[This piece ran in the Financial Post , August 3, 1999.] Economists and politicians who talk about the world economy these days are increasingly advocating a “new global financial architecture.” What many of them wish to do is give the International Monetary Fund (IMF) new powers over the world’s economies. In practice, this means giving the
One of many virtues of the free economy is its flexibility. It is able to adjust to changing tastes, technology, and resource availability. In a living economy, property rights are secure but the uses to which they are “assigned” is in continual flux. Market signals embody individuals’ subjective valuations of goods and services, and of money
In his recent Wall Street Journal editorial titled “Help the Third World Help Itself” (November 29, 1999), Kofi Annan advanced a statist agenda for improvement in the developing world. This is what we would expect from the acting secretary-general of the United Nations. Improvement necessarily always begins with government for people in positions
The Times (London) Friday, March 26, 1999 Two cheers for Colonel Tony Benn Nato was set up to fight a war in Europe. The Red Army invades, Nato fights back; Turks fight for Norway, French fight for Greece. What an extraordinary irony it is that Nato should not, in the event, have had to fight any war in Europe, but then chose, after the Cold War,
One of the complaints raised at the WTO meetings in Seattle, Washington, echoes the accusations that have for years been leveled at Nike, Kathy Lee Gifford, WalMart and others, all of whom have employed workers abroad who charge far less for their labor than do workers in most Western countries, especially in the US. It is that it is evil to pay
It seems everyone in D.C. claims to believe in “free trade,” but the meaning of the phrase is being drained out through sheer political hypocrisy. A true free trader is not a supporter of export subsidies and bailouts, foreign aid and mercantilist trade treaties, centralized executive power or global environmental regulations. Simply put, a free
London Times March 24, 1999 The real catastrophe Why Kosovo? Why, of all the current civil wars and humanitarian horrors, is it Kosovo that now summons British troops to the colours? Or put it another way, why does a bloodstained shroud only have to wave over a Balkan village for otherwise intelligent people to take leave of their senses?
[This column ran in the National Post , September 17, 1999, on the occasion of the Mises Institute conference “Austrian Economics and Financial Markets”] Our fiat money system--the one currently in worldwide use--does not work. Although admittedly managed by sophisticated individuals called central bankers, fiat money--or managed money--has
Members of Economic and Monetary Union couldn’t even wait for the euro’s official advent on January 1, 1999 to reveal its future. The EMU-wide interest rate cut in December 1998, an Keynesian-style effort to forestall a recession, was the real portent of things to come. Monetary inflation and credit expansion are the fate awaiting Europeans and
Jude Wanniski argues that the IMF’s “shock therapy”--with its characteristic devaluations, tax increases, and wage freezes--marked the beginning of ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia. Read Polyconomics.com for his perspective.
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.