Booms and Busts

While economics textbooks are weak on causes of the Great Depression, American history texts are even worse. It's time for some truth telling.

While the creator of modern portfolio theory was awarded a Nobel Prize, that doesn't mean the theory isn’t flawed. In fact, it explains very little about investments.

Bob comments on the key disputes from his recent debate with Dean Baker, underlying the differences between the Austrian and Keynesian frameworks.

Thanks to Federal Reserve intervention, apartments and apartment buildings have turned into giant malinvestments. Once again, a federal entity intervenes in markets presumably to make them work better, but things end in a crisis.

The Post-Keynesian School of Economics claims that business and personal debt create instability that sinks the U.S. economy. Private debt, however, is not the cause of boom-and-bust cycles.

While some of Tucker Carlson's recent broadside on free-market economics is mistaken, too many so-called Beltway Libertarians have endorsed interventionist policies that have had severe consequences.

One of the biggest and most pervasive myths in modern-day economics is the myth of the omnipotence of the Federal Reserve.

Thanks to Federal Reserve intervention, apartments and apartment buildings have turned into giant malinvestments. Once again, a federal entity intervenes in markets presumably to make them work better, but things end in a crisis.

A bedrock of Austrian economic thinking is the notion of causality. A libertarian worldview also requires the understanding of causality.

The common belief is that increases in the stock market drive overall economic growth. Expansionary monetary policies, however, are responsible for driving up stock prices even as they simultaneously damage the economy.