Since the early 17th century, American governments (colonial, state, and federal) have tried and failed to restart business expansions by reflation, writes Scott Trask. But new money in the system is no substitute for genuine production. It is too early to see the long-run consequences of the Bush-Greenspan reflation, but if the past is any guide we can expect the next decade to more resemble the 1970s than the 1990s.
It's not new colors and security features that make money, "Safer. Smarter. More Secure." Money will never be safe and secure as long as the Federal Reserve and the Treasury can create money unchecked, writes Doug French.
Perhaps you regret that you didn't take a course on economics from Murray Rothbard. Well, you can. Or perhaps you regret missing the Austrian Scholars Conferences for the last several years. Well, listen online. Concerning texts, Mises.org features all the writings of Mises that we can possibly put online, not to mention nearly everything the Mises Institute has ever published.
Many economists use the idea of externalities as the basis for public policy recommendations: a tax or subsidy to "make up" the external costs. In fact, most government functions at one time or another have been justified on the basis of externalities. But Jacob Halbrooks asks: do externalities really have a meaningful role in economics?
As any reporter knows, U.S. attorneys on a regular basis illegally leak information to the press, which dutifully reports it as the unvarnished truth. By empowering the prosecution, the press is not protecting individuals but rather is creating an atmosphere in which government employees can readily break the law and be untouchable at the same time.
In war on terrorism, writes Lew Rockwell, we are dealing with the oldest political error: the belief that because everyone wants something (security), government should or must provide it. If the error is pervasive, the result is the total state. If it is completely uprooted, the result is the purely free society.
Hans Hoppe writes: "Though the implications of the arguments made in this volume are radical and sweeping, the principles are quite simple at root. In economics, the contributors seek the consistent application of market theory, not its arbitrary exclusion from whole areas of life, such that it applies also to the delivery of goods and services associated with security and defense. In politics, the contributors seek only the application of the principle Jefferson presented in his Declaration of Independence, that people have the right and duty to throw off governments that are not effecting their safety."
Hans Sennholz writes: No central bank on earth, not even the Federal Reserve System, can continually inflate its currency and defy market rates of interest without harming both its currency and the economy. Inflation tends to accelerate and ultimately destroy the currency and cripple the economy. And no government whatsoever can suffer budget deficits of half a trillion dollars annually without impairing its standing with its creditors.
The disappearance of gold from the monetary scene is perhaps the most tragic economic calamity to befall the world of money in the twentieth century, writes Christopher Mayer. Views on gold in the first two decades of the twentieth century compared to those held today could scarcely be more different.
Most people know Las Vegas as the slickly packaged, corporate version that is hawked coast-to-coast by the local government's convention authority these days. But, not so long ago, Las Vegas was just a dusty, desert town where a few of the nation's wise guys, bookmakers and one defense attorney came to reinvent themselves.
