“I know no time which is lost more thoroughly than that devoted to arguing on matters of fact with a disputant who has no facts, but only very strong convictions.” So said, James E. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, London 1901. In line with the above definition of futility, I shall not spend time re-refuting all the false lines of
The Keynesians are claiming that we have nothing to worry about because there can be no inflation within a recession. The monetarists, meanwhile, say we must fight deflation and flood the market with liquidity to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s. Greenspan is telling us to “Pick a card, any card,” or whatever hucksterism he is now employing to keep
The Fed’s Open Market Committee, that supposed bulwark against monetary profligacy, has opened the floodgates with its latest move to push the federal funds rate to a forty-year low. It’s the ninth cut this year, and the one that pushes the real rate of interest 1.3 percent below the median measure of CPI. We are now waiting for just two of the
Gerardo Leone, commercial director at Argentine cold meat supplier Paladini SA, knows he has to revise his price list that assumes an exchange rate of 1.4 pesos per dollar. He just doesn’t know when to do that. “It’s impossible to set our prices,” said Leone. “The country is such a mess.” Without a believable peso rate, some companies are either
The following extract neatly sums up why monetarists and Keynesians are both wrong in their prescriptions about the need to use easy money and Big Government to boost “effective” demand. From The National Federation of Independent Business April Survey: “The economy is splitting with the services sector improving and the goods sector suffering,”
How many times have you heard the unthinking comment that we need to keep consumption burning brightly because “consumption is two-thirds of GDP”? There it is, after all, in black and white. If you look up the GDP release, you see that, in 2001, nominal GDP was $10 trillion dollars and change, while personal consumption expenditures were a touch
Forget Greenspan’s timorous optimism about the economy—after all, ask yourself when, in the course of the whole dirty dozen of futile rate cuts, he last talked its prospects down ? No. Just like the tired old stock promoter he is, Bookie Al always thinks better days are ‘round the corner, so puh-leeze, People, let’s perform our own analysis
We have seen the temperature rise along the corridors of power in recent days as finance ministers, central bankers, and others have clamored to have their say on the current disruption in international capital and goods markets. This disruption has its roots in America’s Military Keynesianism and the Asian Mercantilist response it has elicited.
Just when you thought that threat of DISINflation (a Good Thing, the Fed tells us) turning into DEFlation (A V-E-R-Y Bad Thing) had vanished and that instead we were on the verge of INflation (A Not Quite So Bad Thing), up pops another frightful creature from the Fearsome ‘Flation Family—STAGflation! For example, Bloomberg News recently ran a
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.