Money and Banking

New technologies, such as the blockchain technology behind digital currencies like bitcoin, may in the future facilitate the convenient use of precious metals as money once again.

After a week of jittery markets, join us LIVE online Saturday for our Mises Circle in Houston, where we'll discuss where the world is headed in 2016.

Last week, the Bank of Canada announced it would stay at 0.5 percent for its target overnight rate (the equivalent of the Federal Funds Rate in the US).

Thanks to relentless government intervention, the economy in Brazil is in deep trouble. Anyone familiar with Austrian business cycle theory, however, could have predicted the current troubles long ago.

We're being told to blame the current market volatility and emerging crisis on oil prices, China, and a "strong dollar." To find the real causes, though, we must look at central banks and at past mistakes and malinvestments.

Fear is in the air. Central bankers are warning of crisis, and while mainstream economists fear the falling prices that are on the horizon in our post-boom world, Austrians know that deflation and recessions are both inevitable and necessary.

Barron's is writing about skyscrapers and the Skyscraper Curse. They also quote me on the subject.

Following the discovery of the Americas, Spain began a 300-year period of booms, busts, war, and mercantilism. Only in the eighteenth century did the country begin to find prosperity through liberalization of trade and private property.

The global economy continues to wrestle with deflation, with

You may have heard about the Swiss referendum to end fractional reserve lending by Swiss commercial banks. It's a fascinating development, and another example of how average Swiss people can use the federal referendum process to force both the central legislature and the 26 cantons to consider citizen proposals—merely by gathering 100,000 signatures within 18 months.