What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
Read More »Against the Hamiltonian Statecraft
What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
Read More »What Does ChatGPT Know about Money?
Given the contentious topic of money and its influence on the world, I decided to see what ChatGPT “knows” about it. I was surprised by the breadth of its responses, as well as its information on free market positions, especially those of the Austrian school.Though my prompts (queries) were exactly as I present them here, ChatGPT was so expansive I had to edit its results due to article length restrictions. For emphasis and to mark subject headings ChatGPT frequently...
Read More »The Vampire Fiat Money System: How It Works and What It Means for Your Wealth
Who doesn’t know them: the blood-sucking vampires, the eerie undead, immortalized in countless films, and inspired primarily by Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Just think of iconic movies like the silent film Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror (1922), Dracula (1958) with Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski’s parody The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), or Nosferatu – Phantom of the Night (1979), starring Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula. Vampires are demons who rise from...
Read More »China on the Edge of Recession
China is on the edge of recession — excluding Covid, for the first time since 2008 — as new data showed all-important manufacturing contracted for the fourth month in a row with particular weakness in new orders.In other words, what they’ve got is a backlog, then it’s a cliff.Manufacturing makes up a third of China’s economy — much more than the US. The collapse of China’s property — another third of China’s economy — is adding further fuel to the fire.Offices...
Read More »No, Russia is Not Losing the War in Ukraine: A Reply to Paul Schwennesen
On September 5th, Reason Magazine published a very strange assessment of the war in Ukraine, written by Paul Schwennesen, titled “The War in Ukraine Is Already Over—Russia Just Doesn’t Know it Yet.” In short, Schwennesen argues that, based on his experience recently traveling to the front in Kursk Oblast, Ukrainian will and high morale mean that the war is as good as over and that Ukrainian triumph is “inevitable.”Schwennesen’s analysis that Russia has as good as...
Read More »The Comic Absurdity of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund
In recent weeks, both candidate Donald Trump and President Biden—via his staff—have expressed support for the idea of a US sovereign wealth fund (“SWF”). An SWF is simply an investment fund run by a national government. Ostensibly, the goals of such a venture are twofold—to increase the wealth of America and its citizens, and to spur innovation in “critical” areas like infrastructure, technology, and medicine.An American SWF is bound to fail on at least these two...
Read More »Economically-Illiterate Policy Proposals Are Popular, And Economists Are to Blame
According to a recent poll from the Wall Street Journal, many of the policies proposed by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump that economists hate most are very popular with the American public. For example, the plan endorsed by both candidates to eliminate taxes on tips for service workers is favored by nearly 80 percent of the ordinary public. However, only 10 percent of economists support the measure.A similar difference can be found with Harris’s plan to penalize...
Read More »The Fed Cut the Interest Rate to Bail Out the Treasury
The Federal Reserve decided to cut rates by 50 basis points despite what Chairman Powell considers “no risk of a recession or downturn,” a “solid economy,” and a “strong job market.”After ignoring the impact of monetary aggregates and the warning signs of inflation, the Federal Reserve has breached its price stability mandate for three consecutive years, preferring to prioritize liquidity injections, i.e., printing money, to the recovery of the currency’s purchasing...
Read More »Thanks to Our Fall Campaign Donors
What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
Read More »