Tag Archives: Featured

Overview: The capital markets are in flux. The powerful short-covering rally of the yen and unwinding of carry trades continues. For the second time this week, the PBOC has surprised by cutting interest rates. The dramatic sell-off of equities continues. The unexpected contraction of South Korea's Q2 GSP (-0.2%) is seen as confirmation of broader economic weakness Speculation of a more aggressive Federal Reserve is gaining ground. It is not that the odds of a cut...

UBS took over former rival Credit Suisse after the collapse of the latter in March 2023. Keystone / Jean-Christophe Bott UBS Group AG was asked by a powerful US lawmaker about whether the bank it acquired, Credit Suisse Group AG, failed to report an American accused of evading taxes on $350 million (CHF307 million) in income. Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked in a letter whether Credit Suisse told US tax authorities about...

 In a mere 11 minutes on Wednesday night, President Biden settled any doubts about whether he was fit for another four years of the presidency. Uncle Joe wrestled with the teleprompter like a slacker high school boy blindsided by trigonometry questions on the math SAT test. By the end of the Bidens brief spiel, most judges declared that the teleprompter had won by technical knockout.A few weeks ago, Biden declared that it would take “the Lord Almighty” to get him to...

[Editor’s note:  The article below is adapted from a lengthy 1954 memo by Rothbard which is written largely as a review of George B. DeHuszar and Thomas Hulbert Stevenson’s A History of the American Republic. The memo was republished in 2010 by the Mises Institute as part of Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, edited by David Gordon. Rothbard here provides a concise and razor-sharp analysis of how the Mexican-American war and...

I recently viewed Finding the Money, a video aimed at persuading a popular audience of the putative merits of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  The video debuted this past May on several streaming platforms and theaters throughout the U.S.  Whether it succeeded or not in its purpose, I will leave it for others to judge.   What I found most noteworthy in the 95-minute video was a brief clip of an interview with George Selgin, an economist of some stature in free-market...

The U.K. election is over. While it was in full swing, I happened to find myself watching an interview of party leaders from the 1959 election, and it put so much of the current political landscape into perspective. The video, which you can watch here, takes you back to a time, post war, where there was something Brits called “the post-war consensus.” After the Second World War ended, both major parties came to a philosophical harmony where certain policies were seen...

President Joe Biden announced over the weekend that he is withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election. The announcement follows almost a month of pressure on Biden to drop out after his abysmal debate performance in late June made it impossible to keep hiding the fact that the president is cognitively impaired.The soon-to-be former president and most major players in Democratic politics quickly threw their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. In the days...

Overview: The dollar's gains have been extended today, but in the risk-off mode, and unwinding of carry positions, the Japanese yen and Swiss franc are firmer.  the dollar has stabilized in late European morning turnover. The Bank of Canada is widely expected to cut rates today and the greenback is pushing against CAD1.38, which it has not traded above for three-months. The US dollar gains, which we anticipated, are coming despite interest rates remaining soft. The...

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....

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....