Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

[April 5 is the 90th Anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's executive order banning private ownership of gold. In this selection from Part III of America's Money Machine: The Story of the Federal Reserve, economist Elgin Groseclose shows how FDR's executive order was part of a larger effort to deliberately debase the dollar, drive up prices, nationalize gold markets, and default on gold-based bonds. All the while, he claimed the dollar "a generation hence" would "have...

Money proper is not artifice. It is a physical "thing" of value, acquired through labor and emerging out of the needs of individuals, who through voluntary exchanges determine its value. Original Article: "Is It Real Money or Just Artifice?" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

Earlier this month, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or the RESTRICT Act. The bill is being floated as a possible means for the federal government to ban TikTok over its connection to the Chinese government. However, the RESTRICT Act’s vague language and broad scope has many voicing concerns about the bill’s threat to free speech and freedom of expression....

Market research is a tool for gathering data about customers and consumers that businesses hope will lead to insights about their behaviors and preferences that can be translated into innovation, better service and better business performance. As with any dynamic system, it has changed over time, and the effects of entropy have begun to show themselves in invalid techniques, invalid data, and invalid conclusions. And as with virtually all business systems, the coming...

From race to gender to nearly everything else, decisions about what is correct or incorrect are made according to politics. This is a recipe for social destruction. Original Article: "Politics Is Turning Us into Idiots" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content] Tags:...

Thinking that billionaires are a policy failure has become pervasive in the United States. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge in the demonization of billionaires. Left-leaning politicians and their allies think that billionaires corrode society by accumulating large fortunes, which amplify inequality. As such, many propose taxation as a tool to promote fairness by redistributing resources, yet such intentions are not...

The challenge at hand is more than simply opposing the state. Rather, it is necessary to build up, reinforce, and sustain institutions that can offer alternatives to the state. Original Article: "To Fight the State, Build Alternatives to the State" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.  [embedded content]...

The Federal Reserve’s new report of its balance sheet shows that in the approximately six months ended March 29 it has racked up a remarkable $44 billion of cumulative operating losses. That exceeds its capital of $42 billion, so the capital of the Federal Reserve System has gone negative to the tune of $2 billion—just in time for April Fools’ Day. This event would certainly have surprised generations of Fed chairmen, governors, and, we’d have thought, newspapermen....

Last week, Fox News aired a segment discussing the possibility that the US dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency and what that would mean for Americans. The tone of the piece suggested that a “catastrophic” decline of the US dollar was not only possible, but perhaps even imminent. CNN last week also aired its own segment suggesting the US will face “a reckoning like none before” if the “dollar’s dominance” in the global economy falls significantly. Much...

Access to energy has long been taken for granted as society became quite used to relatively stable prices and the ample abundance of energy. Meanwhile, the business side of energy was relegated to industry insiders, policymakers, and market traders dealing with the matter as a profession. However, the perceptible rise in prices and the fear of supply shortages have pushed energy considerations to the forefront of societal consciousness. This crunch has largely...