There has been no constant concept of asset price inflation through the modern age of fiat money even amongst those who recognize the condition. The term has become most popular in the present period of inflation targeting coupled with the use of radical monetary tools. The historian of economic thought could doubtless find some common threads through the evolving concept going back into the nineteenth century or earlier (indeed the first big example is the Dutch...
Read More »Thanks to Bailouts, Wall Street Banks Are More Fragile than Ever
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Read More »Why There Is No Free Lunch
No Free Lunch: Six Economic Lies You’ve Been Taught and Probably Believe by Caleb S. Fuller Freiling Publishing, 2021. 110 pp. Caleb Fuller, an economist who teaches at Grove City College, thinks that many people have a mistaken conception of economics. It is, they think, a dull and dry subject, the “dismal science,” of primary interest to specialists. Fuller disagrees. He says that “economics changed my life” (p. 11; all page references are to the Amazon Kindle...
Read More »Price Inflation Hits a 31-Year High as Janet Yellen Insists It’s No Big Deal
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday morning that prices rose 6.2% on a year-over-year basis in October. That’s the highest YOY rate since December 1990 when the CPI was also up 6.2 percent. October’s rate was up from 5.3 percent in September, and remains part of a surge in the index since February 2021 when year-over-year growth was still muted at 1.6 percent. Not surprisingly, producer prices surged in October as well. The producer price index for...
Read More »The Problem with “Stakeholder Capitalism”
Writing in the Investment Monitor on March 18, 2021, Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, was urging the replacement of the present economic system. According to Schwab, the present system is deficient, since it only benefits a small minority of the population while leaving all the others at a visible disadvantage. Schwab is of the view that a system that strives at attaining maximum profits, which he labels as shareholder capitalism, is bad news...
Read More »Cronyism, Not Welfare, Is China’s Big Problem
After three decades of promarket reforms, extreme poverty in China has been virtually eradicated. So President Xi Jinping now has the leverage to shift his attention to reducing the wealth gap in Chinese society. In a speech to the Chinese Communist Party in August, Xi touted “common prosperity” for all Chinese as an essential requirement of socialism and modernization. Western pundits have welcomed China’s drive for more income redistribution and consumption, but...
Read More »In a Free Economy, Prices Would be Going down, Not Up
Whenever politicians and media outlets discuss inflation, they invariably use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as their measure. The CPI is only one of several price indices on top of the various measures of the money supply that underlie aggregate price changes. Strictly speaking, the CPI does not measure inflation per se, but rather the consequences of monetary expansion on consumer products. In macroeconomics, the CPI is one of the key indicators of economic health,...
Read More »Why Bureaucrats Aren’t Like Private Sector Workers
Bureaucratic management means, under democracy, management in strict accordance with the law and the budget. It is not for the personnel of the administration and for the judges to inquire what should be done for the public welfare and how the public funds should be spent. This is the task of the sovereign, the people, and their representatives. The courts, the various branches of the administration, the army, and the navy execute what the law and the budget order...
Read More »There’s Nothing Hawkish About the Fed’s New Tapering Plan
The Federal Reserve concluded its November Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday. According to the FOMC’s statement, the Fed now plans to taper beginning in mid-November by cutting back its asset purchases by 10 billion in Treasury securities and 5 billion in mortgage-backed securities. Right now, the Fed buys $80 billion in Treasuries and $40 billion in housing-backed securities each month. So, according to the FOMC statement: Beginning later...
Read More »Employer Vaccine Mandates: When the Feds Pay the Piper, they Call the Tune
Advocates for vaccine mandates—led by the Biden Administration—are apparently unconcerned that the mandates are likely to drive down total employment and reduce access to government services. In many cases these are the same services that mandate-pushing politicians have always insisted are utterly “critical” and must be expanded. Instead, the party is taking the position that the drive for vaccination must be placed before all other values in society, including...
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