CNBC claims that the Fed has been “crying wolf” and will back off raising interest rates even a tiny bit more. There are reasons why they might want to back off. China is selling US securities, other central banks are selling, and the Fed might be afraid to sell any of their holdings, which would have to accompany a rate increase. It was fear of a
We would seem to be experiencing a pretty close duplicate of the almost fifty year old scandal that rocked the world and brought down President Nixon. But this time the Washington Post is trying to cover up the scandal, not bring it to light. President Trump gave President Obama and the Democrats lifesaving wiggle room by using words like “ wire
The Republicans have a problem. Healthcare prices are so swollen by government imposed monopolies that most people cannot possibly afford to pay the crazy bills without subsidies. What to do? Example: my son recently went to an out-of-state emergency room for food poisoning. The bill came in at over $8,000. And how is this for fairness: our
Many years ago, the mass circulation Reader’s Digest had a feature titled “Humor in These United States.” The following would have qualified for inclusion. Greg Mankiw, author of a leading economic textbook, former Chair of the G.W. Bush Council of Economic Advisers, member of the Romney inner circle, widely praised for his decency as a human
In my last post, I made light of British columnist George Monbiot’s absurd charge that today’s free market economists and libertarians are part of an establishment crony capitalist system. A “progressive” friend of mine responded by asking: “Doesn’t big business wrap itself in the mantle of free markets? If so, aren’t exponents of free markets
Noah Smith, writing in Bloomberg , says that middle class America has indeed been fleeced by our national economic policies. We agree. But which policies have been responsible? Smith mentions and immediately dismisses trade, immigration, economic regulation, and welfare policies. The real villain in his view is an alleged turn toward managing the
George Monbiot of Britain’s Guardian newspaper seems to think that Mises is indeed the progenitor of today’s crony capitalism and more. It is not Mises alone, however, who by this account is the cause of just about every imaginable contemporary scourge, from the Crash of 2008 to loneliness to obesity. It is all the “neoliberals” who schemed
The Congressional Budget office today reported that 24 million people would lose health insurance coverage under the Ryancare bill. Mainstream Republicans were not pleased to hear that. But let’s look at this figure a bit more closely. When we do, it becomes apparent that the Republicans have created their own problem. They are trying to keep
Why are we fighting over confederate monuments? Because people feel strongly about this issue? Because they are being removed? Because some groups are trying to exploit the situation to get attention? Or is there another reason? While we are fighting over Confederate monuments relating to events almost two centuries ago, we are not focusing on:
A march for science is a contradiction in terms. Marching is an expression of our subjective emotions. Science is an attempt to put emotion and subjectivity aside in order to discover how the world works. If you march for science, you are clearly marching for something other than science, and damaging the standing of science in the process. Many
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.