Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

With its $700 billion bond-buying expansion in response to the COVID crisis, the Federal Reserve has thrust itself into the limelight. Like a sixteen-year-old with a credit card, the Fed is salivating over what money-printing powers it shall seize next. How is the prudent investor to respond? First, what the Fed’s already done: pushed interest rates to zero and expanded into “unlimited” buying of assets, now reaching to corporate bonds and local government bonds....

As of April 26, there were nearly 55,000 COVID-19 deaths reported in the United States. Of those, more than 22,000 (or about 40 percent) were in the state of New York alone. New Jersey was in second place, with nearly 5,900 COVID-19 deaths reported. If we combine these two states, we find that a majority of COVID-19 deaths in the United States have come from them alone. Combined, these two states accounted for more than 51 percent (28,213) of all deaths, while all...

In the increasingly polarized America, Black Swan moments like the COVID-19 pandemic have further confirmed growing divides in the country. Our textbooks would like us to believe that emergencies create fertile grounds for unity. But when you have a populace that is politically dividing itself even when it comes to the TV shows it watches, there comes a point when we have to start recognizing that the prospect of national unity is becoming more of a mirage as the...

We have been locked down for weeks. Classes have been canceled. Only essential activities are allowed. Although there is much to cover and analyze, I want to focus on the economics of the situation. To understate it, the situation today is simply not good. The COVID-19 crisis has caused the world to lock down the population, which essentially ceased most commerce. While all businesses are affected in some way, a report by the US Chamber of Commerce shows that 24...

All over the world, governments and central banks are addressing the pandemic crisis with three main sets of measures: Massive liquidity injections and rate cuts to support markets and credit. Unprecedented fiscal programs aimed at providing loans and grants for the real economy. Large public spending programs, fundamentally in current spending and relief measures. However, they may cause deeper problems than those they aim to solve. When governments try to...

Wouldn’t you feel great knowing that your stock picking is fully insured by the Fed? Billionaires and wealthy hedge fund managers know the feeling. This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Millian Quinteros. Original Article: “Why Markets Are Rallying as Millions Become Unemployed” You Might Also Like Builders in Denial The year 2006 seems like a lifetime ago. The...

My oldest turned seventeen last month. To commemorate the occasion, she and I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’d taken her to her first (allegedly) rated-R movie a couple years ago to see the quite good Baby Driver, but this was Tarantino. Brad Pitt won an Oscar for portraying Cliff Booth, the personal stuntman for Leonardo DiCaprio’s struggling actor Rick Dalton. Early on, Cliff consoles Rick after Rick interprets a dinner meeting as a signal that he is...

On Wednesday, April 1, the acting prime minister of Barbados, Hon. Santia Bradshaw, came on the local news station to announce a mandatory partial shutdown to combat COVID-19. She announced that starting April 3, all “nonessential” businesses would remain closed until midnight April 14. I watched this address with my girlfriend, and we both were scared. Not so much for the coronavirus, though it is a great concern to us. We had recently begun disinfecting all of our...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The US economy is imprisoned, most of the population is under house arrest, and the inmates in Washington are running the asylum. And yet while the nation appears to be walking the green mile, investors residing in the Wall Street cell block have been extended pardons from the market gods.

In the early days of the COVID-19 panic—about three weeks ago—it was common to hear both of these phrases often repeated: “The fatality rate of this virus is very high!” “There are far more cases of this out there than we know about!” The strategy of insisting that both these statements are true at the same time has been used by politicians to implement “lockdowns” that have forced business to close and millions to lose their jobs. For instance, on March 12, Ohio...