Overview: Calmer markets are prevailing today, but an unease remains, and market moves continue to be sharp even if less dramatic. Still, it is in these somewhat less volatile conditions that the US dollar is doing better. It is firmer against all the G10 currencies today. The yen and sterling are the weakest, nursing 0.4%-0.5% losses, while the Norwegian krone and the Canadian dollar are faring the best, off 0.05%-0.15%. Emerging market currencies are also mostly...
Read More »Yen Carry Trade Blows Up Sparking Global Sell-Off
On Monday morning, investors woke up to plunging stock markets as the “Yen Carry Trade” blew up. While media headlines suggested the sell-off was due to fears of a recession, slowing employment growth, or fears over Israel and Iran, such is not the case. As previously noted, headline events like the economy, employment, or geopolitical conflict are quickly evaluated and hedged by market participants. However, as we saw on Monday, what sparks a global sell-off is...
Read More »The rule of law and property rights
Respect for the rule of law cannot simply mean a moral obligation to obey legislation. History is replete with too many examples of tyrannical legislation for that notion to pass muster. But if the rule of law does not mean obeying whatever legislators enact, what does it mean?Murray Rothbard argued that this question must be answered by reference to ethical guidelines, which he constructed around the concepts of self-ownership and property rights. Rothbard...
Read More »Swiss prosecutor hits Glencore with multi-million franc fine
More Swiss breast cancer screening quality varies across cantons This content was published on Aug 6, 2024 The quality of breast cancer screening programmes in Switzerland varies from canton to canton. However,...
Read More »Yen Slumps, Germany Contracts, and the Week’s Key Events Still Lie Ahead
Overview: An unexpected decline in Japan's unemployment did not prevent a retreat in the yen to a four-day low ahead of tomorrow's data and conclusion of the BOJ meeting. The dollar has probed the JPY155 area where nearly $3.5 bln options expire today. An unexpected contraction Germany's Q2 GDP was offset in the aggregate by better French, and especially Spanish figures, leaving the euro consolidating in a narrow range (~$1.0815-$1.0835). The greenback is softer...
Read More »Law and state coercion: The liberating effects of free markets
Many who support state regulation of free markets claim that they are not against free markets, just against unregulated free markets. They argue that regulation is needed to mitigate the harm that may be suffered during market participation, such as people working long hours for low wages or suffering racial discrimination. As Ronald Hamowy explains in his introduction to Friedrich von Hayek’s “The Constitution of Liberty,” these arguments were influential in the...
Read More »Praxeology
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 »Subjective Value and Market Prices
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 »Between “terrorist acts” and international support: Maduro’s theater elections
In the early hours of Monday, July 29, the announcement of the election results in Venezuela echoed. Nicolas Maduro, is declared the winner in Venezuela’s presidential election by the electoral authority, setting up a high-stakes showdown that will determine whether the South American nation transitions away from one-party rule. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, banned from running for office, said opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won 70 percent of the...
Read More »Is increased consumer spending good for the economy?
Just about every so-called business periodical touts an increase in consumer spending as “good for the economy.” But is this really so? Can we really spend our way out of a recession? Lord John Maynard Keynes thought so, and his teachings have become the standard narrative just about everywhere in the world.Probably the most influential economic treatise of all time is Keynes’ “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” published in 1936 at...
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