In his June 21 New York Times article “Is the Era of Cheap Money Over?,” Paul Krugman argues against the view that the Fed has kept interest rates artificially low for the past ten to twenty years. Other commentators have argued that these low interest rates have inflated bubbles everywhere as investors desperately look for something that will yield a decent rate of return. Krugman expresses strong disagreement that the decline in interest rates caused bubbles and...
Read More »To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States
Most commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—which overturns Roe v. Wade—has focused on the decision’s effect on the legality of abortion in various states. That’s an important issue. It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision’s effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal. After all, the ruling isn’t so much about abortion as it is about the federal government’s role in abortion....
Read More »Powell Is the New Arthur Burns, Not the New Paul Volcker
Last year, just as it was becoming increasingly clear that price inflation was mounting, Jerome Powell repeatedly denied there was any reason for concern. He called inflation “transitory.” A few months later, he admitted it was not transitory, but denied it was “entrenched.” Then, by late 2021, he admitted price inflation was getting out of control but still took no action of any consequence. Through it all, the Powell plan was repeated delay and opposition to any...
Read More »How Money Printing Destroyed Argentina and Can Destroy Others
Inflation in Argentina is far worse than neighboring countries. It has only one cause: an extractive and confiscatory monetary policy—printing pesos without control and without demand. Original Article: “How Money Printing Destroyed Argentina and Can Destroy Others” The most dangerous words in monetary policy and economics are “this time is different.” Argentine politicians’ big mistake is to believe that inflation is multicausal and that everything is solved...
Read More »Peter Lewin and Steven Phelan: How Do Entrepreneurs Calculate Economic Value Added? Subjectively.
At the core of the entrepreneurial orientation that is the engine of vibrant, growing, value-creating, customer-first businesses, we find the principles of subjectivism and subjective value. Subjective value embraces not only the value the customer seeks, but also the value that entrepreneurs establish in their companies: capital value. Once businesses master these two principles in combination, they can open new horizons of innovation and growth. Key Takeaways...
Read More »Who Really Makes US Foreign Policy? Who Benefits and Who Loses?
In a piece of news that shocked the mainstream media, but which shocked no one familiar with the academic industry writ large, retired US Army general John Allen was forced to resign as president of the Brookings Institution after it was revealed the FBI was investigating him for lobbying on behalf of the Qatari monarchy. Of course, the real news, scarcely noted by the Washington Post, New York Times, or any other purported paper of record, is that Allen was only...
Read More »How Bad Were Recessions before the Fed? Not as Bad as They Are Now
With a recession looming over the average American, the group to blame is pretty obvious, this group being the central bankers at the Federal Reserve, who inflate the supply of currency in the system, that currency being the dollar. This is what inflation is, the expansion of the money supply either through the printing press or adding zeros to a computer screen. It has gotten so bad that in the last twenty-two months, 80 percent of all US dollars in existence have...
Read More »What Will It Take to End Rampant Home-Price Inflation?
Real wages are falling, inflation is at a 40-year high, and the Atlanta Fed predicts we’ll find GDP growth at zero for the second quarter. Meanwhile, both the yield curve and money-supply growth point to recession. But when it comes to the latest data on home prices, there’s still no sign of any deflation or even moderation. For example, the latest Case-Shiller home price data shows home prices surged above 20 percent year-over-year in April, marking yet another...
Read More »Economic Winter Has Arrived
The average card-carrying Austrian would say that the Federal Reserve is creating money by the bale, with evidence being Consumer Price Index prints of 8.6 percent per the Bureau of Labor Statistics or over 15 percent per John Williams’s shadowstats.com computation based on the way the government calculated CPI back in 1980. Surely, at best, the US dollar is only the cleanest dirty shirt in the currency laundry basket. But Uncle Sam’s dollar continues to strengthen...
Read More »Markets Promote Real Equality Much More Than Progressive (and Conservative) Critics Claim
The economy consists of a huge chain of the division of labor that is interlocked to such a limit where there exists hardly any single individual or firm that produces the whole of the product alone. This is famously illustrated in the essay “I, Pencil,” by Leonard Read. Each element of this complex chain is a firm that consists of many individuals, therefore one of the first questions one might ask is, “Why do individuals engage in these complex economic...
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