One can be certain that interest rates will shoot up once inflation picks up. Since most of the U.S. debt is short term, it is going to be very difficult to inflate prices to reduce the real value of the debt. How will the U.S. government react if it has to refinance at interest rates of 12 percent or more, like in 1981?
Austrian economics teaches that understanding the “economy” can only be undertaken with the aid of economic theory. There is no formula or equation for understanding the economy. It cannot be measured in any meaningful scientific way. Only the logical construction of cause and effect aid us.
The prospects for an unwinding of the Fed’s bloated balance sheet without even more damage to the economy and a return to a more reasonable rules-based monetary policy, are significantly diminished under a Yellen-led Fed. It is time, not to restore a rules-based policy, but to denationalize money.
What would happen if the FDA didn’t ensure that food was safe and the EPA didn’t protect us from pollution? What would happen if the SEC didn’t rein in Wall Street and the FTC and antitrust laws didn’t protect us from monopolies and collusion? The answer is “I don’t know; no one knows.” But someone would come up with an solution.
Real, lasting change comes only with education and with the intellectual movements behind them, and with a revolution in ideas. It’s up to us and the scholarship of the Austrian School to show the nature of central banks and state-dominated economies, and how it would work without them. Help continue the revolution.
The myth endures that after Hitler inherited a country ravaged by the Great Depression in 1933, his aggressive policies turned the nation around and created an economic powerhouse. But the truth is something far different. It became a story of rationing, shortages, and misery in the Third Reich.
The singular brilliance of the debt ceiling is that it keeps reminding everyone that there is a growing national debt that never seems to shrink. That is a tremendous service to American citizens who live in the dark regarding the borrowing machinations of their political overlords.
A paper currency system contains the seeds of its own destruction. The temptation for the monopolist money producer to increase the supply is almost irresistible. A drastic reduction of government spending and deficits is not very likely either, given the incentives for politicians in democracies. So what is to come?
The only way to provide good medical services at a reasonable cost is to bring back market pricing. We need the market not only to get supply and demand back into balance, but also to decide what exactly will be supplied. When was the last time that anyone saw a normal market price in medicine?
The focus of Dallas Buyers Club is on the crony-capitalist relationship that exists among the American health care system, the pharmaceutical companies, and the FDA. The monopoly power that results from this union is used to stifle a person’s right to consume what he wants and treat himself as he sees fit.
