Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

Some commentators attribute the latest sharp increase in the Consumer Price Index to businesses pushing prices of goods higher in order to secure higher profits. (See the New York Times article “Democrats Blast Corporate Profits as Inflation Surges,” January 3, 2022). Note that the yearly growth rate of the Consumer Price Index jumped to 6.8 percent in November 2021 from 1.2 percent the year before. However, is it true that businesses are determining the prices of...

During a confirmation hearing with the US Senate this week, Fed chairman Jerome Powell was asked about whether or not a digital currency issued by a central bank could exist side by side with private cryptocurrencies. Powell responded that there is nothing that would prevent private cryptos from “coexisting” with a “digital dollar.” This, of course, is obviously true so long as federal regulators do not decide to ban the usage of cryptocurrencies. Business...

During the 1920s, the emerging individualists and libertarians — the Menckens, the Nocks, the Villards, and their followers — were generally considered Men of the Left; like the Left generally, they bitterly opposed the emergence of Big Government in twentieth-century America, a government allied with Big Business in a network of special privilege, a government dictating the personal drinking habits of the citizenry and repressing civil liberties, a government that...

In the incessant media discussion about whether inflation is transitory there is a big elephant in the room about which all are silent. Perhaps strangely some do not see it. Others for whatever reason pretend it is not there. The elephant is the fantastic surge in US corporate profits that monetary inflation has fueled during the second year of the pandemic. This elephant’s unremarked appearance is likely transitory, unlike the simultaneous jump in US consumer...

Most experts tend to assess the strength of an economy in terms of real gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP framework looks at the value of final goods and services produced during a particular time interval, usually a quarter or a year. The GDP is formed as the summation of consumer outlays on goods and services; outlays by businesses on plants, machinery, and inventories; outlays by government; and exports less imports. An increase in consumer outlays, businesses...

Runaway house price inflation continues to characterize the U.S. market. House prices across the country rose 15.8% on average in October 2021 from the year before. U.S. house prices are far over their 2006 Bubble peak, and remain over the Bubble peak even after adjustment for consumer price inflation. They will keep on rising at the annual rate of 14–16% for the rest of 2021, according to the AEI Housing Center. Unbelievably, in this situation the Federal Reserve...

A certain meme has become popular among advocates of both gold and cryptocurrencies. This is the “Fix the money, fix the world” meme. This slogan is based on the idea that by switching to some commodity money—be it crypto or metal—and abandoning fiat currency, the world will improve greatly. Taken in its moderate form, of course, this slogan is indisputably correct. State-controlled money is immoral, dangerous, and impoverishing. It paves the way for government theft...

Over the years observers of Turkish politics have become somewhat inured to erratic swings in policy coming out of Ankara. Particularly since the political reforms of 2017, his high degree of control over the primary functions of the state mean President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces few hurdles to executing abrupt changes he views as correct or necessary. This lack of any effective institutional check to his authority is, at present, leading the country off an economic...

For those of us who value liberty, these past two years have been a bad dream. It seems like we fell asleep in early 2020 and woke up in 1984! They said that if we just put on a mask and stayed home for two weeks, we’d be able to return to normal. The two weeks came and went and instead of going back to normal they added more restrictions. These past two years have been a story of moving goalposts and “experts” like Anthony Fauci constantly contradicting themselves....

With new mask and vaccine mandates, New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul has reaffirmed the state’s status as the nation’s most zealous practitioner of covid cultism. Original Article: “New York State Has Imposed New Covid Rituals. This Time There’s Some Resistance.” Friday, December 10, New York State governor Kathy Hochul reaffirmed the state’s status as the nation’s most zealous practitioner of covid cultism with the announcement of a new statewide “vax-or-mask”...