The local paper offered up this vague headline last week, “Car Part Thefts Up in Henderson in 2021, Police Say.” Most readers likely passed over the article. But, in the time it takes to read the piece, a half dozen catalytic converters can be stolen. “It actually takes an individual who’s committing these offenses about three seconds really to
A term has been coined for product sellers who shrink their packages, and thus, the amount of product in those packages, keeping the package price the same: shrinkflation. Anyone with a bit of good sense or economics training knows this is another form of price inflation, caused by what used to be the dictionary meaning of inflation; an increase
Murray Rothbard made the point to us in his US Economic History class at UNLV that economic downturns used to be called “panics.” But, the government believed that word to be too scary for the general public, so, “depression” began to be used to describe downturns. Then, the word “depression” was felt to be, well, too depressing, so “recession”
The New York Times recently published a piece entitled “ When Kmart Moved Out, Churches and Flea Markets Moved In .” The article, penned by Kevin Williams, provides an instructive subtitle: “The retailer’s former stores are being used by tenants that might not typically get a crack at such a large haul of commercial space at an affordable price.”
For the Wall Street sequel , the subtitle was Money Never Sleeps . But the Oliver Stone reprisal of Gordon Gecko was the stuff of 2010. In America, a decade plus ago, money slept. Now, it truly doesn’t, with cryptocurrency prices gyrating 24/7/365. This frantic activity has spread to other asset markets. Once real estate was stable and slow
Charlie Munger defines old school. The ninety-seven-year old is partners with Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway. He’s lived and invested through a few booms and busts in his nearly a century on earth. Speaking to the Sohn conference in Sydney, Australia, Munger said “I consider this era an even crazier era than the dotcom era.” Speaking of
A gentleman who does work for us sent me a text recently saying the price of his supplies has increased 20 percent, so he wants to increase his monthly fee 10 percent. It was a nice way to ask, and I said sure, especially given that he’s willing to take a haircut on his labor to make the increase more palatable. Chairman Jerome Powell would be
It’s hard to crack the headlines of the financial pages, what with GameStop, bitcoin, Tesla, and squeezes of one sort or another. There is a squeeze in commercial real estate that won’t shock anyone, or shouldn’t. That squeeze is tenants unable to pay owners and owners unable to pay lenders. It’s possible the pandemic will fizzle, someone will
Back in the wild west days of the housing boom, say 2004-2005, there was a mortgage loan officer who used to pitch an idea to us he called wealthbuilder. He would trot out a spreadsheet and plug in a person’s mortgage amount, and assume a variable rate loan with the low teaser rates that were being marketed at the time. He then would subtract
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. The Clark County Commissioners voted recently to rename McCarran Airport to Harry Reid International Airport. The vote was unanimous among those who rule the Las Vegas Strip. The public doesn’t understand why Las Vegas International Airport wouldn’t do if McCarran’s past is so perturbing.
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.