Mises Dailies

Revisiting Ludwig von Mises's Interventionism

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

I turn your attention to one of the shortest of Mises's works: Interventionism: An Economic Analysis. It can be read in an evening. Mises offers solid evaluations and critiques of different types of interventionism.

Mish Should Ditch His Deflation Fears

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

We who are advocates of sound, free-market money need to get our story straight. Are we predicting hyperinflation or massive deflation? Personally, I am much more worried about the former problem.

P.I.G. Tales

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Reading about Hoover's and FDR's mistakes and the coming Obama miscues won't make the economy any better and may not make you feel better. But at least you'll know why this depression will last a long time.

Headed to National Socialism

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

What people don't remember is that Hitlerism was about more than just militarism, nationalism, and consolidation of identity politics. It also involved a substantial shift in German domestic politics away from free enterprise, or what remained of it under Weimar, toward collectivist economic planning. Nazism was not only nationalism run amok. It was also socialism of a particular variety.

Mathematics Versus Economic Logic

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

If this antagonism between the logical and the mathematical economists were merely a disagreement concerning the most adequate procedure to be applied in the study of economics, it would be superfluous to pay attention to it. The better method would prove its preeminence by bringing about better results. It may also be that different varieties of procedure are necessary for the solution of different problems and that for some of them one method is more useful than the other.

75 Years of Housing Fascism

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In terms of the unforeseeable and destructive effects of government regulation, it's difficult to find a better example of a time bomb: it was set in 1934 to explode in $147 billion (about $239 billion in 2008 dollars) of damage 55 years later.[8] Then, to top it all off, the free market received the blame! While the establishment Left is certainly horrible on the issue of housing, the Right has its own shameful legacy as well.

"It's Discrimination!"

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

If there were a prize for the most boneheaded thing that one hears very frequently, it would have to be the astonishment and revulsion that is commonly expressed at the existence of discrimination. You are likely to have heard this horrified expression before: "It's discrimination!" Heavens above! Alert the authorities!

When Stimulus Does Not Stimulate

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Obama's stimulus plan is equivalent to a giant welfare scheme. Instead of the money going to lower income Americans, however, it is meant to go to municipal bureaucrats of various stripes. Instead of productive American citizens determining what to do with their own scarce resources, the state is stepping in and dictating how they will be used. Consequently, such spending is essentially government consumption, which is what vulgar Keynesians think we need now more than ever.

Wind or Nuclear?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Boone Pickens is calling for massive subsidization of the wind-power industry. As with ethanol and recycling and a host of other issues, you must ask yourself again, if these things are so efficient, why do they need to be subsidized? Answer: they're not so efficient. Energies that require massive subsidization benefit absolutely no one.

Krugman's Rearguard Apologists

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

As most readers will know, a collection of damning quotes has surfaced recently, exposing Paul Krugman, the doyen of the economic Left, as having been completely backward on the most material economic event in our generation: the housing bubble. My recent article on the subject, "Krugman's Intellectual Waterloo," has elicited some pretty heated rearguard apologetics

Credit Expansion, Crisis, and the Myth of the Saving Glut

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Credit expansion was the source of the funds that fueled both the stock market and the real estate bubbles.Credit expansion provided funds for the purchase of stocks. The sellers of the stocks then used the far greater part of their proceeds to purchase other stocks, whose sellers did likewise. In this way, the new and additional money created by credit expansion traveled from one set of stocks to another, raising the prices of the great majority of them.

Christina Romer's Faulty Depression History

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Obama, recently wrote an ode to Keynesian deficit spending as a method for curing severe recessions. Yet a simple glance at the big picture shows that the Keynesian story makes no sense.

The Che Guevara Brand

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Ironically, anticapitalist crusader and left-wing icon Che Guevara has turned into a brand name revered by people the world around, which brings me to Alvaro Vargas Llosa's The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty. Llosa evaluates the Guevara legacy and assesses the prospects for liberal reform in Latin America.

Prices, Part 3

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Woods Tells the Story of the Meltdown

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Tom Woods has made an invaluable contribution with his latest book. If the Austrian account of our current plight is correct, what should we do now? Woods offers a simple answer that is essential for the public to understand. The government should do nothing. Malinvestments have occurred and must come to an end.

War Eagle Condo Bust

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Back in the middle of this decade, building anything seemed like a good idea. With the housing boom in full bloom, developers had the imagination, lenders had the construction money, and buyers had swarms of mortgage lenders panting to lend them the entire purchase price of anything their hearts desired. So imagine the confluence of combining Auburn Tigers football and real estate: a certain touchdown.

The Economics of Illusion

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Keynesianism presupposes an economy whose members do not see through the changes brought about by monetary or fiscal manipulation — or, as some might say, the swindle. Above all, it presupposes that people are blinded by the idea that the value of money is stable — by the "money illusion," as Irving Fisher called it. In all this we are not saying anything new; fundamentally, we are merely stating the approach of the classical economists.

Monopoly Prices (Prices, Part 2)

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Free Bernie Madoff

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

What is the point of jailing him? He is no direct threat to anyone. Society would not be safer with him in the slammer. He is not going to rob people or beat people up. He might write a book and donate the funds to charity or make some restitution to his victims. I, for one, would like to read that book. Instead, taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab for his living expenses until his death.

Dean Krugman to the Marching Band: "Stay the Course!"

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

All who remember Animal House can recall the scene at the end in which the band is trying to walk through the wall at the end of the alley, having been led there by one of the pranksters from Delta House. Obviously this moment is an absurdity, but nonetheless I can think of no better way to describe Paul Krugman's latest exhortation to the Obama administration to "stay the course."

Auditing the Fed will Audit the State

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The Fed is a racket at heart, a con game writ large — what else can you call an organization with the exclusive privilege of printing money in the trillions and handing it over to friends? But if this is true, what does that say about the state, the organization that created and sanctions it? Is the Fed an honest mistake in the state's otherwise undying efforts to preserve our liberty, or might it be a key component of a bigger racket?

How Much Money Inflation?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The Federal Reserve is lying about the nation's money supply (M1). The current figure for money supply is being given as $1.6 trillion. The actual number is $2.34 trillion. The reported number is equivalent to an increase of 16% over the past year. The actual number is equivalent to an increase of 70% over the past year. This compares with the nation's high money-supply increase of 16.9% in 1986.

Inflation: What You See and What You Don't See

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

People are being told by governments, central bankers, and leading mainstream economists that money-base expansion is not inflationary — because the money would remain in the portfolios of banks and would not spill over into the hands of firms and private households. This is, to put it mildly, an uninformed view. Let us start right from the beginning,

In Comes the State

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The trustees and bureaucrats plan the future based on the science of the day. They act as if they were the intended recipients of a letter written by Claude-Henri Saint-Simon some 200 years ago. In that letter, Saint-Simon envisioned a paradise governed by "men of genius." That was his utopia. Of course, history reveals a different reality.

Australia's Uncreative Destruction

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

It turns out that Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is going around town breaking windows by, well, demanding they be built. There are over 35,000 construction and maintenance projects planned across Australia over the next 12 months. This includes AU$49 (US$39.4) billion dedicated to "nation building infrastructure," or crudely AU$2,200 in taxes for every man, woman, and child residing in Australia.

Whose Right Is It, Anyway?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Recently, the Shelby County Commission passed an ordinance that would make it illegal for employers and firms that contract with the county to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the debate largely ignored the key issue, which is whether it is just, moral, and appropriate to use force to correct others' wayward beliefs.

Mises Introduces the Austrian School

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

When I first came to the university, Carl Menger was nearing the end of his teaching career. There was little attention paid the Austrian School of economics at the university, and I had no interest in it at the time. Around Christmas, 1903, I read Menger's Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre for the first time. It was through this book that I became an economist.

"Repressed Inflation": The Ailment of the Modern Economy

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

We have a vivid memory of this process in the case of prohibition in America, and we know that legislation of this kind in the end becomes a poisonous source of corruption. Can anyone seriously believe that what did not succeed in the case of drink is likely to succeed in the case of inflation, that is, simply to forbid it?

What Changes and What Does Not

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

"Why, you'd take us back to the horse and buggy." The basic fallacy of this all-too-common cliché is a confusion between technology and such other aspects of human life as morality and political principles. Over the centuries, technology tends to progress: from the first wheel to the horse and buggy to the railroad and the jet plane.

Can the "Mimetic Effect" Explain Speculative Bubbles?

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

For the enemies of freedom in general , and of the economy in particular, the recent crash has been the occasion to re-assert that markets in general, and financial ones in particular, are inherently unstable — and thus dangerous — because they are driven by irrational behaviors such as the "mimetic effect," which, according to many experts and politicians, explains how Wall Street booms and then busts.