Free Market

The Free Market 27, no. 6 (June 2009)

If you follow the Austrian recipe of allowing liquidation of bankrupt firms and debt, allowing prices to fall without monetary inflation, not propping up employment or subsidizing unemployment, and not discouraging hoarding, you will end up with the quickest possible recovery and minimize the magnitude of economic pain.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan tried to exonerate himself from the housing boom and bust. Even though more and more analysts are realizing that Greenspan’s low interest rates fueled the bubble, the ex-maestro himself uses statistics to defend his record.

He taught this lesson for decades, with stamina, consistency, and calm persistence in his belief that education was the key to freedom.

Consider what it means to live through our times in the light of economic understanding. Even in the face of calamity, there is no mystery, and hence fear is reduced.

The Free Market 27, no. 1 (January 2009)

This was the first book on economics that just jumped out and grabbed me. I had read a few before, but they were boring. Very boring.

This wasn’t an economic plan: it was a heist.

It turns out that making money is a business like any other, not something that only governments do. In a free world, it would be something done entirely by private enterprise.

When you do a lot of driving, $4 gas eats up a pretty big chunk of your disposable income and requires a few adjustments to the way you live. So how does the market coordinate these changes?