Not many Americans have heard of Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, but maybe more should. They are the authors of Out of Work , the best economic history of 20th-century America and an indictment of all the monstrous and stupid things our government has done to us. In addition to holding legitimate jobs as professors of economics at Ohio
Unhinged 2.0 This article originally ran on Tuesday, February 17, 2009. It was near the low of the last stock-market cycle and the economy had endured a year of unprecedented government interventions. The Federal Reserve had made a series of bailouts, Detroit had been bailed out, and we had the various stimulus programs. These measures were sure
An explanation for the downfall of MF Global Complete article here . That is why this system has to change at some point. It is exactly designed to be misleading, and the reason is so very simple. In any fractional system there will be a desire to amplify that fraction to the maximum degree. But in doing so, participants recognize that the process
This segment of “This American Life” is actually quite good and might be worth assigning to principle of economics classes as an introduction to the topic of money. They begin with “the most stoner question we have ever posed on this show” and they get all the way to including Ron
The American Economic Association recently held their annual conference in Denver. David Warsh reports that members were working on a variety of thorny issues, like what caused the economic crisis, how to prevent future crises, and even what to name the current crisis. No solutions are yet available. On a promising note, he reports that there
It is not a big stretch of the imagination that Europe is facing an economic crisis. Even optimists admit that there is some potential for a crisis to develop. However, my skyscraper model has issued a crisis signal. The signal comes in the form of the Shard , now the tallest building in Europe. The skyscraper model holds that when there is a new
The United States government has just crossed the magic line where its total national debt now exceeds (more than 100%) of GDP. See here that the U.S. national debt of $15.033 trillion is now higher than the $15.032 trillion gross domestic product. The magic line usually means that a country is plunging into a long term malaise. There are other
Here is a good example of a malinvestment. Its the Sathorn Unique skyscraper from Thailand which was to be one of the biggest building in the country until the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit. Regulations in most countries require that the contractor finish the structure or at least make it look like it is finished. Not here in Thailand. I guess
Dateline: Auburn, Alabama: The Economist tries here to summarize the battle that is going on in modern macroeconomics including Ron Paul, the Austrians, the Free Bankers, Paul Krugman, Keynes and one of my undergraduate professors Scott Sumner. It needs some extensive Austrian analysis and
The Free Market 29, no. 4 (April 2011) If we were to take the greatest economists from all ages and judge them on the basis of their theoretical rigor, their influence on economic education, and their impact in support of the free-market economy, then Frédéric Bastiat would be at the top of the list. As Murray N. Rothbard noted: “Bastiat was
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. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.