Booms and Busts

Bob reviews Murray Rothbard's 1988 essay "The Myth of Free Banking in Scotland," his sharp response to Larry White's influential account of Scottish free banking.

In this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan sits down with Mark Thornton to talk through the economic trends fueling today's unrest.

The Singer Building and the panic of 1907. The Empire State and the Depression. The Burj Khalifa and 2008. Lucas Engelhardt on why the world's tallest buildings keep opening at exactly the wrong moment.

Successful entrepreneurs are all Austrians, Per Bylund says. They just never had the words for it.

Even in a world of gold, silver, and costly mining, whoever got the new money first still came out ahead. Jeffrey Degner on why hard money doesn't repeal the Cantillon effect, and why fiat makes it far worse.

The recession isn't the disease, it's the cure. Patrick Newman on why the Austrians blame the boom, not the bust, and trace it all to one cause.

For a while, some economists tried to claim that business cycles are the result of significant changes in technology. The Austrians have a better explanation.

Bob uses U.S. economic history, centering on the greenback era, to work through some subtle but important distinctions in Austrian monetary theory.

In the wake of Alan Greenspan's recent passing, Bob revisits two contested claims about his legacy: did the Fed under Greenspan fuel the housing bubble, and did that bubble cause the 2008 financial crisis? 

Economics’ greatest unsolved mystery, finally explained.