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The Free Enterprise Society at Oklahoma State University was kind enough to recently invite me to lecture on secession at the University on March 13, 2024.  This talk is significantly different from the secession debate at LibertyCon in February because this lecture covers historical, theoretical, and international aspects of secession in much greater detail. The talk is approximately an hour long: Remote video URL [embedded content]...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in February accelerated for the second month in a row, and price inflation hasn't proven nearly as transitory as the regime's economists have long predicted. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.2 percent year over year during February, without seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-sixth month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2...

The Fifth Amendment declares, “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”Except by dogs.The Supreme Court declared in 1967, “Wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”Except by dogs.The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless unreasonable searches, but canines now provide push-button vetoes for constitutional rights. Last month in my piece “Highway...

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito Website powered by Mises Institute donors Mises Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent the law allows. Tax ID# 52-1263436 [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

There is no shortage of experts that the government is willing to hire to gain public favor for a particular policy. For Connecticut, that expert is a man named Cameron Rifkin, a policy associate for the National Council of State Legislatures. On December 4, 2023, at a legislative roundtable discussion on housing, Mr. Rifkin spoke of the grim reality of the housing situation in Connecticut, stating, “Sixty-eight percent of renters in Connecticut with extremely low...

The canary in the coal mine, is the consumer in our current economic period. We can still hear it, but it is growing weaker.We clearly hear Janet Yellen telling us in a March interview that rapidly increasing credit card use by consumers is normative. Is it normative to use credit card debt to offset “transitory” inflation?America has used credit to promote a recovery. Household debt rose to 17.5 trillion in the 4th quarter 2023. Debit and Credit card balances...

Our present cultural landscape is filled with the language of class conflict, ideology, bias (conscious or unconscious), and the politicization of everything. While there are many contributors to this, we can largely thank (or blame) Karl Marx and his theory of class consciousness and class conflict. While not necessarily following Marx in his economics, these concepts have captured the imagination of many, especially in the modern Western world.The claim is rather...

Overview: The US dollar is trading with a mostly softer bias against the G10 currencies. The notable exceptions are the Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Ironically, speculation of a Bank of Japan rate hike appears to have increased, while there is a risk that the Swiss National Bank cuts rates this week. The Norwegian krone is the strongest of the major currencies. The central bank meets later this week but is widely expected to stand pat. The continued rise in oil...

There has been a dramatic adjustment to US rates. The two-year yield was near 4.40% before the US employment report on March 8 and it reached near 4.73% before the weekend. The 25 bp surge is the largest weekly increase since last May. For the first time in four months, the Fed funds futures strip is no longer has at least three rate cuts discounted. The interest rate adjustment underpinned the dollar, which rose against all the G10 currencies last week.  Like the...

Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. 261Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, who teaches philosophy at Georgetown University, has a very different view of justice from libertarians. We believe that justice is based on the libertarian rights of self-ownership and Lockean appropriation, expressed in laws that apply to everyone and do not discriminate between different races or classes of people.Táíwò, by contrast, is a proponent of what...