In April 2011, two years shy of its 100th birthday, the Fed held its first press conference in history in response to mounting criticism of its lack of transparency. In other words, the Fed felt that it had to walk out into the sunshine and defend itself. And, as no doubt part of the same public relations effort, recent Fed publications reveal a
In a recent interview, Jeb Bush said that in order for the United States to reach a higher level of economic growth, “people need to work longer hours.” Leftists immediately jumped on this comment as proof that Bush is horribly out of touch with ordinary working Americans. Bush soon backtracked and attempted to explain that what he really meant
One of the benefits of being an extremely powerful lobby in Washington is the ability to live off the taxpayers without ever having to tell the taxpayers what you do with their money. This includes two of the most powerful lobbies in DC: the Fed and the Pentagon. In recent years, thanks to Ron Paul, the “Audit the Fed” movement has gained a high
In absolute terms, the US dollar continues to be inflationary in ways rarely seen before 2009. That is, in a world of Quantitative Easing, the Fed just keeps on creating money in order to prop up domestic industries as well as US government debt. In late December, for example, the Fed continued with its buying spree of mortgage debt in order to
The supply of US dollars has slowed during early 2017 with February’s year-over-year percentage increase hitting a 17-month low of 7.7 percent. Monthly year-over-year growth rates in the money supply have been falling each month since October. Over the past eight months or so, money supply growth rates have become somewhat volatile with the
In case you missed it, be sure and check out the October issue of The Free Market, now online at Mises.org. October’s issue features a short adaptation of Jörg Guido Hülsmann’s important lecture on The Cultural Consequences of Fiat Money , in which Dr. Hulsmann examines how a century of artificially low interest rates and money manipulation has
In recent years, home price indices have seemed to proliferate. Case-Shiller, of course, has been around for a long time, but over the past decade, additional measures have been marketed aggressively by Trulia, CoreLogic, and Zillow, just to name a few. Measuring home prices has taken on an urgency beyond the real estate industry because for many,
There is no doubt that there is a boom going on out there. Unfortunately, it’s just a boom in asset prices, and not in job growth. That means real incomes are going down for people who don’t make a sizable amount of income off assets they own. In other words, for most people, the cost of living is going up while the job situation is stagnating.
The Swiss central bank’s recent move to de-peg the Swiss franc from the euro reminds us of the importance of choice in currency. By pegging the Swiss franc to the euro, the Swiss central bank was in effect subsidizing the euro by refusing to compete with it. If carried into the long term, this would have meant a de facto monetary union between the
Janet Yellen continues to be an inflation dove, and last week, she suggested that the FOMC keep interest rates low, even if unemployment continues to fall and official inflation rates increase. After more than seven years of rates below 1 percent, several members of the FOMC have started to worry about just how they’re going to re-establish any
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.