Bank CEOs always have their heads in the clouds. First, pessimists never earn a seat in the corner office. Plus, it takes a good-sized ego to climb to the top of a bank bureaucracy. A person running a bank believes they can sail the ship through any stormy economic weather. Take John Allison. He’s the chairman of a bank holding company, Home BancShares. He told the Wall Street Journal about a time when the regulator of Home BancShares, the Federal Reserve, was...
Read More »Defending the Undefendable Investments
The people presented in this book are generally considered villainous, and the functions they perform, harmful. Sometimes society itself is damned because it spawns such reprehensible characters. However, the thrust of this book will concentrate on the following propositions: They are guilty of no wrong-doing of a violent nature;In virtually every case, they actually benefit society;If we prohibit their activities, we do so at our own loss. ...
Read More »Are Workers Being Paid Their Product? Watch Out for Misleading Charts
Dr. Jonathan Newman joins Bob to break down the data used in a popular productivity vs. pay graph. They show why you should be wary of charts coming from agenda-driven institutions and how you can spot manipulated data. The charts mentioned during this episode are available at: Mises.org/HAP414Charts Gene Epstein on the Bob Murphy Show: Mises.org/HAP414a The Economic Policy Institute 2022 Paper: Mises.org/HAP414b The Economic Policy Institute 2015...
Read More »Dollarization in Argentina Will Not Promote Freedom
Javier Milei’s sensational performance in the Argentinean presidential election primary confirms the very real possibility that an anarchocapitalist who quotes Rothbard and Mises could become Argentina’s next president. If elected, there is little doubt that Milei will implement proposals aimed at profoundly reshaping Argentina’s economy along free market lines. Unfortunately, a controversial idea to fully dollarize the Argentinean economy seems to have become his...
Read More »Is the US Banking System a House of Cards Waiting to Topple?
Decades of low interest rates have ruined saving in the US economy, and banks are going to pay dearly for it. Original Article: Is the US Banking System a House of Cards Waiting to Topple? [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »“Social Justice” Is Neither Social nor Just
Social Justice Fallaciesby Thomas SowellBasic Books, 2023; 224 pp. Thomas Sowell has given us a penetrating criticism of the approach to justice taken by many political philosophers, especially John Rawls and his innumerable followers. He says that they construct an image of the way society ought to be but fail to ask whether their plans are feasible. His criticism is well-taken, although he does not offer an adequate account of the rights that people have. He says...
Read More »August Price Inflation Accelerated, and the Fed Fears More Is in Store
The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data last week, and according to the report, price inflation during August accelerated, coming in at the highest year-over-year increase in three months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.7 percent, year over year, in August before seasonal adjustment. That’s up from July’s year-over-year increase of 3.2 percent, and August is the twenty-ninth month...
Read More »Striking Autoworkers Will Only Harm Their Own Livelihoods
Autoworkers are angry at their working situation and are striking for higher wages and a shorter work week. Their anger is misdirected. Original Article: Striking Autoworkers Will Only Harm Their Own Livelihoods [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »America Since 9/11: 22 Years of Lies and Despotism
One sees many flags at half-mast across the country today. And rightly so. Thanks in part to the negligence and incompetence of the CIA and FBI, the Federal government failed disastrously at what it tells us is the regime's number-one priority: public safety. [Read More: "9/11 Was a Day of Unforgivable Government Failure" by Ryan McMaken] More than 2,900 human beings died that day, the overwhelming majority of which were civilians working in ordinary...
Read More »Is the Monopoly Board Game Like Real Markets?
Many people believe that the board game Monopoly, developed during the Great Depression, mimics a real-world capitalist economy. Monopoly is a game, not real life. Original Article: "Is the Monopoly Board Game Like Real Markets?" [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
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