“Advocates of the free market must confront the fact that both the Great Depression and the current financial chaos were preceded by years of laissez-faire economic policies,” write Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation , and author Eric Schlossel. Knowing full well that inanities like this would become the received version of events, I
“The Therapist” (1937) by Rene Magritte Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) “The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences.” Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to
[An audio version of this article, read by the author, is available as a free MP3 download .] In case you’ve ever wondered what it must have been like to read Pravda , reading the American media’s treatment of the financial crisis and our wise leaders’ expert management of it all has given everyone a wonderful opportunity. For instance, check
“The time to worry about depressions,” F.A. Hayek once wrote, “is, unfortunately, when they are furthest from the minds of most people.” He’s right, of course: imagine trying to tell a house flipper in 2004 that the housing market was a giant bubble that was going to burst. At best he’d smile politely, and then roll around in his fresh pile of
We all encounter more than our share of foolish blog posts. Most of the time you simply have to let them be. You could spend the rest of your life correcting drones and automatons who will never have an original or unconventional thought no matter how much you prod them. Their seventh-grade teacher, who was also the track coach, taught them what
[This article was first published in the Fall 2009 issue of The Intercollegiate Review .] It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones — and often deliberately
Good news: this Sunday, Meltdown , my book that gives an Austrian perspective on the economic crisis, enters its second week on the New York Times bestseller list , up to #11. (The list is for March 8; it was published online on February 27.) I have an article up today at ISI’s web journal First Principles called “Banana Republic, U.S.A.” that
Here’s my most in-depth discussion of the Depression of 1920, which reversed itself in the face of dramatic government budget cuts and a Federal Reserve that did not use its money creation powers. The article is a more formal version of my presentation at the Mises Circle in Colorado Springs back in
Finally an attack on Meltdown . It comes from leftist Matthew Yglesias, whose knowledge of business cycle theory I leave you, dear readers, to judge for yourselves. The Austrian theory of the business cycle has been “superseded,” our expert tells us. Yes, because the mainstream view of capital -- a gigantic, synchronous blob we can represent in 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.