Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

[Originally published August 13, 2008] It’s been 75 years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. This happens to be one of the episodes Kevin Gutzman and I describe in detail in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. From the...

In an earlier article, I explained that the collapse in the long-dated UK government bond (or gilts) market on September 28 that followed the ill-fated Kwarteng “mini budget” of a few days earlier had exposed a hitherto underappreciated problem: UK pension schemes were massively exposed to changes in long-dated gilts rates. The week after the mini budget, the gilts market became very unsettled. To quote the Financial Times: Huge shifts in bond prices were leaving...

My previous article demonstrated how the free market solves a boom-bust crisis and is the only solution, its effectiveness depending upon the magnitude of the crisis and, more importantly, how much the government intervenes in response. The bigger the problem created by the Fed, the greater the crisis and the more government intervenes, and the slower the economy recovers. Here we consider how the market works most effectively, with the efficiency of the process...

The warning lights on the dashboard of your car suddenly light up. You naturally take it to a mechanic to diagnose and repair. Cars are complex. You don’t have the time or accumulated expertise to figure out what is happening or to fix it. We rely on experts daily. In a complex world filled with busy people, it is impossible for any one person to know and do everything. So, we outsource. By doing so, we of course rely on others’ expertise, but we also subject...

As mortgage rates have risen this year, the demand for home purchases has fallen. That has spelled trouble for the home construction business. Homebuilder confidence dropped for the 10th straight month in October. The decline in builder sentiment reflects what economist Ian Shepherdson describes as “housing … in free fall. So far, most of the hit is in sales volumes, but prices are now falling too, and they have a long way to go.” The University of Michigan’s index...

When I was a child, my mother and I would take the Long Island Railroad to Brooklyn to see relatives a few times a year. My grandfather was always outside in front of the apartment house in Park Slope, where he and my aunts and uncles lived. Upon seeing him, I would run down the sidewalk to greet him, but before I could say “Hi, Grandpa!,” he would without fail press a shiny silver dollar into my hand. He was a quiet, dignified man with a big white mustache. Since he...

Commentaries about World War I frequently discuss causes and consequences but almost never mention the enablers. At best, they might mention them approvingly, as if we were fortunate to have had the Fed and the income tax, along with the ingenuity of the liberty bond programs, to finance our glorious role in that bloodbath. Economist Benjamin Anderson, whose Economics and the Public Welfare has contributed greatly to our understanding of the period 1914–46 and is a...

Even as price inflation slows and we move past June’s peak, progressives continue to push the concept of “greedflation”—that this year’s price inflation is caused by corporate greed and price gouging. This is inaccurate, based on bad economics, and it blames a consequence of the problem rather than the problem itself. If we want to address the real issues in the economy and avoid similar pain in the future, we need to get serious and drop “greedflation” from the...

A grand plan is advanced by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Its name, “The Great Reset,” conveys the scope of this undertaking. Among its many audacious goals, it will “offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons.” That is clearly all for the good. But what are the particulars? A number of...

Much is made of the failure of Republicans to make predicted gains in the recent midterm elections, but, as Ryan McMaken has pointed out, Congress plays a much-diminished role in national governance to the point that even had the so-called Red Wave actually occurred, it is doubtful that much would have changed regarding Joe Biden’s presidency. In fact, most of what Biden has done in his two years in office has been outside of Congressional legislative matters....