The Free Market 27, no. 5 (May 2009) John Maynard Keynes often employed flowery language like “animal spirits” and “liquidity trap” to describe things he did not understand. He was, after all, more of a bureaucrat than an economist. In fact, he would best be described as an anti-economist because he eschewed things like supply and demand and
[This article originally appeared in The Free Market , March 1996.] “For those who appreciate the virtues of private enterprise, the UL insignia is an inspiration.” Look at the back of your computer monitor, the bottom of your table lamp, or the label on your hair dryer. Chances are you will see the symbol “UL” with a circle around it. It stands
The current crisis has revealed the Keynesian roots of mainstream economics. The only debate has been the type and size of bailouts and stimulus packages. For example, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University thinks nationalization is preferable to the Geithner-Summers toxic-asset-relief plan. The Keynesian fantasy is really a
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, like most mainstream economists, has an irrational fear of deflation — whether it is understood as falling prices or a contracting money supply. I have coined the term “apoplithorismosphobia” for this psychological malady. In contrast, average Americans love deflation whether it’s at Wal-Mart, in the Cash for Clunkers
In the wake of the downfall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of capitalism in China, I was asked to teach the comparative-economic-systems class at Auburn University for the summer term in 1989. My only exposure to the topic had been as an undergraduate student, where my teacher was a Cold War–era professor
Niall Ferguson the famous Harvard historian appears to be reading Mises.org. Not only is his Newsweek article painfully realistic regarding the prospects for the American Empire, but he also quotes Paul Krugman–the exact same quote that Ben Lee dug up and published on Mises.org . =========================== From page 3-4 of Ferguson: Now, who said
I just came across a letter from a mainstream economics journal from 2003 rejecting my paper “Skyscrapers and Business Cycles.” It reads in part that “this journal focuses upon specification and testing of formal macro and monetary models and does not publish papers like yours in which the theorizing and testing is more casual-descriptive than
Here : “In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf
The ‘Skyscraper Curse’ strikes again There is often a correlation between financial bubbles bursting and attempts to construct the world’s tallest building, says William Pesek on Bloomberg.com. In 1931, for instance, the Empire State building, designed in the exuberant 1920s, finally opened, “presaging years of gloom”. The Sears Tower was the
What Goes Straight Up? Graphs of economic statistics usually meander across the page like a walk through the forest; others will wiggle up and down with the business cycle like an EKG machine. Only recently have we been confronted with statistics that shoot up vertically, like a lie on a polygraph test. Statistics such as the monetary base and 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.