Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

The United States was waiting for the zombie apocalypse. The country was given a coronapocalypse instead. But could the two events merge and provide the nation with a dangerous economic trend? Corporate America’s worst-kept secret had been the swelling number of zombies kept on life support and hidden away during the boom phase of the business cycle. Now that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fault lines underneath the economy, the zombification may accelerate...

When US attorney general William Barr recently announced that the Department of Justice was reversing course and dropping all charges against former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, the response from Democrats, the mainstream news media, and Never-Trump Republicans such as David French was thermonuclear, to put it mildly. The New York Times, which many times has editorialized against prosecutorial tactics that drive people to plead guilty instead of going to trial,...

In an attempt to maintain the lockdown and their authority over our lives, politicians, health experts, and the mainstream media have been misusing some unusual analogies to describe the current economy. By using these analogies, our political overlords hope they can continue to keep the economy shut down, force companies to produce what the government forgot to purchase before the virus hit, and toss out trillions of dollars of handouts and bailouts to their...

Inflation is typically defined as a general increase in the prices of goods and services—described by changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or other price indexes. If inflation is a general rise in measured prices, then why is it regarded as bad news? What kind of damage can it inflict? Mainstream economists maintain that inflation causes speculative buying, which generates waste. Inflation, it is maintained, also erodes the real incomes of pensioners and...

“There are no libertarians in an epidemic” crowed Atlantic reporter Peter Nicholas back on March 10, as he listed the numerous economic interventions the Trump administration was undertaking in the wake of the mounting COVID-19 crisis. This intervention, Nicholas declared, just goes to show you that whatever antigovernment talk one might talk, government intervention in the economy is “nothing new and, as may well prove the case this time around, it’s often...

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. People often ask me, “How are the Austrians different from the Chicago School economists? Aren’t you all free market guys who oppose big-government Keynesians?” In the present article I’ll outline some of the main differences. Although it’s true that Austrians agree with Chicago economists on many policy issues, nevertheless their approach to economic science can be quite different. It’s important to...

Recently, I was reminded of John F. Kennedy’s most famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” when I heard it among several famous sound bites leading into a radio show segment. It also reminded me that we will hear it more soon, as we are approaching JFK’s May 29 birthday. However, it is worth reconsidering what it means. Of particular importance is Milton Friedman’s response that “Ask not” was “at odds with the...

Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic EventsRobert J. Shiller Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019xxi + 377 pp. Abstract: Much of Shiller’s new book is about how economic narratives form, spread, and fade. Drawing on medical evidence about the spread of infectious disease, Shiller argues that “economic fluctuations are substantially driven by contagion of oversimplified and easily transmitted variants of economic narratives.” But...

Even those fortunate enough to have escaped infection by the Wuhan coronavirus will by now have noticed one of the virus’ many secondary effects: the disruption of the supply chain. Sick workers at meat plants, closed restaurants, hoarding, and the sudden spike in demand for things like ventilators, masks, and comestibles with long shelf lives have thrown the global flow of goods and services into disarray. Shelves are empty, crops are rotting in the fields—supply...