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...
Read More »How Politicians Use Regulations to Deflect Blame
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]...
Read More »Wisdom from a Yenta
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...
Read More »With the Feds, It’s the Fox Guarding the Henhouse
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]...
Read More »The Outbreak of World War I: A Libertarian Realist Rebuttal
One excuse that political elites give when they drag nations into war is that the conflict was "inevitable" or "unavoidable." Ralph Raico knew better. Original Article: "The Outbreak of World War I: A Libertarian Realist Rebuttal" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. [embedded content]...
Read More »Credit Suisse Collapsed Because of Government Intervention, Not Despite It
Credit Suisse, one of the fifty largest banks in the world, has joined the long list of Western banks over the past two decades that have been rescued from the brink of failure and subsequently acquired by a larger financial institution. After comments from the chairman of the Saudi National Bank triggered the evaporation of almost a third of the megabank’s market capitalization, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced the creation of a new facility to preemptively...
Read More »Submission Guidelines for the Mises Wire
The Mises Wire depends on unaffiliated contributors for a significant proportion of its content. We welcome submissions from everyone, regardless of educational achievements and other credentials, so please send us your essays! We’re looking for short articles that approach real-world economic issues from an Austro-libertarian perspective (read: not just theory). We also accept history and sociology pieces that make use of Austrian or libertarian ideas. Radicalism is...
Read More »Does Cost Cutting Undermine Economic Growth?
Keynesian economists claim that cutting costs in a business slowdown is counterproductive. As usual, the Keynesians have it backward. Original Article: "Does Cost Cutting Undermine Economic Growth?" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »The Pentagon’s Budget from Hell
On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were—or at least should have been—stunning, even by the standards of a department that’s used to getting what it wants when it wants it. The new Pentagon budget would come in at $842 billion. That’s the highest level requested since World War II, except for the peak moment of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when the United States had nearly 200,000 troops deployed in those two...
Read More »Elizabeth Warren’s Contradictory Demands for Easy Money and Strict Financial Regulation
As the financial ripples following the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) continue to run through the financial sector, a predictable voice has weighed in on the affair, and, as always, giving bad advice. Elizabeth Warren, never one to skip a chance to publicly gnaw on a financial carcass, writes in the New York Times that the entire problem is lack of government regulation. Of course. The US senator from Massachusetts has spent most of her Washington...
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