Even when Congress tries to restrict government agencies from illegally gathering information on people, the agencies simply exploit legal loopholes or just break the law—without consequences. Original Article: Government Agencies Exploit Data Brokers as End-Around to Legal Restrictions [embedded content] Tags:...
Read More »How the Fed Undermines Prosperity
The boom-and-bust cycles are not natural to a market economy, contra Keynes. Instead, government through monetary manipulation creates them—and then politicians blame markets themselves. Original Article: How the Fed Undermines Prosperity [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »Why Must Supply Precede Demand? Understanding Economic Foundations
Popular economic thinking holds that consumer spending is the most important driver of the economy. Actually, demand can’t exist without something first being supplied. Original Article: Why Must Supply Precede Demand? Understanding Economic Foundations [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »Mounting Deficits Mark the US’s Road to Ruin
According to the U.S. Treasury, year-end data from September 2023 show that the deficit for the full year 2023 was $1.7 trillion, $320 billion higher than the prior year’s deficit. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit was 6.3%, an increase from 5.4% in FY 2022. This means that the United States will likely post the worst GDP growth excluding debt increases since 1929, or, in other words, that the country is in a recession disguised by bloated deficit spending. This...
Read More »November 2023 Monthly
November may be an in-between month. It will be a month of limited monetary policy actions and a period of heightened geopolitical tensions. Fiscal policy may be more interesting, with a Japanese supplemental budget, more measures expected from China, and a debate in Europe over the re-implementation of the Stability and Growth Agreement. In the US, the drama that played out in the House of Representatives could still leave the federal government with insufficient...
Read More »On the Cultural Impact of the Paper Dollar
On this week's episode, Mark recaps Professor Guido Hülsmann's recent lecture on the cultural impact of the paper dollar. Hülsmann explains how an ever-inflationary monetary system and depreciating currency are leading to moral decay and divisiveness in America. Be sure to follow Minor Issues at Mises.org/MinorIssues. Additional Resources "The Cultural Impact of the Dollar" by Guido Hülsmann: Mises.org/Minor_42A "Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An...
Read More »The Specter of Hyperinflation Looms over the Economy
The threat of hyperinflation has haunted fiat money economies throughout history. Although past empires crumbled under the weight of unrestrained money printing, modern bankers at the Federal Reserve assure us that today’s financial system is immune to such a fate. Austrian business cycle theory, however, reveals that current economic stimulation may be propelling us toward a crisis of catastrophic proportions: a crack-up boom that marks the dramatic end of this...
Read More »Kendi’s Critical Race Theory Is a Failed Marxist Doctrine
Ibram X. Kendi, the controversial author of How to Be an Antiracist, has been revealed as not only a hustler of horrid ideas but also a poor businessman. Kendi was appointed the head and founder of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research in 2020 following the aptly named “summer of love,” which saw riots in most major cities over calls for “racial justice.” Now, Boston University is committing mass layoffs of employees, as the Center has lost the $43...
Read More »American History Is a Preview of the Israel-Palestine End Game
As news of the Hamas attack on southern Israel began to trickle in on October 7, many who follow the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict knew the bad news was just beginning. It was immediately obvious that the ferocity of the Hamas attack, and the high proportion of women and children among the victims, would provide the Israeli state with political justification to launch devastating and revanchist attacks against civilians within the Gaza strip in retaliation. ...
Read More »Mises on the History of Warfare
“The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another.” So Ludwig von Mises begins a short chapter in Human Action called “The Economics of War.” While brief, the eleven pages (pages 817–28 in the scholar’s edition) are densely packed with Mises’s take on the history of warfare, what leads to total war, how wars are won, the costs of war, and the...
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