability to magically create, ex nihilo, his own stimulating drug, as fractional reserve banks can do with money and credit. Would you expect moderation? Original Article: "Why Fractional Reserve Banking Is behind Bank Failures" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

The "first" Children's Crusade of 1212 ended in tragedy for those taking part. The "second" crusade is not going to produce any happy endings, either. Original Article: "Climate Activism: The Second Children’s Crusade" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content] Tags:...

Mark is not fooling around today. He looks back at the history of gold and its price, which some believe is too erratic and too unstable (like Bitcoin) to serve as a basis of a monetary system. Mark shows that it is not gold that destabilizes events in the real world, but rather real world events related to political decision-making that has made the price of gold unstable. The price of gold is a "minor" indicator of what governments are really up to. Be...

When Rudy Giuliani was pursuing his infamous Wall Street prosecutions in the 1980s, his aides admitted that they were indicting people on “novel legal theories” that had not been used before. A Giuliani lieutenant bragged to a group of law students that prosecutors in his office ...were guilty of criminalizing technical offenses. . .. Many of the prosecution theories we used were novel. Many of the statutes that we charged under . . . hadn’t been charged as crimes...

As long as states are around, money will never be sound. But first, some clarity. Sound money, per Ludwig von Mises, has two aspects: It serves as a commonly accepted medium of exchange, while also making it difficult for governments to meddle with it. We can see immediately that sound money is nowhere to be found in today’s world. All the current rhetoric about banks and their systemic risks are about money that’s subject to political expediency, the kind that...

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discuss the global moves being made against the US dollar. The regime's decade long weaponization of money and banking has both international rivals and historical allies looking for alternatives. Ryan and Tho discuss what that means for Americans, and what may come next. [embedded content] Recommended Reading "World needs to end risky reliance on U.S. dollar: BoE's Carney" (Reuters, 2019):...

Because his actions were so outrageous, perhaps it is impossible to satirize the former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, but perhaps I can describe him. As a shout-out to all my neighbors in the Asia Pacific, let us not forget the Sun Tzu tradition to “know the enemy.” For an analysis of the Zimbabwe hyperinflation, see Jayson Coomer and Thomas Gstraunthaler’s article in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. Below, I draw similarities between Mugabe’s...

Thanks to their adoring media, politicians create crises and then blame businesses for them. And the political "solutions" are worse than the original problems. Original Article: "How Politicians Use Regulations to Deflect Blame" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

Left Is Not Wokeby Susan NeimanPolity Press, 2023; 155 pp. There is much to dislike in this book. Susan Neiman, a former philosophy professor who now heads the “Einstein Discussion Group” in Potsdam, is a socialist who has good things to say about Communist East Germany and parrots every anticapitalist cliché in the book. I have blasted some of her work in earlier reviews. In Left Is Not Woke, though, she makes some good points, and I’m going to concentrate on them...

Bob is joined by guest Peter St. Onge to discuss how SVB's CEO, as well as Bernie Madoff, had key positions advising the Fed and SEC. Then they discuss how we should think about central banks losing money. How the SEC was Charmed by Madoff: Mises.org/HAP389a Bob's Understanding Money Mechanics: Mises.org/HAP389b [embedded content] [embedded content]...