Booms and Busts

International aid agencies are providing goats for families in Malawi as a way to fight poverty. Like so many other do-good experiments, this one has numerous unintended consequences.

On the Daniela Cambone Show, Mark Thornton explains why central banks are dumping Treasuries for gold, why US debt is hitting a point of no return, and why silver could move even faster.

In 2011, Paul Krugman infamously declared that the US could revitalize its slow economy if it were to prepare for an invasion of space aliens. Would the real presence of aliens, however, touch off an economic crisis?

While elites tell us we need to fear artificial intelligence, they continue to approve of the Federal Reserve’s attempts to expand artificial credit, which is the real threat to our economic well-being.

AI is not the killer—it is the coroner.

AI is not the killer—it is the coroner.

Mainstream economics and finance theories hold that markets immediately adjust to new information. While market prices do reflect available information, the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) fails to explain the boom-bust cycle as well as Austrian analysis.

The boom-and-bust cycle isn’t limited just to so-called advanced economies. It also has become a way of life in the economies of tropical countries and other emerging economies.

Critics of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory claim that capital investors over time will no longer be fooled by artificially-low interest rates triggered by central banks. However, when central banks push easy money policies, the inflation itself sets the ABCT pattern in motion.

Economic historians usually are mistaken when looking at the causes of the Panic of 1857. Douglas E. French sets the record straight.