SNB & CHF

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data last week, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in twenty-three months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 5.0 percent year over year in March before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from February’s year-over-year increase of 6.0 percent, and February is...

President Biden pushes a wealth tax as a measure of "fairness." Not only is it unconstitutional, but it's also bad for the economy. Original Article: "Biden's Wealth Tax Is a Trojan Horse Requiring Multiple Manipulations" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content] Tags:...

On February 3, 2023, on Norfolk Southern Railway’s general merchandise freight train 32N, a suspect bearing on the twenty-third car measured at 38°F above ambient, then 103°F above ambient, then 253°F above ambient. In East Palestine, Ohio, eleven tank cars derailed and hazardous materials ignited. First responders mitigated the fire, but afterward the temperature was still rising in one tank car that carried vinyl chloride liquid. Responders expanded the evacuation...

In a recent column, I discussed an argument about secession made by Abraham Lincoln and sympathetically expounded by Michael P. Zuckert in his important book A Nation So Conceived. Lincoln maintained that a nation once formed could not allow secession because doing so would open it to unlimited fissiparous tendencies, culminating in anarchy. This argument did not address the problem of slavery, surely relevant to the concrete circumstances of the Civil War. Zuckert...

David Gordon explores how Abraham Lincoln's stated view on secession was fundamentally Hobbesian, cynical, and violent.  Original Article: "If at First You Don't Secede . . ." This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

The RESTRICT Act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act) has recently been making the rounds in the media, and rightfully so. The act is truly terrifying, but more than the open tyranny that it would further, the act illustrates a very clear problem from the perspective of the state. In previous eras, either formally or informally, the state exercised a great deal of control over the information...

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop look at common American history myths baked into government school curriculums. While Republican governors have begun to prioritize removing "critical race theory" and other forms of modern "leftwing indoctrination" from textbooks, there are a number of historical episodes left unchallenged that all lead to a deification of state power and a celebration of progressive politics. [embedded content]...

Over the past year, three US states have enacted new legislation legalizing recreational marijuana within their borders. In May 2022, recreational cannabis became legal in Rhode Island, and the same occurred in Missouri in December of last year. In the wake of the 2022 election, in which Maryland voters approved Maryland Question 4, recreational use became legal in that state as well. With the addition of Rhode Island, New Hampshire—where cannabis is "only"...

The original vicious circle starts with inflationary interventions in an up-to-then well-anchored monetary regime. Consequent asset inflation spawns a banking crisis. That leads to the installation of anticrisis safety structures (one illustration is a novel or enhanced lender of last resort). Alongside a possible monetary regime shift, these damage the money’s anchoring system. A great asset inflation emerges and leads on to an eruption of another banking crisis,...

Part II of II by Claudio Grass A real systemic crisis If there was one thing more telling than the bank failures themselves, it was the governments’ reaction to them. The sheer panic that shook US, Swiss and Eurozone officials was almost pitiable to behold. The way they all rushed to make statements denying that this would be a repeat of 2008 was alarming instead of reassuring. And their apparent, urgent desperation to be believed was perhaps reason...