Late last month, Erik Prince, the founder of the Bush Administration’s mercenary army in Iraq—also known as Blackwater—expressed admiration for the State of Israel’s “pager attacks.” The attacks, which killed at least two children and critically injured many others, employed explosives in crowded civilian areas. Even a lose application of just war theory would force us to conclude such attacks are war crimes. Detonating bombs without any knowledge of where the bombs...
Read More »Gold’s Future Depends Crucially on China
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of China in the future of gold even if the relationship falls short of monocausal. Beijing’s actual course both in economic policy and geopolitics since its giant bubble economy turned to bust — starting circa 2020 — has had a huge bearing on gold’s super-strong performance. By contrast if the bust were to spark somehow a triumph of economic and political freedom in China, a continuing stellar rise for gold would depend, most...
Read More »What is Bolstering the Chinese Economy?
On October 23, 2024, Tom DiLorenzo appeared NOW with Stacy Washington, to explain how the Chinese Communist Party is imitating what the Federal Reserve did in the early 2000s.The original episode is available on SalemNewsChannel.com.Stacy Washington (SW): Welcome back to Salem News Channel. There’s no room for argument when it comes to which candidate in this election will fix our economy. We know what both plans are, and John Paulson wrapped it up nicely on Fox...
Read More »Swiss Bankers Association critical of “Too-big-to-fail” measures
Bankers Association takes a critical view of "too-big-to-fail" measures Keystone-SDA The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) is critical of a number of the measures proposed by the Federal Council for systemically important banks. This content was published on October 24, 2024 - 13:36 It is...
Read More »Trump’s Latest Tariff Plan Just Replaces One Tax with Another
Donald Trump on Monday floated the idea that he might seek to replace the federal income tax with federal taxes on imports—also known as tariffs. This is potentially a good idea, but not for economic reasons. There is no economic reason why tariffs are any better or any worse than the income tax. A tariff, which is just a tax, is no less compulsory than the income tax. A tariff is no less destructive to private wealth and capital than the income tax. Contrary to...
Read More »Free Markets Don’t Need Government Regulation
The “middle of the road” has become a popular position among those who find both free market capitalism and communism both to be extreme opposites. Despite the fall of the USSR, many still believe in various, often moderate, forms of socialism. This leads many to oppose a pure free market economy because they believe it is a radical idea prone to failure. With the failure of several socialist countries and systems, many are now becoming aware of the problems...
Read More »Turn Around Tuesday Comes Late
Overview: It is ironic that a few months ago, many wanted to sell the dollar because the Republican president and vice president candidates said they wanted a weaker dollar. With the election drawing near and the race very tight, there has been a surge in the betting markets of a Trump-Vance victory, and this has corresponded with the dollar's dramatic rise. US rates held on the lion's share of their gains despite the sharpest loss in the S&P 500 since early...
Read More »Playing With Fire and Its Critics
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 »No Compromise With the Fed!
Some people argue like this: Although the Fed as it now exists is very bad, a nation needs a central bank to regulate its money supply, and the Fed is better than nothing. That being so, we should try to urge the Fed to adopt a non-expansionary monetary policy. In this view, calls to “End the Fed” are mistaken. I’m sure most of my readers already know what I’m about to say, but, just to be clear, that view is disastrously wrong. We do not need a central bank, and to...
Read More »Living With Hamilton’s Curse
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....
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