In the latest issue of The New Republic magazine, Peter Eavis calls Enron “a uniquely bad company,” and I agree with him. From everything I have read, I think that its upper management was comprised of a smarmy group of individuals, many of whom may find themselves in one of those country-club jailhouses in the not-too-distant future. I
Due to some incredible competition over the last two weeks, this year’s Hubris in Monetary Policy award will go to someone other than Alan Greenspan. To be sure, it looked like Greenspan would retain his trophy after his now-notorious speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo. It was here that The Chairman pulled out the big guns by arguing that monetary policy
This is not your father’s housing market, nor your grandfather’s, for that matter. For them, steadily rising — but basically stable — home values seemed (more or less) a given. Recent news suggests that that situation may be a thing of the past. The National Association of Realtors estimated optimistically (have you ever known a pessimistic
Due to credible competition that has emerged among this year’s candidates for the Hubris in Monetary Policy Award, the Award Committee has announced that it is officially deadlocked. The competition is centered on two candidates. Take, for instance, the submission by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who provided remarkable testimony to the
So it has come to this. Years of spending, inflating, taxing, and redistributing has left the US economy teetering on a recession that our best and brightest — meaning the ones who created this mess — claim requires a multibillion-dollar economic-relief package to quell fears, promote confidence, and spur recovery. And, one might add, to keep
When the bailout passed last week, no one was surprised. In fact, what looked like a principled opposition to massive legal theft on Monday was transformed into a done backroom deal by Friday once the bill ballooned from three to 400-plus pages, filled with crumbs that congressmen could throw to their districts. It may be that, 25 years from now,
[This talk was delivered at the Berry College Omicron Delta Epsilon installation dinner in Rome, Georgia, on April 2, 2009.] Studying economics over the last year or so is like an astronomer studying meteors during a dangerous meteor shower. You see dangers out there with some hits and many near misses, you understand them and see their
Confession time: I still read newspapers the old-fashioned way, meaning the way my father and grandfather did, on paper, frequently at the kitchen table, and to the smell of a hot, Honduran coffee. I have various reasons for not yet giving in completely to the digital delivery of news. The paper I read, the Birmingham News , is a good though not
Do you remember when, Things were really hummin’, Yeaaaah, let’s twist again, Twistin’ time is here! So crooned that 1960s social philosopher, Chubby Checker, hoping to extend the popularity of the dance craze he started in a follow-up song urging the kiddies buying his music to do it again for another year. It was a successful twist on the Twist;
The Democratic Party gained prominence in the first half of the nineteenth century as being the party that opposed the Second Bank of the United States. In the process, it tapped into an anti-state sentiment that proved so strong that we wouldn’t see another like it until the next century. Its adversaries were Whig politicians who defended the
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.