Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

Jay “The Inflation We Caused Is Transitory” Powell finally did it. On Friday, the Fed chair finally mustered the courage to say that he is going to do the job he has been hired to do: the Fed will not “pivot” to cut interest rates until inflation slows meaningfully and persistently—even if the stock, bond, and housing bear markets become much worse and the economy goes into recession. Powell’s Speech Translated Below we provide key quotes from Powell’s Jackson Hole...

Speaking at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on August 26, 2022, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said the Fed must continue to raise interest rates—and keep them elevated for a while—to bring the fastest inflation in decades back under control. Powell said that a tighter interest rate stance is likely to come at a cost to workers and overall growth. However, he holds that not acting would allow price increases to become a more permanent feature of the economy...

[This essay, which exposes the big-government policies of the Hoover administration, was first published in the Saturday Evening Post, June 25, 1932.] In the minutes of the Chicago City Council, May 12th last, is the perfect example of how commonly we regard public credit. From bad taxation, reckless borrowing and reckless spending, the city of Chicago had so far prejudiced its own credit that for months it had been unable to meet its municipal payrolls either out...

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released new price inflation data today, and the news wasn’t good. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 8.3 percent year over year during August, before seasonal adjustment. That’s the seventeenth month in a row of inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target, and it’s six months in a row of price inflation above 8 percent. Month-over-month inflation rose as well, with...

This is the story of a man, an intellectual, born after World War I, who spent studying his university years in New York and became acquainted and studied under German Jewish émigré who fled the Nazi regime in Germany, later becoming mentor and protégé. That man belonged to the political Right, taught in two different universities during his lifetime, the first one in the Eastern United States, the second in the Western part of the country, was cast out of more...

Over the present year we have experienced record-breaking price inflation, a series of interest rate hikes, and an overall fall in stock prices. It is widely accepted that there is a bubble. A good way for Misesians to measure this is by comparing the price of capital (stock prices) to its replacement cost (book value). A normal ratio for the overall market should be close to one. Such a ratio means that value is being properly imputed, and that the structure of...

In last week’s column, I criticized Jedediah Purdy for the ignorance of economic theory on display in his Two Cheers for Politics. Fortunately, the book contains much of interest, reflecting the author’s wide knowledge of the history of political philosophy. I have to say, though, that the main argument of the book strikes me as utterly unconvincing. Purdy starts off well. He asks, Why are people living today bound by past political arrangements to which they have...

Most economic commentators believe that historical data is the key in assessing the state of the economy. Thus, if a statistic such as real gross domestic product or industrial production displays a visible increase, then the economy is stronger. Conversely, a decline in the growth rate says the economy is weakening. It seems that one can establish the state of economic conditions simply by looking at the data. The so-called data that analysts are examining, however,...

Fundamentally, inflation is fraud. The central government or bank printing more money lessens the value of the money already in circulation. A truckload of sand isn’t particularly valuable in Saudi Arabia. An increased supply of money means ultimately that prices denominated in that money will go up. Unless you are the one to receive that new money at its point of entry, and thus keep pace with the inflation, the real value of your money holdings will go down. So, in...

The 2018 announcement that the British government completed the payment of a loan that was borrowed to compensate slave owners for the abolition of slavery continues to evoke a flurry of emotions. Many find it outrageous that the British government would contemplate compensating planters rather than the enslaved. Such responses are expected because people are using current moral standards to judge historical realities. But an appreciation of the sociopolitical events...