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Seizure fever is toxifying law enforcement across the nation. For more than thirty years, federal, state, and local government agencies have plundered citizens on practically any harebrained accusation or pretext. You could be at risk of being pilfered by officialdom anytime you sit behind a steering wheel. Between 2001 and 2014, lawmen seized more than $2.5 billion in cash from sixty thousand travelers on the nation’s highways—with no criminal charges in most cases,...

[A selection from Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, Spring-Autumn 1967.] The chronic Middle East crisis goes back – as do many crises – to World War I. The British, in return for mobilizing the Arab peoples against their oppressors of imperial Turkey, promised the Arabs their independence when the war was over. But, at the same time, the British government, with characteristic double-dealing, was promising Arab Palestine as a “National Home” for...

Overview: The dollar is beginning the new week mixed. The dollar-bloc currencies and Japanese yen are softer while the European currencies enjoy a firmer today. Among emerging market currencies, central European currencies are trading with higher. The Turkish lira is the notable exception. It is the weakest currency today, off about 0.65%. The Chinese yuan is a little softer, but the dollar continues to be capped near CNY7.20. Last week, more often than not, the...

Die Sichtguthaben bei der SNB steigen gegenüber der Vorwoche um 3,4 Milliarden Franken. Die Einlagen von Bund und Banken lagen am 23. Februar bei 480,5 Milliarden Franken nach 477,1 Milliarden in der Woche davor, wie die SNB am Montag mitteilte. Das ist ein Anstieg um 3,4 Milliarden Franken. Auf die Giroguthaben inländischer Banken entfielen Ende letzter Woche 471,4 Milliarden Franken. Das Total der Sichtguthaben bei der Nationalbank umfasst als grössten Posten die...

Married couples in Switzerland are taxed together, unlike unmarried couples who are taxed individually. This often acts as a tax disincentive for one spouse to work, disproportionately affecting women. For many years, certain political parties have been pushing to remove what is essentially discrimination on the basis of marital status. The issue came back into the limelight this week in the run up to a 27 March 2024 deadline for the government to respond to an...

Argentina’s Javier Milei is racking up some solid wins, with the fiscal basket case seeing its first monthly budget surplus in 12 years. Apparently, it took Milei just nine and a half weeks to balance a budget that was projected at 5% of GDP under the previous government. In US terms, he turned a 1.2 trillion-dollar annual deficit into a 400 billion surplus. In 9 and a half weeks. How did he do it? Easy: he cut a host of central government agency budgets by 50% while...

There are many arguments against secession. Some of them are quite prudent, such as those that simply contend that national separation may not be a good idea at this time.  Many others are premised on the refusal to acknowledge the human right known as self-determination. This argument is wrong and immoral, and is nothing more than the traditional imperialist-colonialist argument repackaged for modern audiences.  Perhaps the worst "argument" against secession is the...

In this week's episode, Mark looks at the type information that investors need, but do not have. These anti-wild cards are going to appear in the economy, but no one really knows what, where, or when. Mark looks back at some historical examples. See also Surprised Again! The Covid Crisis and the New Market Bubble by Alex Pollock and Howard Adler: Mises.org/MI_59A Be sure to follow Minor Issues at Mises.org/MinorIssues. Get your free copy of Dr. Guido...

The US dollar and interest rates appear to be at an inflection point. Much of the past several weeks have been about correcting the overshoot that took place in  Q4 23, when the derivatives markets were pricing in nearly seven quarter-point rate cuts by the Federal Reserve this year. US two- and 10-year interest rates set new three-month highs last week. With the help of economic data and comments by Fed officials, the market, as it did a few times last year, has...

Christianity Today magazine, founded by Billy Graham, chose Christopher Watkin’s book, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, as one of its 2024 Book Awards and the book most likely “to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.” Other Christian organizations promote the book too. Nonreligious readers won’t care, but they need to keep in mind that most people won’t take a class or read a book on economics....